In 1982 he was sentenced by a Yugoslav court and spent three and a half years in prison for his support to the 1981 protests in Kosovo, although he was not charged with the use or advocacy of violence. In 1983 Amnesty International declared him a prisoner of conscience. On 28 September 1994, he was sentenced to five years in the Dubrava penitentiary for "endangering the constitutional order of Serbia". On 16 May 1999, the day he was to be released, he was last seen alive by three inmates. Rather than be released, he was transferred to the prison of Niš, and from then, he went missing.