This is a story that might never have been written. It was the end of May 1999 and war was raging in Kosovo. The NATO bombing was at its most intense as the West sought to convince the Yugoslav President, Mr Slobodan Milosevic, it meant business.
The Yugoslav army was demoralised but fighting with the kind of desperation which settles in when failure is inevitable.
In the midst of this chaos, a soldier named David fighting with the Serbs invited me to a Yugoslav army compound hidden in the hills about an hour from the Kosovo capital, Pristina. This trip would take place without official permission; moreover, the captain of the compound could reject the deal when we arrived, but David would do his best to persuade his superior of the wisdom of allowing a journalist access.
The Serb captain, a tall, blond man and a veteran of fighting in Croatia I knew only as Bojan, agreed to let me stay on the condition that I not reveal the exact location of the compound and that I not use real names. Both commitments were easy as I only knew the general region and was not sure of anyone's full name.
During this visit I made a chilling discovery. Some 49 Albanian prisoners were being kept in a tiny basement of the three-storey former home occupied by the soldiers. One spoke English and I was allowed to talk with him. The story of that visit appeared in The Irish Times on May 31st last year.
Besim Hasanaj was a gaunt, yellow-skinned 26-year-old man when we spoke. He had been captured at the end of April, he said, and he denied he was a member of the Kosovo Liberation Army.
Sitting in a bare concrete room, guarded by Serb soldiers, listening to bombs hitting their mark outside and the sounds of gunfire between Serbs and the KLA echoing all around, Besim was clearly terrified. He had been studying computers. He told me of his family who lived in Sweden, the younger brother who had also been taken, his father and mother. He told me of his wife and of the son who had been born around the time of his capture. He began to cry quietly then, as the likelihood of ever seeing his son swept over him.
It was one of the most difficult interviews I have ever done. What could I say to Besim, as men with Kalashnikovs who had been drinking raca since early morning stood beside us? I could not comfort him. As the machine-gun fire intensified outside, and it was evident the compound was under a KLA assault, the Serb guards fled for a few minutes, and Besim and I were alone.
"I don't know anything that is going on outside. And I cannot speak freely, you can see that," he said.
"Of course I know," I said.
I then told him the status of the war, that Milosevic seemed ready to sign an agreement, and that the captain had told me he would soon free the prisoners.
And then it was over. Besim returned to cleaning the toilets and obeying the soldiers' commands and I left, wondering if this young man and the others would survive. He seemed very ill, and had mentioned there was something wrong with the water. But more than that, I wondered about the captain's assurances of freeing the prisoners. After the war ended, mass graves were found all over the Drenica region, bodies stuffed down wells, prisoners shot in their beds.
This week I returned to Kosovo on the first anniversary of the beginning of the war. One of my first tasks was to find out what happened to Besim Hasan aj. Armed with a handful of village names which he had mentioned, but unsure where he was from, we set out from Pristina. My Albanian translator informed me that the family name, Hasanaj, was common in this region.
After more than eight hours, and speaking to Hasanajs in Klina Mesme, Gorja Klina, and several other villages, we were discouraged. No one knew of Besim Hasanaj, or anyone who fitted that description. With the translator insisting this was futile, we headed to a remote mountain village called Klladernica.
Besim had mentioned the place. It began to snow heavily. We were greeted by a group of old Albanian women who stood beside a couple of men who were trying with limited success to encourage a cow and bull to mate. They invited us for tea - but no, there was no Besim Hasanaj here.
On the way back down down the mountain, we passed a village called Rezala. This looked familiar. I believed that the Serb compound had been set in an area between Rezala and Morine. We stopped and asked a group of men about it. Oh yes, there had been a prison camp there. It was gone now. The houses had been thoroughly mined by the Serbs and were now blown up. In fact, two brothers who had been held there were now running a little store in Skenderaj, a town not far away that used to be called Srbiza in Serbian. They gave us directions to find the brothers.
A young man named TK greeted us in the store. Yes, he had been held there. He looked at me. "I remember you. You were wearing a coat. We didn't know who you were." After a few minutes, he smiled. "Follow me. I will take you to Besim's house. But I don't want to tell him you are here. It will be a surprise."
As we approached a three-storey house in town, Besim and his father emerged as TK called outside his window. I recognised him only because of his eyes. He had put on about 20 lb. His hair, instead of long and stringy, was close-cropped. We were warmly welcomed upstairs and were met by Besim's wife, Minire, his mother, Memine, and his infant son, Celik. We are seated on a comfortable couch.
The house had been burned inside and destroyed by Serb soldiers. Besim and his father have been rebuilding. Still, much of our conversation takes place in the glow of a florescent flashlight as the electricity in Kosovo is intermittent at best. Above us are posters showing a photo montage of figures prominent in the NATO effort: Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Tony Blair, NATO's Gen. Wesley Clark. There is also a poster of KLA heroes and martyrs.
Now Besim was able to speak and tell the story of what had happened.
"Before the war I worked with the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe). I was afraid if they found out about that, they would surely kill me. That is why I told you I worked in computers," he said.
As the war began, Besim and his family were evicted from their homes by Serb paramilitaries, They spent days hiding in the forests. Later, the army told them they could return to their homes. When they did, on April 27th, they were captured. Some 89 men were rounded up and then separated by age.
About 25 were executed. Besim's father, Zymer, was taken with the older men to an adjacent house, where they were kept until after the June agreement was signed. About 50 were in Besim's group and were taken to the compound in Morina. The Serb general in Srbiza told Capt. Bojan they were not to be returned.
"We were treated okay in Morina, but there was not enough food. We could not wash. Before we were brought there though, we were beaten. There were broken ribs. It was very bad. I cannot remember some things and I cannot express myself. Do you understand?" Besim asks.
He picks up his son, who is a happy and healthy looking baby who was born on April 17th, 1999. "His name is Celik. It means steel in Albanian. We said if this boy survives he will be made of steel."
In June, after the agreement was signed, Capt. Bojan brought the prisoners back to Srbiza. He shook all of their hands and wished them well.
It was a move that got Capt. Bojan killed by his own commander.
"We heard shooting," said Besim. "Bojan had been ordered not to bring us back and he did." The Serb general demanded money from the prisoners' families for them to be released. The last few days were filled with wives and mothers bringing any deutschmarks they could gather to secure releases.
Besim is back working with the OSCE field office. After all he has been through, after he and his father helped to bury 46 bodies of their friends who were killed in a massacre, he has applied for work as a humanitarian worker. He does not believe, however, that Serbs and Albanians will ever be able to live together.
"I do not want revenge. I just want a solution. And what is the solution? No one will ever be able to protect us. Will Serbs live with Albanians? I ask you . . . you have seen things? What do you think?"
His father is more adamant. "These crimes have been committed against us and the world must know. We will never live with them. We will never forgive them."