Old Original bar, after second paintin in white in 2.000!

After the arrest of a man in Kosovo on war crimes charges this month, the BBC’s Nick Thorpe visits Albania, which is at the centre of the EU-led investigation into torture and murder.

Boy on the beach at Durres, Albania
Durres is a popular holiday spot, but is implicated in a dark chapter of history

The Hotel Drenica still graces the sea-front in Durres, on Albania’s Adriatic coast - one of a long line of hotels and restaurants waiting for the summer influx of tourists.

Children take their first dip of the season in the warming sea, while their parents sip coffee and watch them from the terraces, and boys play football on the sand.

Ties to neighbouring Kosovo run deep. Tens of thousands of refugees found shelter here during the war, and local people are proud of their role in helping their ethnic-Albanian brethren in their hour of need.

Many bars incorporate Kosovo in their names. In the 1998-99 conflict, the Hotel Drenica was at the centre of everything - it was the local headquarters of the Kosovo Liberation Army.

There is still an engraving on a red marble block at the back of the hotel, of a soldier and the initials UCK - the KLA.

But the arrest of Sabit Geci in Pristina on 6 May, and an ongoing investigation by the War Crimes Unit of Eulex - the European Union Law and Justice Mission in Kosovo - look set to show the role of Durres in a different light.

We panicked every time they opened the door, wondering who they were going to pick on next
Former prisoner, Kukes detention centre

Mr Geci, 51, stands accused of the torture and killing of ethnic Albanian prisoners of the KLA at a detention facility within a KLA base in the north-east Albanian town of Kukes in 1999. According to investigators, some of the 40 people who were mistreated in Kukes were detained by the KLA in Durres.

There were also Serb prisoners kept in Kukes - apparently kidnapped and smuggled in from across the border, and kept in a separate room.

Lawyers for Mr Geci say he denies all charges, and was receiving medical treatment in Slovenia during the period mentioned by Eulex, April-June 1999.

Interrogated

As Serb military and paramilitary forces swept through Kosovo in the spring of 1999, forcing 800,000 Kosovo Albanians from their homes, and killing more than 10,000, many refugees found shelter in Albania.

Ethnic Albanian refugees from Kosovo at a camp in Kukes, Albania
Many Kosovan refugees ended up in a refugee camp in Kukes, Albania

Some stayed in makeshift refugee camps near the border. Others were redistributed around the country, and an out-of-season tourist resort like Durres proved very useful.

But the KLA was curious about some of the new arrivals. Why were young men of military age not joining their ranks in the desperate conflict with the Serbs? Had some collaborated with the Serbs in the past? Did some belong to rival Albanian political and military factions? Had some even been sent as spies for the Serbs, to uncover KLA supply routes for men and guns into the country?

In Durres, the interrogations took place in the Hotel Drenica.

“Bad things happened here,” said a man on the beach at Durres, nodding in the direction of the Hotel Drenica, “but I am not willing to talk about them.”

Buses bedecked with red and black Albanian flags took the willing - and less willing - recruits back to the front.

Some men were taken prisoner and held in terrible conditions in detention facilities inside KLA camps. The one at Kukes, in a disused factory, was among the worst. A BBC investigation last year contacted former inmates.

“We panicked every time they opened the door, wondering who they were going to pick on next,” one survivor of the Kukes camp told us. …………….

Like many local venues, the Hotel Drenica is proud of its links to Kosovo
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8687186.stm

with video http://www.albania.de/alb/index.php?p=2329