In Kosovo, War Prisoners Campaign to Save Their Old Jail

He recalls that it was a warm evening when the detainees were brought to the prison in the village of Gurrakoc/Djurakovac, which was already overcrowded with inmates. The violent abuse started immediately.

"I remember when we gathered here and started to go in with our hands behind our heads. They beat us one after the other. Many of us were bleeding," Kabashi told BIRN in the yard of the now-abandoned prison.

"We stayed here for four days and it was only on the fourth day they brought us some bread. Then they sent us to the prison in Peja," he added.

At that point, Yugoslavia was under NATO bombardment, as the Western military alliance tried to make Slobodan Milosevic to pull his troops and police out of Kosovo. During the 78-day bombing campaign, Milosevic's forces stepped up their repression of Kosovo Albanians, with a series of massacres and mass expulsions.

On June 10, 1999, a day after the Milosevic regime signed an agreement with NATO to withdraw from Kosovo, Kabashi and other detainees were sent to Serbia, firstly to a prison in the southern city of Leskovac then to another in Zajecar, before finally being released.

The prison in Gurrakoc/Djurakovac was no longer used by Serbian forces, and for more than two decades afterwards, the building was used as a shelter for homeless families, mostly Roma people.

The inside of the abandoned prison is now derelict and flooded, and last November, the Istog/Istok municipality decided to knock it down.

But Kabashi and some other former prisoners firmly oppose the decision to demolish it, and are calling for the building to be turned into a kind of museum that will serve as a "place of collective memory".

So far, more than 1,500 people have signed his petition...