Ragip Xhaka, Father of the former Gladbach and today’s Arsenal star Granit Xhaka, has given an interview insights into his moving life story and reported by a multi-year prison stay.
In 1986 at the age of 23, he participated in a demonstration in his hometown Pristina in the then Yugoslavia, Ragip Xhaka described “Look”: “We students were not satisfied with the communist leadership, we demonstrated for better education, for better beds, for better education Better food – in short for a better life. They were peaceful demonstrations that we were lowered from the beginning from the police. They hit us until we were only on the ground. “
Three months later he was suddenly arrested, so Xhaka, whose second son Taulant is also a football professional at FC Basel. “I fell asleep at five at home in my bed. The policemen climbed over the walls of my parents’ house. My mother asked what they want. ‘Her son’, they answered, and stormed my room,” said Ragip Xhaka, who is a “shock for life “spoke.
“One gave me a second time to attract a pant and a sweater. Then they put me in handcuffs, grabbed me in the box carriage and brought me to jail,” says Xhaka. He was justified by his imprisonment that he would “rebel against the state,” he remembered.
“I was tortured, six months”
23 hours and 50 minutes a day, he spent in a tiny cell with four other men together, says Xhaka. “Ten minutes we had yardgang, but were not allowed to look at the sky because of prison rules.”
But not enough: “I was tortured, six months, every other day. You hit my palms, on the suits, on the legs, on the arms, on the upper body. With police sticks, with punchsticks,” Reported Xhaka, “to force a confession”.
Then he came to court. “There I said that we were beaten and tortured all the time. Nobody interested that everything was corrupt. I was sentenced to three years in prison.”
“I knew no discharge date or something”
Because finally Amnesty internationally used for him, he came up after three and a half years, “I knew no discharge or so. You never knew what exactly comes. At once the director called me and said,” You’re free, you can go. ‘ You turned to the prison door, I was puzzled, “said Xhaka Sr.
After his release, he moved together with his wife in Switzerland. In 1991 then son Taulant was born, 1992 Granit Xhaka was born.
The midfield strategist is now captain of the Swiss national team. For Gladbach Xhaka graduated between 2012 and 2016 140 competitive games. Then he changed for 45 million euros to the FC Arsenal.
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