HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK ---------------------------[Just in time for the traditional "spring campaign" - and the US Congress vote on aid to FRY - the 145 remaining KLA terrorists have been released by Yugoslav and Serbian authorities to join their accomplices in crime in Kosovo (esp. 50,000 NATO troops in that province who are harboring KLA leadership structures)]
Yugoslavia Transfers 145 Prisoners
By DRAGAN ILIC
.c The Associated Press
NIS, Yugoslavia (AP) - Serbian authorities on Tuesday took most of the remaining ethnic Albanian prisoners from Kosovo to the provincial border to hand them over to NATO troops.
With police sirens howling, the gates of the penitentiary at Nis swung open and the convoy of buses, jeeps and official black sedans carrying 145 prisoners and 50 police headed for the Kosovo border where international observers will oversee the transfer.
Near the border inside Kosovo relatives of the prisoners eagerly awaited their arrival. Most of the prisoners were convicted of terrorism charges for fighting in the 1998-99 Kosovo war. It was widely believed most of the prisoners would be freed once inside Kosovo.
The prisoners include 104 from the prison in Nis, 125 miles south of Belgrade, the capital, and 41 from a prison in Sremska Mitrovica in northern Serbia.
Seven ethnic Albanian prisoners declined the transfer, saying they wanted to stay in Serbian prisons, said Bruno Vekaric, a Justice Ministry official.
The move came after a Belgrade government decision last week to allow all the prisoners still in jails in Serbia to be transferred to their native Kosovo province.
The decision followed an earlier agreement between the United Nations and the federal Yugoslav authorities that came after months of international pressure. The Kosovo prisoner transfer is among key U.S. demands if Yugoslavia is to continue getting aid and support.
Many of the prisoners were convicted under terrorism charges for fighting in the 1998-99 Kosovo war. Back home, however, they are considered political prisoners who fought a liberation struggle against former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's repressive regime.
Although Belgrade agreed to the release, it hopes the U.N. administration in Kosovo will reciprocate and hand over Serb prisoners there so they can serve out their time in prisons in Serbia.
The United Nations has run Kosovo since the end of the war, when NATO's 1999 bombing campaign forced Milosevic's troops out of the province. The bombing was launched to halt Milosevic's brutal crackdown on the province's ethnic Albanians, thousands of whom were killed and an estimated 800,000 driven from their homes.
When Milosevic's troops pulled out, they brought with them 2,015 Kosovo Albanian prisoners and placed them in Serbian jails. Many were subsequently released and Milosevic's successor, President Vojislav Kostunica, pardoned four of the most prominent ethnic Albanians, including pro-independence student leader Albin Kurti and activist Flora Brovina.
Kosovo remains officially part of Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic.
Milosevic is now on trial by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, for atrocities his forces carried out in Kosovo and earlier in Bosnia and Croatia.
AP-NY-03-26-02 1037EST
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