On March 27, 1999, at eight in the morning, two Yugoslav military planes struck the neighborhood where we were sheltering with eight cluster bombs, resulting in the martyrdom of a 16-year-old boy and injuries to eight others. On the same day, at 12:00 PM, Serbian media reported the destruction of the Radio Kosova e Lirë broadcasting base, while we aired our program at 4:00 PM, the scheduled time for broadcasting throughout the war. At that time, the Serbian war criminal [Vojislav] Šešelj and several Yugoslav army commanders stated in the media that they would soon have their morning coffee in Berisha, where they also planned to build a football stadium.
In order to survive under conditions of continuous attack, at the beginning of April 1999, we built a well-fortified bunker on a mountain peak, and from the bunker, we broadcasted the daily program, up to 1 hour and 30 minutes per day, during the last three months of the war. The area near the bunker was hit numerous times by enemy fire but was not destroyed.
Ahmet Qeriqi was born in 1946 in Krojmir, Municipality of Lipjan. He graduated from the Faculty of Albanian Language and Literature in 1973. In 1965, he was sentenced to two months in prison for political activity, a second time in 1975 for two months. A third time in 1980 for 18 months, and finally in 1982, he was sentenced to eight years in prison for nationalist and irredentist activities. Due to his political activities, Mr. Qeriqi was denied the right to employment and therefore took up woodworking. He is one of the founders of Radio Kosova e Lirë during the war in Kosovo.