Visar was arrested and driven to police headquarters in Skopje, where–despite credentials clearly identifying him as a NEWSWEEK employee–he was questioned and abused over seven hours. Three plainclothes detectives, including one who called himself “the Terminator,” handcuffed the translator to a desk, Jakupi told me in Pristina last week. “Where was I during the war, they asked. I told them I was in Pristina. I was afraid to tell them I was in Albania, because Albania has KLA training camps. But after half an hour they found my Albanian refugee card. They started beating me. ‘Which brigade do you belong to?’ they asked. ‘Who is your commander? In what places did you fight?’ " The detectives showed him Visar’s ID card from the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe and interrogated him about his work driving for the human-rights group. “They said, ‘All OSCE people are spies. You’re a spy, too–and so is [OSCE head] William F—ing Walker’.”
The atmosphere soon turned uglier. Producing an Albanian flag–a souvenir Visar had picked up in Prizren during the triumphant arrival of NATO in June–one detective wrapped it tightly around the 20-year-old Kosovar’s face. Then, according to my translator, he was punched hard–repeatedly–in the back of the head. “They ordered me to hold a Coke can under my wrist, so that my blood would collect in it when they slit it with a medical scalpel.” A second detective showed him the souvenir snapshot of the KLA guerrilla. The detective sliced it with the scalpel, and, says Visar, demanded that he eat the fragments. As my translator choked down the picture, the Terminator declared: “No foreigners are here to protect you now.”
Macedonian police deny that Jakupi was mistreated. Ministry of the Interior spokesman Stevo Pendarovski claims that police discovered “100 shell casings” inside the NEWSWEEK car–a falsehood. He says that nobody struck or threatened Jakupi, that he repeatedly turned down offers to speak to a lawyer and make phone calls, and that he was released and driven to the frontier after three and a half hours. Jakupi claims he was detained for more than seven hours, and begged to be allowed to call NEWSWEEK–but was ignored. The final indignity, says Jakupi, came in the evening, when the Blace police seized 600 German marks as a “fine” for breaking Macedonian import laws–then stole $1,400 more. Recalls Jakupi: “They said, ‘If you tell anybody about what happened, you’ll be in deep trouble. We’ll find you anywhere that you are and kill you’.”
