From UN website

Kouchner urges action to secure release of Kosovar Albanians held in Serbia.

AUGUST 27 -- The head of the United Nations Kosovo operation, Dr. Bernard Kouchner, today urged the international community to exert pressure for the release of political prisoners still being held in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Speaking in Pristina at a rally for more than 5,000 Kosovar Albanians still believed detained in Serbia, Dr. Kouchner also called on international human rights organizations to help seek information on those still missing.

Dr. Kouchner told hundreds of demonstrators that he had received detailed information on 1,924 detainees held in Serbian jails whom representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had been allowed to visit. Most of them were being held without trial and have been charged with terrorism, he said.

Stressing that it was a violation of international law to hold prisoners without providing information to relatives, Dr. Kouchner said he was attempting to coordinate a high-level meeting of human rights representatives in Pristina to confront the matter of prisoners and missing persons.

He also said the Kosovo Transitional Council -- the highest Kosovar political body working with the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) -- would create a special working group, made up of the ICRC, human rights activists and family members, to address this issue.