“I gladly accepted that invitation even though for me the circumstances were new and the security situation in Serbia was quite fragile and dangerous, especially for journalists working with foreign media,” Musliu reminisced in an interview with BIRN more than 24 years later.

When Serbian forces withdrew from Kosovo at the end of the war in June 1999, they transported more than 2,000 ethnic Albanian prisoners to overcrowded Serbian jails to face trial. This is the focus of Musliu’s new book, ‘Rigged Trials of Kosovo Albanians (1999-2001)’, which is an updated version of ‘Hostages’ Trials’, a previous book he published back in 2002.

“They were heavy and emotional cases… It was very sad to see Flora Brovina’s defence, a woman crying in the court,” Musliu said at the book launch event on February 22 in Pristina. Brovina was sentenced to 12 years in prison but amnestied in November 2000 after Milosevic’s regime was ousted.

Musliu argued that Kosovo Albanians who were arrested without cause during the war in 1998 to 1999 “have not received the attention they deserved so far”.

“Four hundred of those who were arrested were never indicted. They were held in prisons unlawfully,” he added.

‘Journalism requires courage’

Fahri Musliu’s book ‘Rigged Trials of Kosovo Albanians (1999-2001)’. Photo: BIRN.

Born in Kosovo, Fahri Musliu studied journalism in Belgrade in the early 1970s and decided to develop his career in the capital of what was then Yugoslavia, working for various local, regional and international media.

When the Yugoslav authorities declared a state of war in March 1999 after NATO launched its bombing campaign, he was still living in Belgrade without much to do, as reporting became difficult in wartime.

Musliu, now 76 and retired, explained that when he decided to follow the post-war trials of Kosovo Albanians in Serbia, he believed that journalism, “as well as professional knowledge, also requires courage and a lack of fear”.

“A dose of fear, which is human, prevailed during the trials but the courage to do my job professionally and inform the public banished the fear,” he said.

“But if I hadn’t followed these trials, I couldn’t have written this book as a key witness to these events and would have committed a professional crime. I would never have forgiven myself,” he added.

Speaking about the trial of the group of 145 people from Gjakova/Djakovica who were collectively tried on ‘terrorism’ charges and sentenced to a total of 1,632 years in prison, Musliu said that he was left stunned when he heard the verdict convicting all the defendants.

“It was the first time we saw collective guilt in a judicial procedure. Even experts on the Serbian judiciary, intellectuals and human rights NGOs considered it a shame for Serbian justice,” he says. All the defendants were released in 2001 when the Higher Court of Serbia annulled the first-instance verdict.

Musliu, who retired from journalism in 2013, said that working on the new version of the book evoked reminiscences about the trials and the defendants.

“Preparing the second edition, all the memories brought me back to that time after the war when Kosovo was liberated from Serbian rule, when over 2,000 Kosovo Albanians, who had been transferred to Serbian prisons as war hostages, were fighting another war – without weapons, without force, without help and locked up in prisons – with the police, the prosecution and the politically-directed judiciary,” he added.

“One cannot forget the individual and group trials, especially those of Flora Brovina, Albin Kurti, a group of ten students from Belgrade University, the group of 145 from Gjakova/Djakovica, the marathon trial of the Mazreku brothers and the ‘Klecka’ case, and others,” he added.

Albin Kurti, who now is prime minister of Kosovo, was charged with ‘endangering the Yugoslav Federation’s constitutional order’ and sentenced to 15 years to prison in March 2000. He was released in December 2001 under an amnesty declared by Milosevic’s successor as Yugoslav president, Vojislav Kostunica.

While Kurti was serving his sentence in Serbia’s Cuprija prison, in May 2001, Musliu managed to get a long interview with which was published by Voice of America and Zeri.

In the Belgrade University case, six of the Kosovo Albanian students were jailed for a total of 46 years in 1999, but subsequently released after the fall of Milosevic. Luan and Bekim Mazreku were convicted of involvement in terrorism in the village of Klecka and jailed for 20 years each, but also later returned to Kosovo along with other prisoners, according to the UN Mission in Kosovo.

Musliu said that his book will be a permanent record of these injustices: “This book… will be factual evidence of a dark time, of a ferocious regime that did not spare any tool to show cruelty towards Kosovo Albanians in Serbia’s prisons and courts.”