Four Border Guards Bartered for a KLA Commander

After three days Kosovo bandits brought half-naked and disarmed border guards near the border with Macedonia, after the agreement that Xhavid Hasani was to be released from custody on a DM200,000 bail. Officially it is still not known who paid the bail

by Dejan Nikolovski

Dnevnik, Skopje, Macedonia, December 30, 2000

Isn't it good that four body bags did not come back, was the answer of the Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski at one session of the Parliament when the representatives demanded the answer to the question whether Xhavid Hasani, who based on the warrant issued by the Ministry of Internal Affairs had been extradited from Kosovo to Macedonia, had been released from custody in exchange for the lives of our four border guards who had been abducted by an armed Kosovo gang. The representatives and the Macedonian public cannot get a clearer answer. Especially because for a long time it was claimed that such an exchange had not taken place. Officially it was never explained who was responsible for the whole affair. Who negotiated with the Kosovo bandits about the release of Hasani, who set up a plan to abduct the border guards and who informed the terrorists that the agreement to release their commander from custody had been reached? Unofficially, much is clear.

Lumberjack Hasani, besides in Kosovo, where he escaped to after shooting in 1998 at the policemen and workers who had come to demolish his illegally constructed building, also became "famous" in Macedonia. Kilograms of paper and meters and meters of videotape have been spent on him. As well as on those who are suspected of assisting him. These allegedly included the Minister of Justice Xhevded Nasufi, and the leader of the DPA Arben Xhaferi.

The American KFOR soldiers in Kosovo in January 2000 arrested Xhavid Hasani for whom the Macedonian authorities had issued an international warrant for an attempted murder and illegal possession of weapons. After his extradition to the Macedonian authorities, the abduction of four border guards of the Macedonian Army was organized and conducted by an armed gang from Kosovo. The release of Hasani from custody was the condition for the release of the soldiers. Three days after the abduction, the border guards, disarmed and half naked, but alive, were brought near the Macedonian border and released, and Hasani was released from prison on bail. Even when the American soldiers arrested Hasani and held him in their base "Bondsteel" in Urosevac and when on March 26 he was supposed to be handed over to the Macedonian authorities, hundreds of Kosovo Albanians blocked the road in several spots, protesting against the intention of the American soldiers. Several days later, Xhavid Hasani was brought to the Skopje investigative prison by a helicopter.

German radio station "Deutsche Welle" reported in mid April that the public prosecutor of the Republic of Macedonia, Stavre Dzikov, had exerted pressure on the investigative judge to release Hasani form custody on DM200,000 bail so that the barter for the captured border patrol could be conducted. The media obtained the letter sent by the public prosecutor in Skopje, Gjorgji Nastevski, to the investigative judge Goran Bosevski, in which the former states that the lives of four border guards depend on the release of Hasani from custody. At this point no one could anymore deny that the exchange had taken place.

The lower public prosecutor's office in Skopje issued an indictment against Xhavid Hasani, which charges him with an attempted murder and illegal possession of firearms. Hasani's lawyers claimed that he would show up at the trial, although the media reported that he had immediately after the release from custody escaped to Kosovo. He was taped at a celebration in the Kosovo town of Vitina. Hasani attended a trial hearing in Skopje on May 24. He defended himself by stating that he had not shot at the policemen and the workers who had come to demolish his illegally erected building but in the air to scare them. Hasani said that he had given a DM2,000 bribe to Gjoko Vasilevski, at the time the deputy minister in the Ministry for Urban Development. The trial continues.

Translated on February 19, 2001