Kurti in New York: The ideal of the Bytyqi brothers, a guide to moving forward

Acting Prime Minister Albi Kurti has paid homage at the cemeteries of the Bytyqi brothers, Ylli, Agron and Mehmeti, in New York.

In a statement from the Prime Minister's Office on Saturday evening, Kurti was quoted as saying that the ideal of the brothers who were killed 26 years ago by Serbian forces is a guide for moving forward.

"By remembering and commemorating the martyrs of the nation, in this case the Bytyqi brothers, we remind ourselves of how high the price we paid for the freedom we enjoy and the people we have, but at the same time their ideal serves as a guide for us to move forward, in order to achieve what they wanted and for which they sacrificed. We will remember Ylli, Agron and Mehmet forever and our generation has a duty to ensure that the generations after us do the same," he said.

The Bytyqi brothers were fighters of the Kosovo Liberation Army, members of the “Atlantic” volunteer unit. On June 23, 1999, a few days after the liberation of Kosovo, the three Albanian brothers had undertaken a very humane initiative: to escort a Roma family from Prizren to the border with Serbia, who were heading towards Kraljevo. During this journey, the three of them inadvertently crossed the border, for which they were arrested by the Serbian police and sentenced by the Court for Minor Offenses in Prokuplje to 15 days in prison. When they were finishing their sentence, the three Bytyqi brothers were sent to a Serbian police training base, where they were shot in the head and their traces disappeared. Their bodies were found in 2001, in a mass grave in Petrovo Sello, near the town of Kladovo, along with other Albanians killed by Serbian forces during the war in Kosovo.

In October 2019 and July 2022, the House of Representatives of the US Congress adopted two resolutions, through which the US requested concrete actions from Serbia and cooperation with international justice to bring to justice the persons involved in this crime.