hi said. Many more unaccounted for Matoshi's release is an exception. More than 1,800 Kosovar Albanians are known to be held in Serbian prisons, according to the Council for the Defense of Human Rights and Freedoms in Pristina. But another 3,600 Albanians are unaccounted for, the council said, and the number still in jail may be greatly underestimated. "A number of them may be dead," said the council's spokesman, Ibrahim Makolli, acknowledging that dozens of burial sites in Kosovo have not yet been inspected by forensic experts. "But we don't believe all of them are in mass graves." Nearly 500 Albanians have been released since the end of the war, Makolli said, and they tell consistent stories of torture and of shortages of food and hygiene. The prisoners are given no or little legal assistance, and those who actually go to court are usually sentenced for terrorist acts in sham trials, said Fred Abrahams of Human Rights Watch. "The trials ... are replete with procedural violations. People don't have access to lawyers, they don't have access to the files against them, they're not able to present witnesses in their defense," he said. 'I was ready to die' For Matoshi, a journalist and painter, his story of horror began on May 21, 1999, when a squad of 70 to 80 Serb police swept into his village south of Pristina. Officers dressed in camouflage uniforms stormed through his front gate and searched his house, demanding to know where he kept any money or weapons. Finding nothing of interest, the police told Matoshi to put on some clothes and leave with them. "I was ready to die. Because I thought that Serbia does not need any more jailed Albanians," Matoshi said. "My wife brought me pants and a sweater. I didn't want to put them on. I had just sports clothes on, thinking that they would kill me immediately. I was thinking, why should I bring new clothes with me, because they are going to kill me? So I went just as I was." The police escorted Matoshi outside. "As soon as we reached the yard, they made me face the w
all. They put a gun behind my head. The other [police], they were five or six yards away from the guy with the gun, they were saying, 'Shoot him, shoot him.' All I could think about was how my head would receive the bullet. That is what I was waiting for at that moment. And I didn't think about anything else because I was ready. I was just glad that my children, who were crying, and my parents were not seeing that." But the Serbian police did not shoot him. They took Matoshi to a makeshift police station in a Kosovar Albanian house. There he was asked to sign a document he was not allowed to read. "From that moment on, I was in their hands," he said. 'They counted us by hitting us' Matoshi and many of his neighbors were taken outside and kicked and beaten repeatedly by police. They were then ordered to squeeze into a small armored jeep. "They put 24 of us in there. The first line had to lie down; the rest were piled up on top of them. The jeep was closed, and because it [was] armored, the air was cut off.
We were scared we were going to suffocate. They told us they would take us to the border of Albania and kill us." Instead, the police drove them to the Kosovo town of Lipljane, where they forced the prisoners to walk through a corridor of officers who beat them as they passed. "They counted us by hitting us, one, two, three, four, five. Then the guard said, `Oh, I made a mistake, I have to start again.' And he started beating us again." After hours of torture, the Albanians were too weak to stand. They were dragged two-by-two and tossed into a dark cell. "There were a lot of people lying in that room. They didn't move at all, even though we were crawling on top of them. We thought that they were dead. They didn't move at all. We thought that we were climbing on top of dead people. But they were just beat-up prisoners, lying unconscious." 'We saw death as our savior' Matoshi and the other prisoners were kept in the Lipljane jail for three weeks, receiving smaller and smaller meals as time passed. Ten to 20
Albanians were taken out every day and tortured, their screams echoing across the cellblock. Anti-aircraft guns mounted around the jail went into action at night to fire at NATO warplanes. "We started praying that a NATO bomb would fall on us and end everything. So it would just stop our suffering. We, at the time, saw death as our savior, not life," Matoshi said. On June 10, the day NATO peacekeepers entered Kosovo, Matoshi and his fellow inmates were bused to a prison in Pozarevac, a town in Serbia. Their treatment improved, but Serbian authorities took another two months to inform the Red Cross of their status. "It was very difficult for us because from the day he was taken, we had no news," said Matoshi's wife, Ilirjana. "We heard rumors he was in Lipljane, but how could we believe them when we had all these reports of people being killed?" She received confirmation from the Red Cross in early August that her husband was still alive. After repeated efforts, Ilirjana managed to visit Matoshi twice, in Oct
ober and in December. "After seeing him, I knew he would come back someday," she said. "Maybe after 10 years, maybe after 20 years, but I knew he would be here. I always had hope." 'Our souls were just broken' His wife may have had hope, but Matoshi's spirits sank to new lows, he said. "In the last three or four months, despair started setting in, because we felt abandoned by all sides" -- by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, by NATO, and by the Kosovar Albanian political leadership that seemed powerless to help them. Finally, in late January, a guard called Matoshi's name and asked him how long it would take him to get his things ready. "I said I need 10 minutes. I didn't really need 10 minutes, because I didn't have anything. But I was glad because I had 10 minutes to say goodbye to my 60 friends in the room. And each and every one of them who was saying goodbye to me, with tears in their eyes, told me at the door, 'Halil Matoshi, please do something for us.' Because they as well as myself, our soul
s were just broken." Greeted at the gates of the jail by a Red Cross representative, Matoshi first went to Belgrade, then to the Kosovo border, where his family awaited him. "At first I thought he might not come," said Ilirjana. "I thought the Serbs might play a game and bring him to the border and go back. When I saw him, I couldn't believe it was really him." 'I will not take vengeance' When news of his return to Kosovo spread, relatives of other jailed Albanians arrived seeking news of their loved-ones. "It was very disturbing," Matoshi said. "Many people came to me and showed me pictures of their relatives who are missing. I didn't know if they were alive or not. And it was difficult, because when they showed those pictures to me, I didn't have anything to say to them. I said only that we should hope together." The fate of his fellow inmates has preoccupied Matoshi since he left jail. He said the international community should send an envoy to negotiate their freedom, or consider buying their release f
rom the Yugoslav government. But revenge is not on his mind, he said. "A chance has been given to us to overcome the Balkan conscience, where in each and every moment someone has to take vengeance on someone else. I have suffered from Serbs, but I would not take vengeance on all of them. " "But it is difficult for people who lost families. How can we convince them? " "I will not take vengeance. I don't even think about it. But I can't also live beside these criminals. I would feel frightened to sit down at the table with criminals, be they Serbs or even Albanians."
