Milazim Thaci survived unscathed, hidden beneath the bodies of those who could not escape the bullets.
On March 28, 1999, four days into a NATO air war to drive Serbian forces from Kosovo, he was among a group of 33 men led away for execution in the Drenica Valley, the heartland of the guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA.
He recalled the Serbian policemen and soldiers taunting them: “Where’s Thaci? Where’s NATO?”
By ‘Thaci’ they meant Hashim Thaci, one of the KLA’s top leaders. Milazim knew him better as his younger cousin, a shy, lanky boy always respectful of his elders. “He was a boy of few words,” Milazim told BIRN in his home in Buroje, a village in the Skenderaj/Srbica district.
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