Now, the nerve center of an agency that for a decade was viewed with fear and suspicion by most of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians has become part provincial archive, part Home Depot. There are surveillance photos and logs, orders for officers to shadow suspected political opponents and a list of political prisoners that dates back to 1945. Whether or not there's evidence of anything sinister, the place is a treasure-trove for the curious. The middle floors of the eight-story structure imploded, leaving deep craters between the third and fifth floors. The walls are covered in soot from a fire that engulfed several floors.
Documents are everywhere, three feet high in places, covering several hundred square feet.
Every window is gone. Left unguarded, the building is a playground for children, who run up and down a heavily damaged interior staircase. They throw documents out the window, which flutter in the wind and land at the feet of NATO troops walking below. The elder Gashi said he stumbled onto some documents relating to the imprisonment of men he knew were innocent of the political crimes they committed. But after flipping through the pages, he tossed them aside.