The witnesses Nezir Gashi and Sejdi Gashi in in the trial for war crimes against Milorad Gjokovic, have confessed about the detention and mistreatment caused during 1999 by the Serbian paramilitaries . They said that when they were sent to the police station, they saw the accused Djokovic in uniform and armed.
The witness Nezir Gashi stated that he was detained by the Serbian police on May 7, 8 and 9, 1999.
According to him, there were 44 people, while after the third night when they were sent to another house, 12 or 13 people remained.
“They took us in the most brutal way… they even took us to a private house”, added Gashi.
In that house, the witness says that they kept them until the next evening, beating them, and then sent them to Peja prison.
“They left us there that night until the next day, they took us with some kind of ‘Pick-up’, they put us in carts and mistreated us, they took us to prison in Peja, hard and tied. They have also attacked us, they have left us, they have left us. “Approximately 29-30 days, per night there is abuse,” said the witness.
The witness said that he had seen the accused Gjokovic at the police station, when the Serbian army was sending Gashi together with other people there (to the police station).
He says that he had known the accused even before the war, since he “had worked in the country office” in Ozdrim, but he says that he had neither good nor bad relations with him.
In addition, the witness Sejdi Gashi also testified about May 7, 1999, on which day he says they were surrounded by Serbian paramilitaries.
“On May 7, we were surrounded by our spies, they shot us with machine guns,” said the witness Gashi.
He said that they had left the house and gone to Nezir Gashi’s house, where the Serbian army had also entered and separated the family members.
“We went to Neziri’s house in the room, the soldiers broke the door and shot us out and separated the women from the men, women were told right in Albania. They controlled us, they took us,” added the witness.
The witness said that the men then sent them to a store after separating them from other family members, and then sent them to the police station in Peja, where he saw the accused Gjokovic.
This witness also said that he knew the accused even before the war.
Otherwise, the witness Ferat Morina was expected to be heard in this session, but the defenders of the accused Gjoković, lawyers Mumo Vukotić and Vasilie Arsić, requested that the session be interrupted on the grounds that they had an unforeseeable obligation.
This request was not opposed by prosecutor Ilir Morina, while the chairman of the trial panel Valon Kurtaj approved it.
According to the indictment drawn up on June 23, 2023, Milorad Gjokovic is accused that in the years 1998-1999, in the village of Ozdrim – Municipality of Peja and in the surrounding villages of the region of Peja, as a member of the Serbian police and military forces, he applied the measures of murder, raid , beating, mistreatment, arrest, torture, cruel and inhumane treatment, keeping in slavery conditions, expulsion and deportation of dozens of Albanian civilians. He is also accused of looting, burning and destroying the houses of the civilian population of Albanian nationality. Oath of Justice.