The past two weeks have seen a further slide into dictatorship in the former Yugoslavia. Serb dissidents are suffering more and more from the repressive justice system, as it becomes even more of a tool for carrying out the repressive policies of the Milosevic regime. It is important for outsiders to remember that the FRY is, at this point, a country run by an indicted war criminal who has for years carried out crimes against humanity and used the military, the police, prisons, and now the court systems as tools of brutal repression. Milosevic has moved his troops to the border of Mitrovica and has placed 40,000 men in Montenegro. Hundreds of Serb dissidents have been beaten, interrogated, and imprisoned. Efforts by outsiders to hold talks concerning the release of prisoners have been nearly futile. Efforts to buy back relatives for thousands of deutsch marks have

been the only "success," if paying ransoms for hostages is a success. Another 50 or so prisoners were released this week. If approximately 500 prisoners have been released at about 10,000 Dm a piece that means that Albanian families have paid nearly 1 million deutsch marks in ransom money. In this context of corruption and egregious legal violations, Albin Kurti, former student leader and KLA political spokesman, charged as most Albanians arrested during the war are charged with conspiring to commit terrorism, had his hearing in Nis on March 9th. In a courtroom with only a handful of human rights lawyers and UNHCHR present, he read a statement in Albanian in which he stated that he refused to cooperate at any level with a "court that has nothing to do with truth or justice. It serves the olicies of the Milosevic regime which kept Kosova under occupation." Albin's case, like all those thousand other prisoners, should be dismissed immediately. Not only were all normal legal procedures during his arrest, detent

ion, and interrogation,

gravely flawed, but under the Geneva Conventions of 1949, all those Albanians arrested during the conflict should have been immediately released in June,1999. For this reason, Alice Mead of the Association of Political Prisoners, has filed a request for a war crimes investigation into the situation of the transfer and detention of the prisoners as an ongoing violation of the Geneva Conventions. The petition for investigation was submitted to John Ralston in The Hague.

Ultimately, however, the prisoner issue remains unresolved because of the confusion of the international community and its failure to plan properly for the future legal status of Kosova. How, in good conscience, can the West insist that Kosova remain legally tied to a brutal, corrupt regime that has clearly stated and continues to state that Kosova should be free of Albanians. Serb actions in continuing to disrupt Mitrovica, in blocking any legal justice for Albanians illegally trapped and sold off as hostages in its prisons, and in its repression now of its own citizens should prove to the outside world that Serbia is a nation with a very long road to back to normalcy. Internationals must make clear, and this includes groups like the ICRC, that Serbia has no jurisdiction over Kosovars. This is the heart of the issue.