One of the most serious stagings during the war to attack the image of the KLA was the lime crematorium in Kleçka.
In the official communique, Serbia had claimed that 22 Serbs had been killed and then burned in the lime kiln. Likewise, Serbia also mentioned two Albanians killed in 1998, where it was finally revealed that one committed suicide in 1981, while the other was alive and died in 2000.
The Humanitarian Law Fund had published a legal analysis of the trial of the Mazreku brothers. In their analysis, based on the course of the judicial process, it was concluded that there was no evidence for their punishment, but many shocking details were given as to how the whole case was staged, otherwise known as the “lime crematorium in Kleçka”.
How did the staging of the case happen?
Two young Albanians, the Mazreku brothers, presented as “KLA soldiers”, were arrested and “admitted” that together with some other soldiers, they had lined up several dozen Serbs and shot them. The bodies were then thrown into the oven and had to disappear in quicklime.
It would later be learned that the Mazreku brothers had been arrested on August 2, 1998, almost a month before that revelation of their “crime” in Kleçka. They appeared tied up on camera on August 27, 1998. After being jailed in Serbia, they were finally released in March 2002. It was all a hoax, which later turned out to be drugged when they went on camera to testified and allegedly admitted to the crimes of the KLA. After their release from the Serbian prison, they admitted that all their statements were given after beatings and brutal torture by the Serbian forces.
The official indictment against the Mazreku brothers claimed that they had admitted to killing two Albanians: Agim Thaqi and Faik Bitiq. The defense managed to prove that Agim Thaqi committed suicide in 1981 and was not killed in 1998, as claimed by the Serbian state apparatus. Serbia, through its structures, had also manipulated the corpses, trying to stage this case, but after discovering that Agim Thaqi had died in 1981, the prosecution was in a hurry to remove him from the indictment.
Mazrek had confessed to abducting a man who committed suicide long before he “abducted” him and another who died of natural causes in 2000, almost two years later. All these statements were made after the extreme torture they had experienced.
The Mazreku brothers were eventually released. After their release, they admitted that their statements were given after the extreme torture they experienced at the hands of Serbian forces.
Luan Mazreku had told in detail to the Court in Serbia how he was drugged with two injections to learn by heart what the security officials of the Serbian state said, Demokracia.com reports.
Statement of Luan Mazrek before the Court
When they arrested us, they beat us with sticks at night. They took us from Malisheva to Gllogoc, where we were beaten by policemen, soldiers, and even civilians. We stayed there for about two hours and then they sent us to Pristina. They beat us until the police inspectors came. There we parted and never saw each other again. Two days later, they gave me some papers and made me sign them, promising to let me go if I did. I signed the papers with folded hands. Then they gave me a typewritten letter and told me I had to memorize what it said. I read the text and saw that it was the same manipulated thing and refused to learn it. They gave me two injections to learn the text. They continued to beat me and threaten to kill me; they cut off my left ear. After this torture, I agreed to learn the text they had given me. The next day, they took me and Bekim to Klečka, where they forced me to say the text I had learned in front of the cameras with beatings and threats.
