UNMIK-KFOR-OSCE Press Briefing: 4 September 2000

UNMIK Spokeswoman Susan Manuel
KFOR Spokesman Major Scott Slaten
OSCE Spokeswoman Laura O’Mahony

UNMIK Spokeswoman Susan Manuel

SRSG Bernard Kouchner is currently in Peja/Pec with COMKFOR Ortuno and UNHCR Special Envoy Eric Morris, along with members of the Interim Administrative Council, visiting the Roma and Egyptian communities, as part of the Roma Platform for Action.

There will be a press briefing here at 3 p.m.

At the press briefing, Dr. Kouchner will discuss the prison escape from the Mitrovica Detention Centre and the action he is taking regarding that incident.

He will also make a statement on the issue of Yugoslav elections and Kosovo.

Dr. Kouchner issued a statement last night on the escape which took place Saturday night.

He said, "UNMIK is taking its responsibility very seriously in this incident. A full and vigorous investigation is under way, and UNMIK Police and KFOR are continuing their intensive search for the escapees."

He also said that "to have smuggled a gun into the detention centre and to have in any way assisted the escape of these prisoners is itself a grave crime that will not go unpunished."

The press release is outside.

Four police officers were injured in the incident. One has been unable to return to work.
The search for the escapees continues, with all UNMIK police patrols in the Mitrovcia area taking part.
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Day Against Violence

The organisers of the "Day Against Violence" to be held around Kosovo on 9 September will hold a press briefing here at 11 a.m. Wednesday, 6 September. The Day Against Violence is being organised by local leaders as a follow up to the Airlie House conference. There will be marches and rallies in seven cities around Kosovo….

Illegal Hotel.

Illegal construction is a serious problem in Pristina and elsewhere in Kosovo. Despite the warnings and orders to stop building issued by the Municipality of Pristina to several
The Municipal Administrator for Pristina, illegal building continues.

On 25 August, a demolition order was given regarding a hotel under construction in the Germia Park areas. The builders were give 8 days to demolish the structure…As they failed to comply, the municipality began demolition this morning at the site. Mr. Sigfried Brenke, Municipal Administrator for Pristina, is urging all builders to register with the Municipal office. Additional staff have been put on to assist…and flyers are being distributed to all construction sites …Any construction begun without a permit after 22 August will qualify for demolition…will announce today that a demolition

Dep. for Post and Telecommunications

The European Agency for Reconstruction has given the Dept. of Post and Telecommunications  42,600 Euros for training in computerised counter operations for post offices in Kosovo.

Also, the department has a new international co-head: Lesar Rainer from Telecom Austria. He has more than 30 years in the telecommunication business and has worked for the International Telecommunication Union in various missions in Africa, Asia and the Pacific Region, with several missions to the Middle East and Africa.

KFOR Spokesman Major Scott Slaten

Weapon Seized

Yesterday afternoon a search of a petrol station by a KFOR MNB Centre patrol resulted in the confiscation of an AK-47 Assault Rifle. The patrol then conducted a search of the owner's house, which failed to uncover any additional weapons or ammunition. UNMIK Police detained the owner of the station for questioning.

Wedding Shots Hit KFOR Installation

Once again, sporadic celebratory fire from a Kosovar Albanian wedding party has impacted in a KFOR MNB Centre installation. The wedding was being held in the town of Podujevo. Wedding guests apparently fired into the air and the bullets went up at a high angle of trajectory and came almost straight down through the roof a KFOR building.

Fortunately, no one was injured as a result of the shooting.

Grenade Thrown

Last night, a grenade was thrown against a Kosovo Serb owned building in the town of Gnjilane. UNMIK Police reported the attack to KFOR MNB East 108th Military Police personnel. The KFOR troops responded to the scene and discovered that the windows of the building had been shattered and minor damage to the wall and interior were caused by the explosion.

An investigation of the scene revealed a grenade spoon. No suspects have been arrested at this time. UNMIK Police is continuing to investigate the attack.

OSCE Spokesman Laura O’Mahony

I have three announcements on election-related topics:

The re-appointed Municipal Elections Commission will be starting to work. They have just been appointed. They are a very important part of the framework for ensuring transparent and efficient elections. They are in fact, the CEC’s representatives at the municipal level. Obviously there are 30 of them; they are comprised of between three and seven members; their job is to assist in the administration of the municipal elections at local level. Their roles for example, involve in forming political parties, citizen’s initiatives, and coalitions of independent candidates about their rights and obligations. They are also involved in providing voter information. In addition they’ve been helping to train the polling station committees, helping to make the technical arrangements at the polling stations and helping to ensure the proper conduct of polling counting and the (..) of the election results.

As I mentioned last week there is special training going on this week and next week for women candidates, contesting the forthcoming local elections. There is a training session, a briefing session today with the trainers themselves and the interpreters, and the training itself actually gets underway tomorrow. The first two venues will be Gjilan and Ferizaj/Urosevac. Those two training courses will go on tomorrow Tuesday and Wednesday.

Ambassador Everts, the Director of Election Operations Jeff Fischer and the members of the CEC will be participating this week at a conference in Stockholm. The conference is entitled “The International Electoral Experience in the Balkans – Lessons for Kosovo”. That will get underway tomorrow evening and last through until Thursday. We will have a press release on that tomorrow.

Questions:

Q: I’ve got a question on the prison break out. I think in the west, normally, something like that is likely considered a resignation matter for someone. Has anyone within UNMIK either at the prison management level or justice system offered to resign over this issue?

SM: Not as of this morning, but by Dr. Kouchner’s press briefing there may be more developments in that direction.

Q: Is anyone going to be taken into responsibility for this thing in the northern part of Mitrovica?

SM: Dr. Kouchner has acknowledged that UNMIK takes responsibility for this incident, and I believe this afternoon he will give more detailed break down of what that means.

Q:..after the investigation made on that case where three or four Serbs escaped from the hospital?

SM: I do believe that investigation is not quite finished, but I understand that it may be concluded today or tomorrow.

Q: I understand that many of the escaped Serbs were accused of atrocities in other towns apart from Mitrovica across Kosovo. Why would you want them imprisoned together in an area of Kosovo, where an escape once they leave the prison ground was made easier by the presence of sympathisers and the local community, and somewhere which is so close to the Serbian border. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to have kept them in prison in Prizren and Pristina and other town where they had committed the crimes?

SM: They were all together, basically, for their own safety. We felt it necessary last year to separate the Serb and Albanian prisoners. We do not have any Serbian or international prison guards, accept at the Mitrovica detention centre, and I believe there are Serbian prisoners also in Gnjilane. There have been plans to bring them back to the towns from which they came in the works, but unfortunately, these plans hadn’t been implemented at this time. But you are right: several of them came from Prizren and the Pristina area. But, as I said, they had all been in the Mitrovica detention centre for several months, if not for a year.

Q: Questions for UNMIK and KFOR: Susan I don’t know what you know about the Mitrovica prison. It used to be, once upon a time, one the (..) security prisons all over Yugoslavia (..) and all over the Balkans. How do you explain that 22 detainees have escaped until now? It is not 15, it’s 22. Starting from February and up till now. And how do you explain the fact that no measures were taken against UNMIK Police, against the guards who were serving there, against people in the UNMIK Administration who control the prisons?

SM: There is an internal investigation continuing, and I believe Dr. Kouchner this afternoon will have announcements of measures he intends to take. Yes, there have been other escapes, however some of them were from the hospital, but clearly this system wasn’t working and we are taking responsibility for it, and we will see what actions will be taken about it later today.

Q: For Scott: Yesterday in Mitrovica, French KFOR didn’t seem to really be engaged in the operation. At least that is what officially their spokesperson said yesterday in Mitrovica. How do you explain this disagreement, if I may call it so. (..)They said something else in Mitrovica than Pristina. They said that UNMIK Police lead the operation, we don’t know if KFOR has recaptured two of the prisoners…

SM: Before Scott responds: KFOR reacted immediately to recapture two of the prisoners.

Q: Yes, but their spokesperson in Mitrovica won’t confirm that. He says I don’t have any information.

SS: OK, I have to confer with the spokesperson there, however, assets were detached from MNB Centre (..), and assisted MNB North in the search operation. There were air assets that were brought up to MNB North and provided aerial observation. Additional troops were provided from their normal duties in MNB North, and assisted in the search with UNMIK Police for the suspects. Information was sent out for the security patrols that normally conduct in the area and the checkpoint with descriptions of the suspects. So no, KFOR is actively engaged, and still is, in hunting these men down.

Q: How do explain the fact that KFOR soldiers were at the gate of the detention centre, and they could react after one hour after everything that happened inside the detention centre? At the same time when the duty is, as the French KFOR says, to take care of, to protect UNMIK personnel. Do you think that they really protected UNMIK personnel?

SS: Well I don’t know, or doubt, if the prisoners first off used the front gate to leave, and second off, it depends on the sequence of events will come out once the investigation is completed. When the UNMIK Police were able to notify KFOR. I don’t have any of the details, and won’t have, until the investigation is completed.

Q: Inaudible.

SS: I don’t have a knowledge of any investigation at this time. It’s an UNMIK internal issue.

SM: The police officers inside were tied up, and it seems that when they got freed they alerted KFOR who went to grab two of the fugitives. So I don’t see any complaint coming from UNMIK Police about KFOR’s responsiveness.

Q: So these people, according to reports, have already crossed into Serbia. That means that people can come in and go out of Kosovo without KFOR noticing them. Is KFOR going to try to have an internal investigation on the matter of crossing the border.

SS: First off, we are always looking at the security situation along the border and the boundaries throughout the region here in all directions; north, south, east and west. The issue, though, is that you are dealing with mountainous terrain. I doubt that if these men left the region, they left through a checkpoint. There are a lot of different ways to get out of the region. It’s a very difficult boundary to patrol. KFOR is responsible for the military security of Kosovo. A lot of that is oriented towards military response from the north into Kosovo. Individuals. I can make the statement that it is impossible to cross the boundary, and we have this happening all the time with smugglers, and this is an active campaign that we are (..) in all the boundaries against smuggling – it happens. We do our best to keep it from happening, but it is still happening.

Q: Can either KFOR or UNMIK confirm that the two prisoners who were recaptured, were only recaptured after they returned to collect their things from their cell?

SS: I’ve heard this, but I don’t have any definitive knowledge to collaborate it, but I have heard this statement made.

SM: Yes, apparently they were in the area of the compound, and they had come back for some reason. Those were the two that were grabbed, yes.

SS: Once again, it is a very difficult thing. You’re dealing with an operation at night. It is not a long distance. You have a population that is not necessarily hostile to the escapes, so it is a very difficult operation once that occurs – once they do escape – to track them down.

Q: UNMIK: How do you explain this case: as incompetence or something else?

SM: This is what the internal investigation will reveal, and the external investigation as well. I can’t draw a judgement right now.

Q: For KFOR: Is the operation still ongoing for finding at least the nine who the reports say have crossed to Serbia yet?

SS: If that information is accurate, then yes, we are constantly looking, or continue to look for the suspects or the escapees. That’s an ongoing operation.

Q: You’re saying that it is mountainous, very difficult to control and stuff like this. Do you exclude the possibility that some day we can see some Serb units and planes crossing the border and going back to Serbia – and they could not be seen by KFOR because of the mountains and the very difficult terrain?

SS: I think you are drawing the wrong conclusion now. First off, we remain close surveillance on the other side, on military units that are operating in southern portion of Serbia. To say that plain close, military personnel from the VJ forces could cross in: there is always the possibility. If we identify them we will detain them and arrest them. There is not a country in the world that can totally close their borders unless you build a wall around it. It has been tried before, and even then it wasn’t proven to be successful. We do have security measures in place to reduce the crossing of the boundaries, but as far as Serbian military forces: yes we have surveillance, we know what is going on, and we have the assets available to respond to any aggressiveness from that area.

Q: Do you have anything to say to the Albanians who are still opening the fresh mass graves because of these people?

SS: First off, I would like to say that the fact that these men have escaped does not mean that they are free. The crimes that they have been accused of do not have statute of limitations. There are criminals throughout the world that both Interpol and other police organisations are actively searching. I know the search will continue for them. They might feel free for a year or so, but eventually they’ll be tracked down.

SM: What makes this escape so particularly disturbing on several levels is that we had been holding these people for more than one year. The justice system was just beginning to work. Three trials have begun, five of these men were indicted The others had not been indicted, so they are simply charged when they were arrested, but I think this is what so particularly very disturbing to us in UNMIK about this case is that it is very important that we administer justice as much as we can for what went on in the past, and I think Dr. Kouchner will talk more about that. He will have a message to the Kosovo people about this. It’s why we are deeply concerned about this, and the message that it sends to the people of Kosovo.

Q: Statistics for KFOR and UNMIK: How many KFOR soldiers have guarded the prisons on Saturday, and how many KFOR soldiers are guarding them now?

SS: I don’t have the exact numbers of soldiers that are guarding the installations. We have security throughout the region, we also have various security patrols that are constantly going around in that area, so it could vary.

Q: Has the number increased from a couple of days ago?

SS: I don’t have the exact numbers of soldiers that are placed in security around the prison.

Q: Could we have some details from KFOR about the follow-up security operation that was launched after the escape. When there is an incident in Pristina, for example, British soldiers would throw a cordon line and try to block the roads. It seems we have had so far that a couple of buildings searched and some cars stopped, but it didn’t seem to be on that scale. Could you give us an idea of what exactly happened?

SS: I don’t have all the details of the operation at this time because it is still ongoing. I do know that the special trained dog unit was sent from Pristina up into Mitrovica, pursued the trail at least four kilometres before they lost the scent, which at least gave the investigators some idea of the direction they were following. I don’t have any details on the operation itself, except the assets that were utilised.