Synopsis

For the purpose of security and the safety of people still living in the former Yugoslavia the names of all persons have been changed. Only the names of the two American UN Peacekeepers remain the same. They are both happy to corroborate Laura’s story.

Laura was just eighteen years old when she was forced to flee her family home in Veliki Trnovac, in Serbia, twenty kilometres from the border with Kosovo at the height of the former Yugoslavia conflict. Laura’s family were Albanian speaking Muslims from a small village in the mountains and it seemed the Serb Army were determined to wipe such people from the face of the earth. The young Muslim girls and women feared a fate far worse than death, as it was common knowledge that Serb soldiers were ethnically cleansing the people through systematic rape of their women. Some were even taken to rape camps where their pregnancies were overseen and monitored and babies delivered by trained doctors and midwives. The children were baptised as Christian Serbs justifying the actions of the soldiers some nine months prior.

Laura’s father thought she would be safe in Pristina, the capital city of Kosovo, after NATO troops had orchestrated a ceasefire of sorts and declared the city a UN safe area. Over the course of several months they had driven the Serb Army back to the borders. What Laura and her father didn’t realise as she made her way over the mountains to the city, was that Kosovo, and in particular Pristina was, according to Louise Arbour, the leading war crime prosecutor - “One vast crime scene.”

Laura was kidnapped by Azem Kupi, a self-professed Kosovo Liberation Army freedom fighter, a commander known as ‘The Chief.’ In reality he was nothing more than a gangster, more interested in lining his own pockets than any so called cause he paraded behind. Kupi’s gang accused her of being ironically, a Serb spy, the very people she had tried to escape from. Taken in broad daylight from the busy streets of Pristina she was delivered to Kupi and systematically abused, physically, mentally and sexually for many hours. When Kupi realized the answers to his questions were always the same he seemingly tired of her and ordered his guards to “Rape the Serb bitch” while he looked on with amusement.

During the attempted rape one of the guards called Laura a Serb whore to which she screamed - “I’m nobody’s whore, I’m a virgin.” Almost immediately Kupi ordered the attack to stop realizing that he had in fact stumbled upon a rather precious cargo. Driven back to an apartment block in Pristina, Kupi would disclose in due course that Laura would be sold to an Arab Sheik for up to one hundred thousand US Dollars. It seemed that a beautiful eighteen year old virgin was a commodity well worth paying a premium for.

Laura found herself confined within the gates of hell, kept prisoner for some weeks and forced to watch Kupi’s sex games with his girlfriend while his guards brought back countless girls who were brutally raped in front of her.

Eventually the deal with the Sheik was finalised and Kupi and his gang drove Laura to the border with Albania. During the journey Kupi disclosed that the Sheik only wanted Laura for a matter of weeks and then she would be returned. Kupi said that she would then be killed and her heart and liver would be removed and sold on to a foreign buyer. This, it seemed, was Kupi’s main income during the conflict bringing him up to $40,000 per organ making him a very rich and powerful man.

Fortunately for Laura, a NATO roadblock at the Albania border prevented the transaction and they were forced to return to Pristina. Incredibly, Laura managed to escape and made it back to the safety of the American troops in the city and once there insisted she should be repatriated back to Veliki Trnovac. The UN troops escorted her to the bus station in Pristina where she climbed aboard an armed and guarded bus to Veliki Trnovac and once there walked the short distance to her parents’ home believing her nightmare to be over.

Within minutes of arriving home, a car load of Serb soldiers drove into the garden and she was kidnapped for the second time, accused of being a Kosovan spy and interrogated all over again. The abuse and torture (including being branded with a cattle iron) was unimaginable and she lapsed in and out of consciousness several times. After her interrogation she was transferred to a small cell where she could not fully stand and described it as something resembling the movie Midnight Express. She would be kept in that hellhole for six months. Her father eventually found out where she was being held and persuaded her captors to let her out for one night explaining her mother was gravely ill and not expected to last the night.

After agreeing a $40,000 bail payment Laura was released but her father had no intention of returning her to her tormentors and instead had arranged to smuggle her through to England. Eventually she made it to London as an asylum seeker and eventually gained British Citizenship.

Laura is one of the few people alive who managed to escape Azem Kupi’s clutches. Every other captive she has come across or found out information about is dead, hunted down and eliminated by Kupi’s henchmen so that they could not give incriminating evidence against him.