From the windows of cell 35, Block C in Dubrava prison

25 years since the massacre in Dubrava.

*On May 22 and 23, 1999, more than 100 Albanian prisoners were killed by Serbian forces in the Dubrava prison, an event known today as the Dubrava massacre. This massacre occurred in the context of the bloody wars in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s, where ethnic and political tensions erupted into brutal conflicts that brought destruction and loss of life across the region. The Dubrava massacre was one of many acts of violence that reflected the Serbian regime’s efforts to oppress Kosovar Albanians and consolidate control in a turbulent period. During this period, about 1,000 prisoners were held in the prison, having been transferred there from other prisons in Kosovo and Serbia. Some of them were Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) soldiers, others were activists for the liberation of Kosovo who were accused of political crimes.

Sadik Zeqiri, now director of the Epoka e Re newspaper, then a political prisoner, remembers those days.

May 22, 2024

It was dinnertime on March 14, 1999, in the Peja prison where I had spent more than seven months. An Albanian guard gave us bread and told me that we might be transferred to the high-security prison in Dubrava the next day.

Almost a year before, on April 19, 1998, I left behind my third-year studies in the law department at the University of Prishtina to join the KLA. I was only 23 years old. Only four months later, on the morning of August 25, as I was passing from one village to another in the Dukagjin region, the Serbian police ambushed and arrested me.

What the warden said shocked me. I thought it was better for us to be transferred to Dubrava because other prisoners who had been moved around and returned to Peja said that the conditions were better in Dubrava. They said that the larger space made it easier to endure being in jail. However, I didn’t want to be removed from the prison in Peja, because it was easier for my family, my mother and other family members, to visit me there. Visits were allowed every 15 days and it was the only interaction allowed with people from outside. Although we couldn’t touch, we could talk through the bars.

We also received information about the outside through new prisoners who arrived. We used to pray that an Albanian prisoner would come to our cell and tell us what was happening outside. We couldn’t watch TV. I had prepaid for the Serbian-language newspaper Blic, since Albanian-language newspapers were not allowed. But even Blic was delivered incomplete — they used to remove the pages that reported on political developments in Kosovo, leaving only the culture and sports sections.

The guards beat us so often that we could hardly muster the strength to do anything but lie down.

After we had dinner, around 9 p.m. on March 14, the lights were turned off, and we were told, as we were every night, to go to sleep. There were six prisoners in cell 4 of Block 3 in Peja. Five of us were Albanian, one was a Serb. They used to put up to nine prisoners in a cell of eight square meters, depending on how many had been arrested. Two people shared each mattress in the bunk beds.

Every day, we woke up at 5 a.m. and were not allowed to sleep any longer. We made the beds, washed our faces, and waited for breakfast around 7 or 8 a.m. After lunch, which we usually had at noon, we could go out for a 10-15 minute walk in the small prison yard. Until dinner, we spent time in our cell playing chess, dominoes, or reading a book from the prison library. We would do this whenever we could get out of bed, but the guards beat us so often that we could hardly muster the strength to do anything but lie down.

In those days, I had a lot of trouble sleeping. Dawn would come and find me awake. Like me, the Serb prisoner I was sharing my cell with also had trouble sleeping. I asked him why he wasn’t asleep yet. He said to me, “Sadik, today they will transfer you all to Dubrava. They are gathering all the Albanian prisoners. If the war ends, they are expected to release you from Dubrava.”

After a few minutes the lights were turned on. The doors of the cells began to be opened one by one. Then they opened the door to our cell. Two guards came in with a list in hand and called my name. “Sadik Zeqiri, you have five minutes to get ready. You are being transferred to Dubrava,” said one. They gave the same notice to some other prisoners. We collected our belongings and lined up in the narrow corridor. They put us in police vans and took us to Dubrava.

The view from the windows of cell 35, Block C

In Dubrava, we were distributed among different blocks, but most of us were sent to Block C.

I was put in cell 35, on the second floor, with a window that faced the sports field. The four of us prisoners that were brought from Peja were put there. There was a prisoner who had been there for some time in the cell. He was also a member of the KLA. With the new company, we had new conversations. We had something to talk about. We were all Albanians in the cell. The windows in our cell were large, but we missed seeing nature, mountains and fields. In Block C, where the most isolated prisoners were kept, those windows were all we had.

The Dubrava prison was organized into wards divided according to the degree of isolation required for the prisoners. Block C was the most isolated. In this prison ward, most of the prisoners were expected to be sentenced to many years in prison. Block B was somewhat liberated; at least the prisoners ate their food in the kitchen, whereas Block A was almost an open prison. Prisoners for criminal offenses and Serbs were placed in these two prison wards.

In Block C, many things were different from the prison in Peja. They didn’t allow us to eat in the kitchen. Food was brought to our cell. We were no longer allowed 10-15 minutes of walking a day. From morning to evening, we stayed in the cell. We could no longer read, nor play chess or dominoes. Even my mother could no longer visit me.

As the days went by, we waited, hoping to be released based on the little information we had obtained. Outside the prison walls, dialogue was taking place to stop the war. We were told that if Serbia did not agree to end the war by March 24, 1999, NATO would intervene to stop the ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians. This intervention would begin with the bombing of Serbian military targets in Kosovo and Serbia.

Since we hadn’t received any news that Serbia decided to stop the war, on the night of March 24, we stayed awake, waiting for the beginning of the bombing of Serbian targets in Kosovo. From inside the prison, we could hear the roar of the planes as they bombed. From inside the prison we felt freedom, but also death.

Day by day, the bombings intensified. During this time, the blocks began to fill with even more prisoners. Every day, new prisoners arrived from other prisons, including from those in Serbia that held hundreds of Albanian prisoners. From Block C, we could see their arrivals through the windows where we had a view of the main entrance door. We didn’t know who they were or where they came from.

Hearing the cries of those being beaten was distressing, however we felt a sense of relief when it was our turn to be beaten, because once the beating was over it meant we were done with the "measles," as we used to call it.

We were kept informed by Albanian prisoners who were being held for criminal offenses and brought us food to our cell. They told us that on April 29 and 30, 1999, they had brought all the Albanian prisoners from other prisons in Serbia — Sremska Mitrovica prison, Niš prison, and others — and had placed them in Block B.

When those from Block B were taken to eat in the kitchen, we looked through the window to see them, as we knew that they were large groups of those arrested and convicted for being KLA soldiers. I knew most of them. Some were friends from university, others I knew for their activism. Some of them I had heard and read about, they had spent their whole lives engaged in political activity, constantly being arrested and released from Serbian cellars used as prisons.

After the bombing began, the guards’ behavior towards us got worse. They were more rude. They started beating us every day. The beatings and mistreatment started in the isolation cell and continued into every cell. Hearing the cries of those being beaten was distressing, however we felt a sense of relief when it was our turn to be beaten, because once the beating was over it meant we were done with the “measles,” as we used to call it.

From the windows of cell 35, as well as seeing people entering, we could also see others leaving. This sight gave us a glimmer of hope.

On the morning of Sunday, May 16, 1999, we saw several guards escort a man to the prison’s exit. Due to the distance, we couldn’t identify him, but we were glad that someone was either being released or transferred to another prison. Later, we realized that the tall man was Professor Ukshin Hoti, known for his commitment to national issues and the rights of Albanians. Hoti was arrested and imprisoned by the Serbian authorities several times. In 1994, he was imprisoned for the last time and sentenced to five years in prison for his political activity and advocacy for the rights of Albanians.

After a few minutes, another prisoner from our block was released. We recognized him as Pepshi from Junik. They escorted him towards the main exit. I distinctly remember hearing the newly freed prisoner ask the warden: “Today is Sunday. How far will you take me?” The guard told him that they would escort him to Peja and that “from there you can go anywhere.” We heard this conversation through the open windows and realized that the other prisoner was not transferred, but released. Pepshi’s remains were found and identified in 2005 in an unmarked grave near Peja. Hoti’s fate remains unclear to this day.

On May 18, a large group of people were brought to the prison. Even from a distance, we could see that they were dressed in civilian clothes, some even had long hair. We guessed that they were hostages. They put them in a building that had been used as a school. Later, we learned that they were a group of 150 captives from Gjakova.

Almost 1,000 prisoners were now kept in Dubrava.

During the NATO bombing campaign we left the windows open so we could see and hear as much as possible.

One day, a guard on duty came and opened the door to our cell and caught us looking out the window. The guard was either from the near of Istog or Peja because he knew the Albanian language and occasionally spoke it. He said: “Come closer to the window, I will tell you which villages they are from.” Among them, he mentioned Shushica and remarked that, aside from some soldiers who remained in some nearby mountains, no Albanians remained in Kosovo.

“We have killed most and expelled those who remained from Kosovo,” he said. The guard was tall, young and had blonde hair. Unlike his colleagues, he seemed somewhat softer and his reactions were less extreme.

Filled with joy, we broke through and opened the door of the cell. When we went outside, we saw prisoners opening the doors of other cells. We saw them carrying the wounded and pulling out the dead from the ruins of the room that NATO had bombed.

In Block C, it was impossible for us to learn the names of the guards. We remembered the guards by their faces, walks and actions. For example, in our cell, we referred to one of them as sakica, meaning ax, because as soon as he started his shift, he would beat the prisoners from the first cell to the last. The harsh prison conditions even changed the behavior of the white-haired guard. One day, he forced us to bathe in cold water.

One very cold day, they told us to go get a haircut. It had been four months since our last one. A boy told us that since they are sending us to get our hair cut, we should try and line up so we got the one of the two hairdressers who was Albanian. They lined us up and sent us to the two barbers. I moved between the two lines in order to try and see which barber was Albanian. I decided that the Albanian barber was the one with darker features. But I was wrong.

That day, both barbers were Serbs. When he started to shave me, I thanked him and told him that he is doing well because they might be releasing us soon. As soon as I said those words, he hit me on the head with hair clippers and cursed me with all his might. After cutting our hair, they sent us to our cells, and told us to undress and clean up. We all undressed and approached the water. The guard with blonde hair turned on the cold water tap.

The struggle for freedom

In the morning of May 19, we opened the windows to see the fighting taking place in villages in the mountains near Istog. At that moment, we heard a loud noise near our prison.

NATO planes destroyed the prison’s heating system and directorate. A loud scream was heard. We became even increasingly curious and saw that the guards started to run toward the main door. After a few minutes, the NATO airstrike also hit our block. Unfortunately, the strike took the lives of three Albanian prisoners and injured many others. Those of us near the window were lucky enough to escape harm, but we urgently called for help. Our plea for help was confined to our cell. No one could hear us or help us.

We started to think about ways to open the door. Eventually, we broke apart a bed in the cell and began bashing the door with it. The walls started to crack. We paired up in twos to hit the door, as we couldn’t all hit it at once. We only weighed 50 or 60 kilos. One of our cellmates noticed through the window that other prisoners had started to come and help us by bringing tools. Filled with joy, we broke through and opened the door of the cell. When we went outside, we saw prisoners opening the doors of other cells. We saw them carrying the wounded and pulling out the dead from the ruins of the room that NATO had bombed.

We went out into the yard where most of the prisoners had gathered and headed for the exit. However, there the guards stepped in front of us, stopping us from going any further.

We were scared to the core. We didn’t know what to do. The situation inside the Dubrava prison had gotten out of control. That day felt endless, but somehow we managed to survive. The NATO forces did not bomb inside the prison facility that day. Even on May 20, it was quiet, and we managed to sleep in the undamaged wards. On May 21, NATO forces again attacked, targeting the blocks as well as the water supply network and probably the base of the telephone exchange. Almost all the buildings were damaged.

On the night of May 21 into May 22, we slept outside. We slept on the sports field, some with blankets and some without. That’s how the morning of May 22, 1999, dawned.

As I joined the line, prisoners fell to the ground

On that day, from the nearby observation points, we were ordered to line up to receive some important news. I was near another prisoner, Rasim Selmani. I told him to get some water in a bottle and clean his eyes. We had enough water because the main pipe had been hit by rockets, creating a pool. Rasim waited for me, we cleaned our eyes and we parted ways.

As I joined the line, I started seeing prisoners fall to the ground.

I raised my head to see what was happening. We were all numb and didn’t know where the bullets were coming from. Finally, I saw that grenades were being dropped from the observation points and guns were being fired. Whoever was in the first line was killed by the guards and other uniformed Serbs stationed around Dubrava prison.

Serbian soldiers and NATO detonations had damaged parts of the prison wall and some prisoners tried to escape. Over 20 prisoners died before one said he could get them out of prison. They acted on his idea and left.

We didn’t know where to hide. We were very exposed on the sports field, with gunfire coming from all directions. We started running to find temporary cover, moving from one building to another. During the escape, many of us were injured or killed by the bullets and bombs thrown at us by the Serbian guards and policemen. After a while, the shooting stopped and we started to come out from where we were hiding to look for our relatives and others. We also sought to provide medical assistance to the injured. Throughout the day, there was continuous gunfire from all sides of the prison.

We had nowhere to hide. A group of us tried to hide behind a pile of wood near the kitchen. A man right beside me was shot in the head by a sniper. Somehow, he was still alive and moving his arms and legs. At that moment, Bislim Zogaj, a medical student, came over and carefully gathered pieces of the man’s head.

It was getting dark and we didn’t know where to sleep or hide. The older prisoners, who were more experienced than us, had gathered the wounded and given them first aid to the best of their ability.

A group of prisoners made their way through the gunfire to the first aid room inside the prison. They took the medical supplies they found there and used them to save the lives of many injured people, though many others died due to a lack of treatment.

I was also wounded that day on the sports field and my friends bandaged my wound to stop the bleeding.

After it got dark, one of my neighbors informed me that they had prepared a place to sleep near the boiler in the basement. They had put mattresses there and according to him, it was safe. I went there, but I couldn’t find my two fellow villagers. After meeting one of them, I told him that we could sleep there because it seemed safe. But he told me that it was better to go to the kitchen in Block C, where 600 prisoners had gathered. I also found a friend of mine from university, Demir. He also told me to go to Block C.

Those who chose to sleep in the basement never saw the next morning. Serbian paramilitaries killed them in their sleep, except for two or three prisoners, who had managed to escape through wide heating pipes.

On the morning of May 23, we woke to the sound of bombs and gunfire as Serbian paramilitaries entered the prison. They all wore different colored armbands, some red, some green and some yellow. Even former Serbian prisoners, who were now armed, were shooting at us. Many prisoners were hiding in manholes in the prison yard. They had the worst luck, on this day, May 23, the army, police and paramilitaries opened the manhole lids and threw bombs inside, killing the hiding prisoners.

The attackers had completely surrounded the kitchen, firing shots at the walls and demanding through a megaphone that we get out. No one dared to come out first. A man in his fifties from Gjakova, who I later found out was Mehdi Ferizi, eventually came out with his hands behind his head. The attackers ordered Mehdi to warn us once more to come out. We emerged, our hands behind our heads, and lined up as instructed. In front of us stood the prison commander, along with some guards and some others in uniform, all with red armbands, all armed, all with their weapons pointed at us. At that moment we all thought that our lives were over — we were just waiting to be killed. We started to bless each other. There were also several barrels filled with gasoline close to us.

We were instructed to walk two by two toward the sports hall. They gathered us all in the hall, and some of us were asked to go and find those who were hiding as well as collecting the wounded. Throughout this whole process, a uniformed man was standing at the door with a bazooka aimed at us.

No one visited me until I was released from Niš prison on March 9, 2001. The only one who could have visited me was my mother, but because of the sadness she felt for me, she had lost her eyesight.

Once nearly all of us had been assembled, we were informed that due to insufficient conditions and a lack of security at the Dubrava Prison, the following morning, on May 24, we would be transferred to other prisons.

The next day, around 800 out of the total 960 prisoners left for Lipjan prison by bus. The wounded were placed in trucks. Over 130 dead bodies were left there. Near the main gate, we saw a pile of about 20 bodies and realized that they were from the group that had tried to escape a few days ago. We had mistakenly believed they had managed to escape.

A little more than two weeks later, in the early morning of June 11, 1999, we were transferred to prisons in Serbia. I, along with 600 other prisoners, was taken to Niš, while others were taken to Požarevac, Sremska Mitrovica, Leskovac, Vranje, Belgrade and elsewhere. Many of us were wounded but were too afraid to speak up, fearing they would kill us. We didn’t receive any medical care. It had been more than a month since we had washed. The last time was when guards, including the one with white hair, had forced us to take a cold shower. Lice became part of our daily lives.

On the way from Lipjan to Niš, we saw many civilian and military vehicles traveling to Serbia alongside us. We suspected that the war might be over, but we didn’t know for sure. When we arrived in Niš, we were informed in Serbian that the war in Kosovo had ended. However, it wasn’t until a month later, in July, when family visits began, that we began to understand exactly what was happening in Kosovo.

No one visited me until I was released from Niš prison on March 9, 2001. The only one who could have visited me was my mother, but because of the sadness she felt for me, she had lost her eyesight. She died aged 59 in January 2008.

To this day, I still carry a fragment of the Serbian bullet that struck me on May 22, 1999. When I was released from prison, I visited the doctor. After an x-ray, he told me that I wasn’t in good health and said, “we can remove it when you gain a little weight. The bullet is already surrounded with a layer of fat, so you won’t have any problems.” I never went back to the doctor about this issue. I will carry that bullet in my stomach as long as I live.

With that bullet still in my body, every May 22, I visit Dubrava prison together with my former cellmates, to honor the many other comrades we left there. We often meet with others who escaped death from Dubrava prison. We are already a big family — we go to weddings and funerals together.

Feature image: Sadik Zeqiri in his 20s. Illustration by Altin Ibrahimi / K2.0.

Sadik Zeqiri is director of the Epoka e Re newspaper. He graduated from the Faculty of Law at the University of Prishtina. Sadiku is a former KLA soldier and former political prisoner.

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