The Bytyqi brothers were members of the "Atlantic Brigade," a band of some 400 Albanian-Americans (and others) who were recruited from abroad to fight in the Kosovo war on the side of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In spite of US laws forbidding such activities, the Atlantic Brigadeers recruited, raised money, and trained in the United States, and then fought at the KLA's side. The three New York-based brothers arrived in Kosovo just as the war was beginning to wind down. They promptly disappeared without a trace v until police disinterred their bodies from a mass grave outside a Serbian special forces training camp. The bodies were found not only with their New York drivers licenses in their pockets, but also with Serbian court papers indicating that they had been arrested on June 27 and jailed for trying to infiltrate the country. Gee, what a fortunate coincidence!
IN HIGH DUDGEON
Incredibly, these KLA soldiers are being touted as helpless victims of Milosevic's "war crimes." The discovery of these bodies has the US chief of mission in Yugoslavia, William Montgomery, in high dudgeon: he told the Washington Post that the Americans are peeved that the Yugoslavs didn't welcome the Bytyqi terrorist tag-team into the country with open arms: "We need to get real information from the Yugoslav authorities. We are going to insist they do a full investigation."
A VISIT TO MOTHER
But surely Mr. Montgomery doesn't want a full investigation, since that would have to mean an investigation of the true nature and sponsorship of the "Atlantic Brigade," and a determined inquiry into just what the brothers Bytyqi were doing in Yugoslavia, 17 days after the Kosovo war officially ended. He needn't worry: the "mainstream" media are quite content to broadcast the official story: that the three brothers had gone to visit their long-lost mother, and, in the midst of an act of charity v escorting 3 male Gypsies from their mother's neighborhood to safety in Serbia v were detained and killed by those awful Serbian racists.
THOSE WONDERFUL BOYS
The New York Times piece is pure agitprop, depicting the Bytyqis as noble idealists who gave up a comfortable life in a beach town in the posh Long Island Hamptons for a cause greater than themselves. These were "wonderful" boys, we are told, and their father extols their vaunted heroism, saying "they gave up the couch" and an easy life to liberate their people. Embedded in the midst these extravagant panegyrics is a key nugget of information: INTO THE MURK
"They were," the Times informs us, "apparently not engaged in combat when they were captured, witnesses and investigators said." Who are these witnesses? The Times doesn't elaborate, and so we have to turn to the International Herald Tribune's version of the story. Another Bytyqi brother, Fatos, who now lives in Kosovo, confesses that "he initially lied about his brothers' war activities, but later explained that he had been 'advised' not to discuss their membership in the Atlantic Brigade." Young Fatos blurts out that, as far as he knew, his brothers were on their way to meet up with some buddies from the Atlantic Brigade in Pristina. The last anyone saw of them, they were heading north in a Volkswagon. At this point, a witness v Miroslav Mitrovic, one of the Gypsies supposedly along for the ride v enters the picture, proffered by the Belgrade-based "Humanitarian Law Center."
THE 'HUMANITARIAN' WITH A GUILLOTINE
Anything that the "Humanitarian Law Center" has to say is suspect, since the HLC is the creature of Nastasa Kandic, who has made a career out of accusing her own people of being incorrigible murderers. Kandic v the perfect incarnation of what Isabel Paterson, the Old Right author of the 1940s, called "the humanitarian with a guillotine. She is currently suing the Serbian Socialist Party for "hate speech" and demanding that they be banned. Heavily subsidized by interventionist sugar-daddy George Soros, Kandic is a weird, isolated figure in Serbian politics, one of the few who openly sided with NATO during the bombing.
SABOTEUR WITH A PASSPORT?
Kandic's "witness" isn't proving all that helpful, for we are told by the Tribune that "there is a dispute between Fatos and Mr. Mitrovic over why the brothers did not have their U.S. passports with them on the journey." Although we are not told the nature of this dispute, it isn't hard to fathom: for since when does a covert agent on an important military mission carry his passport? According the family lawyer, the brothers were stopped by Serbian police in the village of Merdare, well over the border with Kosovo. What would 3 members of the Atlantic Brigade be doing on the wrong side of the border (even if there's some truth to the story that they were merely acting as a military escort for the Gypsies)? The obvious conclusion is that this incursion was a precursor of the wave of KLA terrorism that erupted in the border zone last year, as yet another "liberation army" sprang up, this time in southern Serbia.
BRIBERY AS TRUTH SERUM
The Gypsies were allowed to pass, but the brothers Bytyqi were sentenced to 15 days in prison for illegal entry into Yugoslavia, and on June 27 they were imprisoned at Prokuplie, in southern Serbia. The HLC has gotten a former police inspector, Zoran Stankovic, to testify that the three brothers were to be released into his custody and that he showed up at the prison to collect them four days before their release date, but they were nowhere to be found. According to Fatos, however, a big bribe to a prison official reveals the truth: that the three were "driven away in a white car and never seen again." Will the ICTFY admit evidence from admittedly bribed witnesses? Believe me, they aren't choosy: anonymous witnesses are not only allowed but positively encouraged, and they can submit their bought-and-paid-for "testimony" in absentia.
A HATE CRIME?
"They were killed because they were American citizens," argues Bajram Krasniqi, a Pristina-based lawyer hired by the Bytyqi family. "There were people in that prison who were in the rebel army and they were eventually released. This is the only case where someone was arrested, taken to court, tried, released out of the prison and then executed. This crime was planned, ordered and conducted without any judicial act, and it was done by Serbian officials in cooperation with officials at the prison. Hopefully, the Serb authorities will now arrest these people and they will be brought to justice."
LEGALITY IN WARTIME
Arrest them v for what? For executing three foreign nationals who were clearly members of a hostile military force, sent into Yugoslavia on a mission to wreak havoc? Fatos tells us that they wore KLA medallions around their necks, and no one denies that they were found on Serbian soil. Krasniqui claims that a "judicial process" was lacking in the sequence of events that led to their deaths, but by this standard every act of resistance to invasion must be adjudicated before a single shot is fired in self-defense.
LOOK WHO'S TALKING!
Krasniqi is head of the Kosovo Albanian "commission for war crimes and missing people," and a former member of KLA leader Hashem Thaci's "provisional government." Under this government, the ethnic cleansing of non-Albanians from Kosovo was similarly lacking in the proper judicial procedures. The judicial process in the conquered province is so corrupt and biased that even the United Nations has had to acknowledge the problem. It has got to be a joke of a particularly grotesque sort that has a top official of the KLA standing on the principle of "legality"!
INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW
It's lucky for the ICTFY that Milosevic has decided not to retain legal counsel, and has chosen to stand on the "principle" of not answering any of the charges against him v on the grounds that the ICTFY has no legal standing or authority. He's right about ICTFY's illegitimacy, but it does not follow that a lawyer is "unnecessary." For surely this particular charge v the "murder" of the Bytyqi brothers v would be easy enough to refute. Slobo's defense lawyers could call to the stand the organizers and financiers of this mysterious "Atlantic Brigade." The defense could conceivably prove that the Bytyqi brothers, far from being innocent American tourists on a Balkan jaunt, were American mercenaries on a deadly mission. Just as it is Carla Del Ponte's job to personally link Milosevic to the decision to execute noncombatants, so the task of the defense would be to uncover the true nature and origins of the Atlantic Brigade and a give a full account of its activities. What an interesting trial that would be!
Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com
Kosovo conflict maims Albanian-American fighter
June 23, 1999
Web posted at: 7:43 p.m. EDT (2343 GMT)
Dervisholli, posing in his KLA uniform, top, was hit by a grenade while fighting in Kosovo and the lower part of his right leg was amputated
NEW YORK -- (CNN) Like ethnic Albanians refugees from Kosovo, Albanian-Americans who fought in the latest Balkan conflict are returning home. And some of them are bringing back permanent physical reminders of the experience.
Haxhi Dervisholli, 29, is one of them. In April, he joined about 300 other Albanian-American volunteers in a Yonkers, New York, parking lot where they said goodbye to their loved ones before departing to fight for the Kosovo Liberation Army.
In Kosovo, Dervisholli said he was in charge of heavy machine guns for the ethnic Albanian guerrilla group.
Now he is back home in New York, with a strong sense of pride, but without the lower half of his right leg.
"A grenade fell right near my foot and blew it away," he said. He was hit about three weeks ago and taken to a field hospital where his leg was amputated just below the knee.
He is now undergoing rehabilitation in New York and will soon be fitted with a prosthesis, which his doctor said will enable him to participate in most normal activities.
Dervisholli, who was a construction worker before the war, said he has no regrets about fighting. "I am proud of what I did," he said. "I'm happy. I hope the war is over and we get our freedom."
Dervisholli added that he dreams that his family members who are now in Albania will one day return to Kosovo.
Correspondent Gary Tuchman contributed to this report.