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Mehmet BytyqiYlli aged 24, Agron aged 23, and Mehmet aged 21 were American citizens born in Illinois, all brothers of Albanian origin who worked with their father as painters and made pizzas on Long Island . The family had returned to Prizren in Kosova from America in 1979 but after divorcing, their father returned to the US where the brothers rejoined him, one at a time when each turned seventeen. When the Serbs began the wholesale destruction of property and slaughter of civilians in Kosova their mother was ethnically cleansed from her home and so the brothers volunteered to return and fight. They joined the Atlantic Brigade of 400 Albanian Americans who became part of the UCK, flying out of New York on the Brigadeﾒs charter flight in Spring 1999. When they arrived in Albania they asked to serve together but were told by their leaders that they had to fight separately. Other members of the Brigade said the brothers were enthusiastic volunteers. Ylli was quiet, Agron outgoing and boisterous, Mehmet a hard worker. Like most of the Brigade they trained but did no fighting and eventually escorted their mother back into Kosova immediately after NATO troops went in.Two weeks later, they informed a fourth brother, Fatos, they were going to Pristina to visit some comrades from the Atlantic Brigade. They headed north in a VW Golf on 26th June, seventeen days after the end of NATOﾒs bombing campaign. A gypsy later told investigators that the brothers offered him and two other gypsies a ride out of Prizren and into southern Serbia, but their brother Fatos insists they never discussed going to Serbia. They left without their US passports but were wearing UCK medallions. They were apparently picked up just inside Serbia at Merdare by local police. The gypsies were allowed on but the brothers were arrested for illegally crossing the ﾓborder,ﾔ even though Kosova is regarded by the Serbs as part of their own country and recognised as such internationally. A local judge sentenced them to fifteen days in gaol and the following day they were taken to Prokuplje prison. Four days before the end of their sentence, plainclothes police came to the prison and drove the brothers away in a car. They were never seen again. They were missing for two years until 7th July 2001 when their bodies were discovered by Serb police with thirteen other ethnic Albanians in a mass grave at a forest near Petrovo Selo. A second mass grave nearby contained 59 bodies. They had had their hands tied with wire, their heads covered by black hoods. They were dressed in civilian clothes. Shot at close range, their bodies were dumped into a pit. They were the last of the international volunteers to die in the wars of Slobodan Milosevic. An Albanian lawyer representing the family in Pristina said; ﾓThey were killed because they were American citizens. There were people in that prison who were in UCK and they were eventually released. This is the only case where someone was arrested, taken to court, tried, released out of the prison and then executed.ﾔ The American Embassy in Belgrade announced at the end of February 2002 that their bodies, recovered by war crimes investigators, would be returned to the United States via Pristina.
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