Kosovo/Kosova As Seen, As Told According to Yugoslav criminal law, an official who takes advantage of his official authority with the 36 intention of causing damage to a third person commits a criminal offence. This is particularly true so if it leads to substantial damage to or a serious breach of another person's rights, such as the right to personal liberty. Since violations of this law were largely made with impunity, for many Kosovo Albanians the sight of Serbian security officials carried the fear that, for arbitrary reasons, they could face the prospect of restriction of liberty, theft, abuse of physical integrity, or even the loss of life. The OSCE-KVM was not aware of any case where a Kosovo Albanian who had been arbitrarily arrested, and whose right to liberty was therefore restricted, actually exercised their right to ask for compensation. Arbitrary detention by the UCK In an effort to assert its legitimacy, the UCK early on decided to create its own military police and judicial system. Through this exercise the UCK tried to justify what amounted to abductions of civilians who had contravened UCK dictates or its conduct of operations. Individuals and small groups of people, often accused of being "traitors or collaborators", were forcibly taken and sometimes subjected to summary trial procedures for infractions that were defined to embrace conduct deemed inappropriate by 37 the UCK. There appeared to be no legal basis for these proceedings under international or domestic 38 law. Even if a legal basis had existed to enable the UCK to organize such a judicial system, the absence of predictability as to what constituted punishable conduct under this system would have rendered all detentions effected under it arbitrary. Moreover, these detentions were generally the result of on-the-spot decisions made by UCK members in the field, which the UCK command then tried to justify as amounting to some kind of lawful detention under a so-called "Criminal Code of War" (see below). This again underscored the arbitrary nature of such detentions. The OSCE-KVM made several attempts at gaining access to UCK detention facilities which were denied "for security reasons". It was explained that those in the custody of the UCK were kept in houses and had to be moved around depending on the level of fighting. However, the OSCE-KVM was on one occasion granted access to eight alleged detainees, Kosovo Albanians charged with "looting, stealing, or 39 collaboration with the enemy", and was able to interview the detainees in private. The OSCE-KVM was also informed by UCK commanders that several people were also kept under some form of house arrest. The general detention procedures of the UCK were described as follows: after information was received by the UCK police that a "crime" (i.e. infraction of UCK codes) had been committed or collaboration was alleged, an "invitation" was issued to the person concerned. If that person did not respond to the summons, he was taken into custody by the UCK police. These were reported to have acquired a degree of sophistication, with files, fingerprints, witness statements, UCK intelligence and so on, which http://www.osce.org/kosovo/documents/reports/hr/part1/ch9.htm (12 of 16)12/5/2003 11:52:05 AM