A pediatrician and poet, Dr. Brovina was the founder and head of the

League of Albanian Women. She is charged with providing food, clothing,

and medical supplies to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), as well as

planning terrorist acts. During the war, her clinic provided medical

services to women and children still in Pristina.

Dr. Brovina was originally held in Kosovo's Lipljan prison, where other

prisoners have told Human Rights Watch about regular beatings and

maltreatment by prison guards, including a cordon of baton-wielding

police that met all new detainees. On June 10, two days before the

entry of NATO into Kosovo, she and hundreds of other prisoners were

transferred to prisons inside Serbia.

Dr. Brovina is being held in Pozarevac prison, where she has been

visited by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), her

lawyers, and her husband. However, her husband has not been able to meet

with her alone and has had to speak Serbian, which can be monitored,

rather than their native Albanian. Conditions in Pozarevac prison are

better than in Kosovo, but Dr. Brovina has had difficulty obtaining

medicine for her weak heart, her husband, Ajri Begu, told Human Rights

Watch.

Dr. Brovina's trial will be held in the Nis municipal court on November

11. Human Rights Watch called on diplomats in Yugoslavia and

representatives of the international community, as well as journalists,

to monitor the trial. "It was a great mistake that the fate of Kosovar

Albanian prisoners was not a part of the agreementissing, in addition to those in detention. It

is not known whether these additional 5,000 people are in detention or

dead.

Photographs of Flora Brovina and Albin Kurti are available on the Human

Rights Watch website at: http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/kosovo98/

For further information contact:

Fred Abrahams (+32-75) 528-890

Alexandra Perina (+1-212) 216-1845