Posted on 05/10/2006 9:28:52 AM PDT by joan
Released : May 10, 2006 11:34 AM
BERLIN-A man sought by the U.N. administration in Kosovo on charges of illegally imprisoning and abusing fellow ethnic Albanians in 1998 has been arrested in Germany, prosecutors said Wednesday.
Frankfurt prosecutors said the man was sought for on suspicion of genocide and was a member of the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army, which fought against the Serbian security troops in Kosovo. He was arrested Monday evening in the German town of Seeheim-Jugenheim, south of Frankfurt, and was being held pending extradition.
The suspect is alleged to have run a camp in 1998 in Drenovac, where he "mistreated, and in some cases killed" prisoners, prosecutors said in a release.
The suspect could only be identified by his initials, X.G., born in 1967, federal police spokeswoman Hildegard Becker-Toussaint said.
It was not clear when he might be extradited, Becker-Toussaint said.
The United Nations submitted a formal request to German authorities for the provisional arrest of X.G. based on an international arrest warrant and for the purpose of his prosecution for war crimes and other serious offenses committed in Kosovo, said Neeraj Singh, a UN spokesman in Pristina.
In Kosovo, international and local sources, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case, identified the suspect as Xhemajl Gashi, who was known as "the German" during Kosovo's 1998-99 war.
The war in 1998-1999 pitted ethnic Albanian rebels against Serb forces loyal to the former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, and ended in mid-1999 after NATO air strikes forced the Serb military to pull out of Kosovo, leaving United Nations and NATO in control.
Gashi was the commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army headquarters in Drenovac during the conflict.
He was indicted by the United Nations in Kosovo along with five other former rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army, but was never arrested. The rest of the group were arrested in February 2004 and their trial is underway in Kosovo.
He is charged with illegal imprisonment, torture and killing of seven fellow ethnic Albanians who allegedly collaborated with Serb authorities in mid-1998 in the central Kosovo village of Drenovac.
According to the indictment, Gashi ordered the arrest and detention of civilians and that in concert with others, he participated in their torture and killing of a number of them.
At the time of the formal indictment in 2005, Gashi held the rank of staff sergeant and served in the Kosovo Protection Corps, a civilian emergency organization which mainly consists of former rebels of the now-disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army.
It was not clear how long he had been in Germany.
All he will get is a slap on the wrist and some 40 acres, a house and a mule/tractor.... that USED to belong to one of his victims. /sarcasm off.
PING
PING
If he had "killed Serbs", they'd have given him a monument! But he "killed Albanians" -- they'll hang him from the highest tree for that! BB
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