Grenade Thrown at Kosovo President's Home

PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro - A grenade was thrown at the residence of Kosovo's President Ibrahim Rugova early Friday. He and his family were not harmed, but a guard was slightly injured, officials said.

The grenade apparently was hurled from a passing vehicle, said Malcolm Ashby, a U.N. police spokesman.

Rugova's spokesman Muhamet Hamiti said the blast caused damage to walls and windows of the residence.

"This was a serious criminal attack on the highest institution of our country and we condemn it in the strongest terms," Hamiti said, urging quick action to catch the perpetrators.

Kosovo, which officially remains part of Serbia-Montenegro, the successor state to Yugoslavia, is administered by the United Nations and NATO-led peacekeepers since mid-1999 when a NATO air war ended Serb forces crackdown on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians.

13 dead associates of Rogova, Thaci and friends?

Beta News Agency, Belgrade
March 12, 2004

Several members of Rugova's party killed in Kosovo in recent years

PRISTINA - The bomb attack on the house of Kosovo president Ibrahim Rugova is the first direct attack on the leader of the biggest political party among Kosovo Albanians, the Democratic Alliance of Kosovo, since the establishment of an international administration in the province.

Since June 1999, when KFOR troops and officials of the UN civil mission arrived in Kosovo, several of Rugova's close associates and local party officials have been attacked or killed. None of the cases have been solved.

The series of murders of people associated with Rugova began in Pristina in June 2000 with the murder of Xhevat Makoli, a former member of Rugova's security team. Two months later the house of a Democratic Alliance activist in Prizren was attacked with a Molotov cocktail.

In October 2000 Democratic Alliance of Kosovo activist Hazir Raci was shot to death in Klina, three days after the first local elections were held in Kosovo. The Democratic Alliance won a majority in Klina and formed the local government by itself. The following month police arrested persons suspected of murdering Raci. At that time UNMIK representatives denied that the murder was politically motivated.

The murder of Rugova's party associates continued in November in Pristina. Xhemail Mustafa, Rugova's information advisor and head of the Kosovo information center, the mouthpiece of the Democratic Alliance, was gunned down in front of his house in the Dardania quarter.

Mustafa's murder was condemned in Paris, Washington and London as a heinous act.

In April 2001 Democratic Alliance activists in Klina were again targeted by unknown attackers. Ismet Rachi was killed. UNMIK police advised that Rachi's body was found at the bottom of the staircase in the apartment building where he lived, and that there were no suspects in the murder.

Shortly before the Kosovo parliamentary elections at the end of October 2001, the Democratic Alliance stopped campaigning as a result of new victims in Srbica. Pristina daily "Bota Sot" reporter Bekim Kastrati was shot from a moving car, while Besim Dajaku, Democratic Alliance
president Ibrahim Rugova's bodyguard, died of sustained wounds.

The Democratic Alliance assessed that the assassination in Srbica was politically motivated, while Hashim Thaci's Democratic Party of Kosovo and Ramush Haradinaj's Alliance for the Future of Kosovo evaluated the murder as
"detrimental to general relations in Kosovo".

At the beginning of 2002 Kosovo MP Ismail Hajdari, a member of the Democratic Alliance, was shot dead in Pec. Hajdari (50), was a member of the Democratic Alliance presidency for Pec. Some Albanian language media emphasized at that time that Hajdari's murder was the most serious crime of
its type since the war in Kosovo.

Hajradinaj's murder occurred at a time when the three leading Albanian parties in Kosovo could not reach a power-sharing agreement with regard to the Kosovo government.

The next murder occurred nine months later. Suva Reka mayor and local Democratic Alliance official Uka Bitichi was killed on October 27 with two of his associates. According to the Democratic Alliance, the attack, which occurred in the village of Leshane, on the Suva Reka-Prizren road, was
planned in advance.

Bitichi's murder took place the day after the second local elections in Kosovo. The Democratic Alliance won an absolute majority in Suva Reka. On the same day, the offices of the Democratic Alliance in the Suncani Breg
quarter of Pristina were attacked while the members of the election committee of the party were analyzing election results.

The presidency and main board of the Democratic Alliance of Kosovo concluded that the murder of Bitichi was politically motivated. No one was arrested.

Democratic Alliance official Hasan Zemaj of Decani was murdered in January 2003 in Pec together with Tahir Zemaj, a commander in the former Kosovo Liberation Army, and his son Enis.

Tahir Zemaj was a key witness in the trial of five members of the former KLA and the Kosovo Protection Corps known as the Dukagjini group. Among them was Daut Haradinaj, the brother of Ramush Haradinaj, the president of the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo.

Tahir Zemaj was also the commander of a paramilitary group established by the Democratic Alliance in western Kosovo as a counter to the KLA, commanded in the Pec region by the Haradinaj brothers. Police arrested the witnesses to the murder. According to Kosovo media, the target of the
attack was Tahir Zemaj, because there had been several attempts on his life prior to his murder.

Before the grenade attack on Ibrahim Rugova's house, the Kosovo press had reported that a criminal group was planning the murder of three Democratic Alliance officials. The source of this information was the UNMIK police. Kosovo prime minister Bajram Rexhepi asked UNMIK to provide more detailed information.

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