Part TwoA later interview was conducted by Jared Israel and Nancy Gust. (Nancy trains people in interviewing techniques professionally.) The purpose was to clarify various questions. The most revealing information about the role of NATO troops is to be found in the latter part of this interview.
Israel: You said many Albanians fled the KLA, the gangs. Do you know how many?
Prelinchevich: Tens of thousands. 15,000 went to Vojvodina, 30,000 to Belgrade, many more.
Israel: How did the gangs that attacked buildings know whom to expel?
Prelinchevich: They had evidence who was who. Also they came to the offices. People were expelled from the offices. All the institutions which belonged to the government had been occupied. The gangsters were coming to work, whether municipalities, courts or universities, or whatever which were public, the post office, the civil services, they would come to the buildings and take over, take the people outside. They had a register of who was working in these places.
Israel: Was anybody allowed to stay who lived in your building?
Prelinchevich: As much as I know in the building I live there is nobody left. If they were resisting the person was shot down.
Gust: Do you know how many people were shot?
Prelinchevich: For instance they found today one lady which was strangled in the bath. Ljubica Bujouic.
Gust: She was from your complex?
Prelinchevich: For example today two villages were completely expelled. And they went to Serbia.
Gust: The woman who was murdered, that was in your apartment complex? How did you know that they found her there?
Prelinchevich: It was an official announcement on the TV but I knew her. 4500 murders in Kosovo since KFOR arrived.
Gust: According to?
Prelinchevich: Information that is published by the Media Center from Pristina. It is called the Center for Tolerance and Joint Living.
Israel: In your apartment complex were there other murders?
Prelinchevich: There were several murders. I can't be sure because a majority left. Those that resisted were killed.
Israel: How many attackers were there?
Prelinchevich: There were a large number of them. They were going up and down all day long. It's hard to know how many. The building itself has 11 stories and 20 entrances. It's a huge building.
Israel: Was this building singled out?
Prelinchevich: They did the whole area of new buildings begun in 1990, completed in 1995, very luxurious apartments by our standards luxurious, new buildings, porches, all different kinds of adjoining facilities.
Israel: And were all the people who lived there employees of the government?
Prelinchevich: The elite of the city was living in that area. A majority of university professors and managers of different state organizations, public organizations, doctors, physicians, lawyers.
Gust: Someone might argue that, since these were luxury apartments and since this was the elite, this was just a large scale robbery.
Prelinchevich: You cannot call it robbery, because they were taking us and they were entering, they were occupying the apartments. We are waiting now for a civil government to come from the United Nations to start with their control but we very much believe that we will not be able to return even though we are being invited to come back. We think that what is happening now will be legalized by the civil authorities when they come in and we expect a migration from the big number of Albanians living now in Europe, from Switzerland, where there is a huge number, from France, from London. And they will come from Albania. They already have.
Gust: While you were there were the Albanians occupying the apartments?
Prelinchevich: You cannot call it a robbery because robbery is when I'm not home and you come inside and take my TV. Right? This is robbery.
But you come inside the apartment and you kick me out of the apartment, is this robbery? This not robbery, this is complete anarchy outside the system. Somebody enters by force, kicks you out, enters inside and continues to live? Not just comes there and stays a few hours and drinks coffee and whisky. And all the property inside is not guaranteed? This is like occupying the country, occupying the apartment by force.
Israel: There was a week during which you said you were imprisoned in the apartment and couldn't leave. Was that the week during which the gang was marauding around?
Prelinchevich: Yes, the first week when KFOR came, I was inside the apartment without the ability to go outside because a huge number of Albanians came inside and I was afraid to leave the place.
Israel: They were all over the building?
Prelinchevich: No, no, the city. Inside Pristina. The KFOR was very much concerned about the military withdrawal of Yugoslav Army but without paying attention to the civilians.
Israel: At what point did the gangs come? Was it immediately or was it after a few weeks?
Prelinchevich: Together with them. In other words, the KFOR arrived and the gangs arrived.
Israel: When did they attack the complex?
Prelinchevich: They attacked immediately. When the Russians came to Pristina, before the British, to the airport, the people were expecting that they would protect them but it was not so.
Gust: How long was it before your apartment complex was attacked? When did that happen?
Prelinchevich: At the very day that the British entered my part of the city the gangs started to attack different buildings in this huge area. It's a quarter of Pristina, the section called 'Milana'.
Gust: Are you saying the gangs arrived physically in the same time and place as the British soldiers? The gangs traveled with British soldiers?
Prelinchevich: Yes. The answer is yes. Yes they came together. Yes. Over the frontier, over the route, over the streets together. Yes!
Gust: Did they just come parallel, at the same time but independently?
Prelinchevich: They came in different groups - not together arm by arm - they come and they go, they're here and there - very often you see them together, mingling, but each of them has a separate organization.
Gust: But you saw them mingling together
Prelinchevich: Yes! Yes! For example a gang comes to the building and a tenant calls KFOR and the KFOR arrives and gets around the building and then KFOR leave and the fellows continue to move around.
Gust: Did the Albanians leave when you called KFOR?
Prelinchevich: No they stayed. They didn't leave.
Gust: You're saying the gangs broke into the place, moved into the places, that people called the KFOR, KFOR came and they did nothing?
Prelinchevich: You know sometimes they had funny situations. KFOR would come and they said, the Albanians said, "we don't have a place to stay for the night" so the KFOR says "ok, so stay together in the tenants apartment."
Israel: The same apartment as the people they were trying to throw out?
Prelinchevich: Yes.
Israel: Is that correct?
Prelinchevich: Yes, yes. That's what they suggested. So the Albanians and the Serbs, or whoever was there, will live together in the same building, in the apartment and the gangsters would say if you don't leave the apartment in the next two or three hours we will kill you, we will slaughter you.
Gust: Can you get more identification of these people? Were they not from Kosovo, did they identify themselves in any way?
Prelinchevich: Only in the position that they were armed, and in the position of the power. Definitely they are making an ethnically clean Kosovo.
Gust: When these people came to the building and threatened you did you call the KFOR?
Prelinchevich: They were in the building already. When the Albanians came to my apartment the KFOR was already there. One of the neighbors, a doctor, ran and called the KFOR soldiers to come and protect the place.
Israel: Did you talk to them.
Prelinchevich: Yes. I spoke to them.
Gust: Do you know the name of the person you spoke to?
Prelinchevich: The fellow, the soldier was introducing himself as Major of the British army. And when I showed my papers, the soldier said forget it, next time.
Gust: Next time?
Prelinchevich: The papers that said I was the President of the Jewish Community in Pristina. The soldier just glanced at the paper and said "Next time," like he didn't have time to be bothered with this. "Don't bother me now."
Israel: He arrived with a squad of soldiers or alone?
Prelinchevich: With his squad.
Gust: Did they do anything?
Prelinchevich: If they helped me would I be here now?
Israel: Please don't take offence at these questions. We are asking in this kind of detail to get the clearest answers.
Prelinchevich: It is not only me that suffered but thousands of others. People who are of the age of 80 and expelled from their homes. And they're still doing it on a daily basis. It is still going on.
***
Since interviewing Mr. Prelinchevich we have published other interviews with residents of Kosovo about what happened after NATO took over.
Some of the most revealing interviews concern the Kosovo town of Orahovac.
See 'Save the Families: The women of Orahovac speak' at http://emperors-clothes.com/misc/savethe.htm
See 'The Women of Orahovac Answer the Colonel' at http://emperors-clothes.com/interviews/trouw.htm
The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) has not only persecuted non-Albanians. It has also attacked Albanians who oppose their racism. See 'An Albanian Tragedy' at http://emperors-clothes.com/interviews/albanian.htm
The Yugoslav government has charged that NATO is abetting terrorism in Kosovo. Our editor thinks they understate the case. See:
'The US government arms 3500 terrorists in Kosovo' by Jared Israel at http://emperors-clothes.com/news/u.htm
and 'Why is the KLA shooting at KFOR?' by Jared Israel at http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/whyisthe.htm
Emperors-clothes.com will soon publish follow-up interviews with Mr. Chedomir Prelinchevich. These interviews take hours by overseas phone; they cost lots of money. We rely on donations to pay the expenses associated with combating media misinformation.
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