Amina Nuraj raises suspicions of surveillance after search at Serbian border

A luggage search during a journey from Mitrovica to Novi Pazar has heightened Amina Nuraj’s suspicions that she and her husband may be followed by people linked to Serbian structures in Kosovo. The former “Albanian Coalition” candidate for a seat in Serbia’s parliament described the incident in a Facebook post.

According to her account, the incident happened the day before she published the post. Nuraj had fallen asleep on the bus, and the driver woke her to say that police wanted her to open her suitcase.

At first, she thought officers from the Kosovo Police were calling her. Because she had many friends in the police at the border, and they had just crossed the Kosovo border and handed over their documents, she thought one of them might be playing a joke on her.

Still half-asleep, Nuraj began speaking loudly to them in Albanian, believing it was someone she knew. The driver, however, told her to be quiet, explaining that they were at the Serbian border.

Nuraj says she immediately understood what kind of situation she was facing. She was not afraid, she says, because experiences like this had unfortunately become familiar to her.

Her main question is how Serbian police had singled out her luggage from the 30 suitcases belonging to the bus’s 30 passengers. She asked both drivers whether they had pointed out her suitcase to the officers, but, according to her account, both swore they had given no information.

During the search, one of the officers stood behind her. Nuraj says she politely told him that standing behind a woman in that way was not appropriate conduct for a police officer. She asked him to show more professionalism and stand in front of her.

The journey continued only after police had thoroughly searched every part of the suitcase.

Even after they left, Nuraj says she still had no answer to how her luggage had been identified among the other 29 suitcases. She notes that the suitcases had no first or last names on them that would have made it possible to tell them apart.

It is this circumstance, Nuraj says, that makes her suspect people who cooperate with Serbian structures in Kosovo may be watching her and her husband, perhaps from the moment they leave their home.

She stresses that she is not making accusations without evidence, but says coincidences of this kind raise serious questions. After 14 years of involvement in national activities, Nuraj says she has previously experienced episodes that led her to suspect someone was taking an excessive interest in her every move.