“I was arrested and tortured,” says Granit Xhaka’s father, telling his harrowing life story
Granit Xhaka has made no secret of his connection to Kosovo and as the 29-year-old prepares to lead one country against the other he would rather have played for, his father Ragip has opened up about his time during Kosovo War.
The story of Ragip, one of three brothers, begins in Pristina, former Yugoslavia, in a normal middle-class family.
However, by the time he was 23, his life had changed forever when he was arrested after taking part in a series of student protests.
“I fell asleep in my bed at home at five in the morning,” said Xhaka senr.
“The police officers climbed over the walls of my parents’ house. My mother asked what they want. “Your son,” they answered and stormed my room.
“I got a terrible shock, it was a shock for life. I was given a second to put on pants and a sweater. Then they handcuffed me, put me in the van and took me to jail.
“They came up with a reason why we were violent. But we were just students who wanted to demonstrate peacefully. Then I was put in a cell with four other men.
“[The cell was] Almost four by two meters including a free-standing toilet for all five. We were there 23 hours and 50 minutes a day. We had ten minutes of yard exercise, but because of prison rules, we weren’t even allowed to look at the sky.”
To force a confession, Xhaka says: “I was tortured every other day for six months. I was beaten on my palms, on the soles of my feet, on my legs, on my arms, on my upper body. With police batons, with batons.
“I had done nothing but demonstrate. I was innocent
“And I felt strong. I thought they should hit me again. But of course the fear that they would kill me was always there. It was heard from other inmates that they had been tortured to death.
“I went to court. There I testified that we are beaten and tortured all the time. Nobody cared, it was all corrupt. I was sentenced to three years in prison.”
Read the full interview with Ragip Xhaka here.