Ten years after the Kosovo War, Michael Montgomery returns to the Balkans for the BBC to investigate “the other side of the war”—Serbs allegedly kidnapped and killed by ethnic Albanians. In a series of video journals for CIR, Montgomery takes viewers behind the story.

Part 1: The Mystery House | Sources pinpoint a house in central Albania where Serb captives were allegedly tortured and killed. Rumor has it their organs were stolen, as well.

YouTube video

Part 2: The Severed Heads | Stories about a KLA fighter who beheaded two Serb prisoners lead Montgomery to Tropoje, Albania.

YouTube video

Part 3: The KLA Base | A source leads Montgomery to an abandoned KLA base in Albania where he says many prisoners were killed.

YouTube video

Additional reporting by field producer Jovo Martinovic
+ Update: “Report alleges organ harvesting ring linked to Kosovo officials”
+ Listen to Michael Montgomery’s BBC radio documentary and read more reporting on Kosovo: “Horrors of KLA prison camps revealed”
+ Read a report by Altin Raxhimi, Montgomery’s reporting partner from the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network: “Kosovo Liberation Army Ran Torture Camps in Albania”

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Carrie Ching is an award-winning, independent multimedia journalist and producer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. For six years, she led digital storytelling projects at the Center for Investigative Reporting as senior multimedia producer. Her multimedia reports have been featured by NPR.org, The Huffington Post, Rolling Stone, Grist, Time.com, Fast Company, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, KQED, PBS NewsHour, Salon.com, Mother Jones, Public Radio International, Poynter, Columbia Journalism Review and many other publications. Her specialty is crafting digital narratives and exploring ways to use video, audio, photography, animation and interactive graphics to push the boundaries of storytelling on the Web, tablets and mobile. Her work has been honored with awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, Investigative Reporters and Editors, Best of the West, the Online News Association, Scripps Howard, The Gracies, and was part of the entry in a Pulitzer-finalist project. Prior to her time at CIR she was a magazine and book editor, video journalist, newspaper reporter and TV comedy scriptwriter. She was on the 2010 Eddie Adams Workshop faculty as a multimedia producer working with MediaStorm to teach digital storytelling techniques to photojournalists. She completed a master’s degree in journalism at UC Berkeley in 2005.

Michael Montgomery is a senior reporter and producer for Reveal. He has led collaborations with the Associated Press, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Frontline, KQED and others.

Previously, Montgomery was a senior reporter at American Public Media, a special correspondent for the BBC and an associate producer with CBS News. He began his career in eastern Europe, covering the fall of communism and wars in former Yugoslavia for the Daily Telegraph and Los Angeles Times. His investigations into human rights abuses in the Balkans led to the arrest and conviction of Serbian and Albanian paramilitaries and creation of a new war crimes court based in The Hague. Montgomery’s honors include Murrow, Peabody, IRE, duPont, Third Coast and Overseas Press Club awards. He is based in Reveal’s Emeryville, California, office.

Brian Pollack is a video director/producer whose work has appeared on CBS 5 Investigates in San Francisco, National Geographic, Triage Entertainment, and in independent film. In 2008, he filmed the 2nd Battalion, 24th Marines putting into practice their Arabic language and culture skills for a documentary entitled “Armed Ambassadors”. Reporting on environmental law in Anhui, China he met with residents along the Guo river where toxins have led to widespread fish death. He has won awards for his documentary work, radio reporting in Alaska, and public service announcements. In 2008, he completed a master's degree at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.