Briefing Notes, 13 August 2002

UNMIK Spokeswoman Susan Manuel
KFOR Spokesperson Wing Commander Drew Anderson
Police Spokesperson Derek Chappel
Spokesperson of OSCE Sven Lindholm
Spokesperson of EU Monique De Groot

UNMIK Spokeswoman Susan Manuel

I have no special announcement, Derek.

Derek Chappell, UNMIK Police

I am pleased to say that across Kosovo last week crime continued to be very stable and, for I believe the third week in a row, we recorded no murders, which is certainly good news.

Kidnapping Victim Rescued

On the 11th August, at 5:30 pm, police from Vucitrn Police Station were called to the village of Studime in response to a kidnapping. Five men had forcibly abducted another 65 year old male from the village. The police investigation identified a number of possible suspects and suggested a location where the victim may be being held. A police team entered the home, located in Mitrovice, and recovered the kidnap victim, who was unharmed. Four persons are in custody and we are seeking one additional suspect.

Armed Gang Robs Local Busniess

An example of a successful Kosovo business is the Peje Brewery. On the 12th August Police received a report that there had been a robbery at the beer factory.
In the early hours of the morning, at about 3:00 am, an armed gang of six men wearing masks attacked the security guards on duty, threatening them with a gun. The guards were overpowered, beaten and tied up. The gang then broke into the cashier's office and stole a large amount of cash.
The two guards have been treated at hospital and released.
It is especially sad that the target of these criminals was a successful local business giving employment to many people and helping to build the economic base that Kosovas future needs.

Arrests in 1998 Murder

In February, 1998, A K Albanian male resident of the Peje region was shot to death. The crime was not reported to the Police until 2002, when the Peje Regional Investigation Unit began an enquiry.Two suspects were identified in this case, leading to arrest warrants being issued.
On the 5th August Police executed both warrants early in the morning. One suspect was arrested at his home in Pristina while the second was arrested at his home in Klina. Both men are Kosovo Albanians. Following the arrest a search was made, resulting in items being seized of evidential value.
Both men were detained at Peje Detention Centre.

Vehicle Check Results in Attempt Murder Arrest

On the 8th August Lipjan Police were conducting a regular checkpoint on a road in Talinovc village. A car approached the checkpoint traveling at a very high rate of speed. The officers signaled the vehicle to stop but it refused to slow and drove directly at the police to run them down. With the car only metres away from him, one officer fired a shot at the driver as he jumped aside. The driver lost control of his car as he sped away. The officers gave chase and arrested the driver, who is wanted as a suspect in two cases of attempted murder.

On August 10th, two police officers were patrolling on Airport Boulevard, near the High School. They heard a female screaming from a wooded area off the highway. The officers stopped and started to search the woods. As they did so they saw a distressed female running towards them. At the same time a red car drove off on a back road out of the forest. The police placed the woman in their car and gave chase after the car. The driver refused to stop until Police forced him to do so. The driver, 30, was arrested for attempt rape of the female, 21.

We continue to receive calls every day on our private Dosja E Krimit telephone line from people across Kosovo giving us information on crime and criminals.
I can confirm that we have received new information on a number of current investigations and we want to thank those who have called and remind you that this telephone line is now permanent.

Wing Commander Drew Anderson, KFOR

Rapid Guardian

On Sunday, 11 August 2002, Rapid Guardian ended. During this month long operational rehearsal the US component of NATO's Strategic Reserve Force demonstrated their resolve and commitment to the region. Throughout the month more than 1000 US troops, from bases in the USA, Italy and Germany, were deployed and they were actively involved in the support of resident KFOR soldiers. During their stay they carried out many differing tasks and, in particular, gained great experience in carrying out border control missions.

Operation Iron Fist VI

This weekend KFOR launched its sixth Kosovo-wide cordon and search operation. Operation Iron Fist VI involves soldiers from differing Multi-National Brigades carrying out cordon and search operations. This time the focus was largely in the Drenica valley.

Although initiated in MNB(N), the operation involved a number of KFOR units from MNB(W) as well as MNB(E). Yesterday, the operation moved into MNB(C). Again, units from differing MNBs are providing assistance and support to the operation.

As before, this type of operation is consistent with KFOR's responsibility to provide a safe and secure environment across the province and with our long term strategy to help the people of Kosovo drive out extremism and organized crime. Once again, we thank the population for their continued support and understanding whilst we carry out our mandated task.

Ethnic Armed Extremism

Finally, over the last week KFOR has detained a number of individuals suspected of involvement in Ethnic Armed Extremist groups. All those detained were considered to pose an immediate threat to the safe and secure environment in the region. KFOR will not tolerate, in any way, activities that disrupt the peace and stability in Kosovo and we will curtail criminal and extremist actions wherever and whenever we find them.
Furthermore, KFOR will continue to work in close coordination and cooperation with the civil police authorities and together we will use all means necessary to eradicate activities that undermine the process of democracy in Kosovo.

OSCE Sven Lindholm

As most of you know, yesterday, we held a ballot lottery for political entities running in the October elections. I have copies here for you who will be in the 30 different ballots in municipalities; we have copies here and copies outside. Just so you know, the number is now 68 entities which are running in the election and now that this process done we will go ahead and begin preparing the ballots, print them out so that for election day everything will be ready.

Monique De Groot, EU

Power Situation

Unit A3 is down for planned maintenance to prepare the unit for the winter months. As earlier announced the maintenance process will be speeded up as much as possible. Under the current circumstances a load shedding schedule of 3 hours on, 3 hours off will be applied for the forthcoming period.
A contract has been signed for the supply of energy imports from EFT.
We continue to urge the citizens of Kosovo to save energy as much as possible and not to leave electric appliances switched on when not in use.

QUESTIONS

Q: What is happening to Ivanovic's case? Are there still attempts to arrest him? On the armed extremist suspects, can you be more specific on the illegal activities that you have been putting out on press releases - are they linked to Macedonia or just inside Kosovo? Ramush Haradinaj, last night and this morning, has said that the indictment filed yesterday by the international prosecutor was a political campaign against him. How do you comment on that?

DC: To deal with your first question, we have a legal warrant of arrest for Dr. Ivanovic. The police act as officers of the Court; we are agents of the judicial system. We are obliged to exercise that warrant and we will do so. There is no attempt to evade our responsibility: we will execute that warrant. The time and the place is a matter of operational planning and that is in the hands of the police commander. But, we will continue our attempts to take him into custody.

DA: Your second question, with regards to the detentions that KFOR has carried out over the last week, for ethnic armed extremism, as I said before there is no conclusive evidence of any type of paramilitary type of organization working within Kosovo. Importantly, what we have done over the last days is going back to working under the mandate of 1244. You have heard this many times before. We have looked at providing a safe and secure environment. Of the 19 that were detained earlier last week, 17 have since been released. So, that is another significant step forward, and some are still being questioned. Of the six detained yesterday, they are being questioned as we speak. They are Kosovo Albanians. To dispell any rumors, I believe…and it is our understanding, at the present, they are not linked in any way to a world terrorist organization.

SM: Yes, there is no political aspect, whatsoever, to the indictment of Ramush Haradinaj or the six other indictments that were issued by an international prosecutor at the same time. The six other indictments are for serious crimes that the prosecutor charges were committed in late June 1999. As you may remember, we arrested the six in June of this year on that case. The international prosecutor at some point in the last several months expanded the case to include an incident that happened in July 2000 also in the Peje region. This indictment, which involves Ramush Haradinaj, is for a much lesser offense than the other six - the charge is 'endangering the safety of others.' These are separate indictments, but they will be all under the same case, if the case goes to trial. But, there is absolutely no political aspect, UNMIK has no influence over the prosecutor who acted on the basis of evidence that he, the police and the investigating judge have gathered.

Q: Derek, how come you so easily arrest Albanians and you try once to arrest a Serb in Mitrovica and you fail? Another question: do you think that with the manner that you arrest people, you can irritate and/or create a conflict between people of Kosovo, UNMIK Police and UNMIK? For Drew, these people that were arrested yesterday, to which group do they belong?

DC: The arrests that we make are based on evidence obtained. Every time we make an arrest, the person and the evidence in the case has to be presented to a judge to be evaluated. If we make an arrest without the proper evidence, we are breaking the law. How quickly we make an arrest depends on how quickly we get the information and the evidence in that case. Obviously, we have had more success in the Albanian parts of Kosovo in building bridges with the public. I can tell you that first hand from the number of letters and phone calls I have personally received; and the number of phone calls our television programme has received. In a sense, it is much easier to do police work in the Albanian parts of Kosovo because we have succeeded in building that bridge of trust with the public, so we are getting more information coming in to us, meaning we do have more success in solving crimes. It is a substantially more difficult environment to do policing and investigations in the North and that is probably what accounts for the delay in making arrests in that case. But, to say that one is easy and the other hard, that is making a very simplistic judgment. We will make arrests once we have met the legal threshold that will satisfy a judge that we have the ground to make a lawful arrest. I do not think our arrests have been carried in any way other than a professional manner. Whenever we arrest suspects, we go back to the people we have arrested. With the Glogovac murder, an entire family was massacred - children and a mother. The suspects for a crime like that are brutal in the extreme. They have no hesitation to kill people, even children. How would you have us arrest people like that? Would you have us send them a letter and ask them to come to the station? When we arrest them, we arrest them with due regard to our safety and for the safety of other members of the public. Bear in mind, when we take someone into custody in a public location, they may be armed. We have to take them quickly and efficiently. We have to disarm them, we have to take control of the situation to prevent them from posing a threat to other people around. I don't believe any arrest we have made has been conducted with other than full professionalism.

DA: Your question to KFOR, Mimoza, what we will do is quite clearly intelligence led and I have no detail at all of any type of group. I will reiterate my previous point: there is no conclusive evidence here that any type of paramilitary organization exists within Kosovo.

Q: The police officer in Mitrovica said that the arrest of Mr. Ivanovic will be more careful because "we can irritate the population in Northern Mitrovica" . What about the irritation in the South of Kosovo, in a place where the Albanian citizens are irritated because the main public figures - the generals of former KLA--are arrested in the streets where everybody can see them? There can be protests and everything.

DC: The style and the nature of an arrest is up to the operational commander. Policing is about a lot more than just enforcing the law, it is about using tact and about using discretion within communities. We have all had the experience of working within minority communities in our own countries. They might be communities of ethnic or religious minorities in which the same laws are enforced but they are done with tact and discretion. Instead of going in as an army and enforcing the rule of law with iron rod and inciting anger, hatred and violence, the whole idea of democratic policing is to do it with the support and the consent of the public; not to impose the law, as in a military dictatorship.

SM: I do not know the quote but "irritate" may not be the verb he wanted to use. When UNMIK police attempted the arrest of someone in April, 22 UNMIK police officers were injured by grenades, by sniper fire. This is very serious, so I am sure measures were taken in order not to have that happen again.

Q: Why is it always that when former KLA members and KPC members are arrested, international prosecutors and international judges are always involved in those cases? Second, have you received any announcement regarding any arrest from the Hague Tribunal?

SM: We have not received anything from the Hague Tribunal. I think the involvement of international judges and prosecutors is because of the extreme sensitivity of the case. Local judges may not be able to act with objectivity due to the pressures that might be put upon them.

Q: Drew, in what way is KFOR waging war against global terrorism in light of the latest action that you undertook? Susan, why does this always happen when Steiner is away?

DA: As I suggested, much of what we do here is intelligence-led. I want to clarify a point that everybody seems to have jumped on yesterday as part of the press statement we made when we talked about world and global terrorism. Kosovo is not an island and we know that and the things that we do here in order to provide the safety and security for everyone here today, obviously has an effect in the immediate area of the Balkans and the world as a whole. What we are trying to do is to capture the essence of that comment. What we found now is that everyone has jumped on this because they are not considering this comment that we have made as part of a bigger picture. So, it is not more than that in actual fact and we will continue to do what we do as best we can with the intelligence we have.

SM: The timing of the arrest of Remi Mustafa had nothing to do with Mr. Steiner: it is a police operational matter. The timing of the indictments also had nothing to do with Mr. Steiner. The prosecutor had finished the investigations; he issued the indictments and we informed Mr. Steiner that this had happened.

Q: You said that you have to be careful in Northern Mitrovica because when you tried to arrest people in April, 22 policemen were injured. Does that mean that Albanians in Pristina must injure some 20 policemen to stop an arrest?

SM: First of all, the fact that Milan Ivanovic was not successfully arrested is a matter of great disappointment and frustration to UNMIK, UNMIK Police and I assume KFOR. This was a very important arrest, it was very carefully planned, it took quite an extensive investigation following the incident of April 8. So, there was no less vigor into the attempt to arrest him. I didn't know the quote from this policeman, but I am just trying to interpret it and I certainly did not mean to say that we put any less vigor into the attempt to arrest Dr. Ivanovic than any other arrest.

DC: Let me make a comparison: we have seen demonstrations in Pristina since January and as you well know one of them become violent in Mother Theresa Street. The style of policing you saw at that demonstration and the succeeding ones has been very restrained and that is what I mean about using discretion and tact, about not policing in such a way that you make enemies of the public. We are trying this place together and of course we have the assets with KFOR and with UNMIK police. We could launch an arrest attempt and overpower the North but what would that accomplish? We are trying to do this in a way that would unite Kosovo. We are trying to impose the rule of law in a way that would gain us the support of the public and not in a way that divides the communities and makes enemies of people.

Q: UNMIK Police attempted to arrest Milan Ivanovic in Mitrovica but could not do it. UNMIK Police was successful to arrest the KLA members and Kosovo is thinking now that UNMIK is unable to arrest Serbs. What do you think about this? What happened to the 13 Serbs arrested in Mitrovica who last year escaped from prison? What did UNMIK do to bring them back to prison?

SM: In answer to your first question, I just refuse to subscribe to an ethnic distinction of arrests. We arrest people when police and prosecutors have come up with evidence of a crime. This is not a ball game where you have six on one side and six on the other. We do arrest Serbs, we have had Serbs in jail. We have Serbs serving sentences in prison. As I said earlier, the attempted arrest of Dr. Ivanovic was a very big frustration to all of us. And we have to get the evidence. There are also fewer Serbs in Kosovo than Albanians: You cannot make this a game of relativity. We make every effort to arrest Serbs for crimes just as much as any other ethnicity. Regarding the 13 who escaped, you are actually very kind: there were 24 who escaped over three years. One of them came looking for a document and was rearrested. The rest we believe must have fled to Serbia and at this point I don't know if we have made any demarche to the authorities in Belgrade to find and return them. That has been an idea that has been floating but I am not sure that it has actually been delivered yet.

Q:Do you think that there is an agreement with Belgrade for the latest arrest?

SM: Absolutely not. You saw President Kostunica's comment. Belgrade is not happy about the arrests: there is absolutely no agreement with them.

Q: We were never told why the operation of attempted arrest of Ivanovic failed. Was it a lack of communication between UNMIK Police and KFOR again or was there additional obstruction?

DC: I believe the reason it failed was at the time we entered his house he was not there, as simple as that. I would like to make a point that really policing is not like a television programme. It is not all wrapped up in 30 minutes and if something does not work the first time, you don't pack your bags and go home. You make other plans and you do it again and again until it works and that is exactly what we will do.

Q: Was this operation also supposed to be intelligence led and coordinated? How come you make an arrest attempt, go to his house and not find him there and that is it?

DA: Intelligence is not a defined art in its own right either. It looks great on television when all comes together. There's a lot of hard work that goes into intelligence and it's not always correct.

Q. Isn't the Ivanovic thing a bit embarrassing, when as you said Susan, it was a carefully planned and intensive investigation. Isn't it embarrassing?

SM: Yes

DC: Yes it's embarrassing. Yes it's frustrating. But what's the point? Well, we'll make another attempt.

Q. Derek are you saying that UNMIK Police and KFOR do not have the capacity to go at the same time to Ivanovic's office and his home?

DC: I don't know how many times I can answer the same question. When you conduct an operation there's no guarantee of success no matter how much planning you put into it.

Q. No but you went only to his house but not to his office.

DC: As Drew said, a lot of the information upon which we based this operation cannot be discussed in public. It is intelligence led and if we went to a certain address, it was probably based on good information that we would find our suspect there, and as I said, there is no 100 percent guarantee of success.

Q. Derek, if Ivanovic has gone to Serbia will you ask for his extradition from Belgrade.

DC. That's a question for Susan.

SM: It's a good question but I don't know if we've determined that he's in Serbia. We could explore that, but I don't know at this point.