Serbia charges eight policemen with Kosovo killing
Reuters, Tue Apr 25, 2006 09:40 AM ET
BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbia charged eight former policemen on Tuesday with the 1999 killing of 48 Kosovo Albanians, the first charges stemming from the discovery of hundreds of bodies in a mass grave near Belgrade.
All but one of the victims were from the same family, herded into a cafe in the town of Suva Reka during the 1998-99 war in Kosovo and shot dead. They included 13 children and a pregnant woman, Belgrade media reported.
"Serbia's war crimes prosecutor accuses them of killing 48 people, all but Abdulah Esljani members of the Berisha family, on March 26, 1999 in Suva Reka, in Kosovo," said a statement from the office of the Serbian war crimes prosecutor.
All those charged have been in custody since October and five were on active police duty when arrested. They include former Suva Reka police chief Radoje Repanovic and the former deputy commander of the Serbian gendarmerie, Radoslav Mitrovic.
The killings took place two days after NATO launched its 78-day bombing campaign to drive Serb forces from the southern Serbian province, accusing them of atrocities against Albanian civilians in a two-year war with separatist guerrillas.
The bodies were among more than 800 trucked north from Kosovo and buried in pits on a police training ground just outside Belgrade and in eastern Serbia.
Irrefutable proof of a bid to rid the scene of the crime of evidence of atrocities, they were unearthed in 2001 after reformists ousted former Serb strongman Slobodan Milosevic.
Tuesday's indictment was the first stemming from the gruesome discovery and comes as the United Nations is steering Serbia and the Kosovo Albanians through negotiations to decide the future of Kosovo, which has been run by the U.N. since 1999.
The United Nations hopes to complete the talks by the end of the year, with the 90-percent ethnic Albanian majority pushing for independence.
An estimated 10,000 Kosovo Albanians died in the war, and 800,000 more fled into neighboring Albania and Macedonia.
Belgrade currently faces a new end-of-month deadline to hand over top war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic to the United Nations war crimes tribunal or face a freeze on negotiations with the European Union on closer ties.
Serbia's special war crimes court, set up three years ago to show Serbia is ready to face up to its bloodstained path, has pledged to prosecute lower-level perpetrators the U.N. tribunal in The Hague does not have the time or resources to deal with.
BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbia charged eight former policemen on Tuesday with the 1999 killing of 48 Kosovo Albanians, the first charges stemming from the discovery of hundreds of bodies in a mass grave near Belgrade.
All but one of the victims were from the same family, herded into a cafe in the town of Suva Reka during the 1998-99 war in Kosovo and shot dead. They included 13 children and a pregnant woman, Belgrade media reported.
"Serbia's war crimes prosecutor accuses them of killing 48 people, all but Abdulah Esljani members of the Berisha family, on March 26, 1999 in Suva Reka, in Kosovo," said a statement from the office of the Serbian war crimes prosecutor.
All those charged have been in custody since October and five were on active police duty when arrested. They include former Suva Reka police chief Radoje Repanovic and the former deputy commander of the Serbian gendarmerie, Radoslav Mitrovic.
The killings took place two days after NATO launched its 78-day bombing campaign to drive Serb forces from the southern Serbian province, accusing them of atrocities against Albanian civilians in a two-year war with separatist guerrillas.
The bodies were among more than 800 trucked north from Kosovo and buried in pits on a police training ground just outside Belgrade and in eastern Serbia.
Irrefutable proof of a bid to rid the scene of the crime of evidence of atrocities, they were unearthed in 2001 after reformists ousted former Serb strongman Slobodan Milosevic.
Tuesday's indictment was the first stemming from the gruesome discovery and comes as the United Nations is steering Serbia and the Kosovo Albanians through negotiations to decide the future of Kosovo, which has been run by the U.N. since 1999.
The United Nations hopes to complete the talks by the end of the year, with the 90-percent ethnic Albanian majority pushing for independence.
An estimated 10,000 Kosovo Albanians died in the war, and 800,000 more fled into neighboring Albania and Macedonia.
Belgrade currently faces a new end-of-month deadline to hand over top war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic to the United Nations war crimes tribunal or face a freeze on negotiations with the European Union on closer ties.
Serbia's special war crimes court, set up three years ago to show Serbia is ready to face up to its bloodstained path, has pledged to prosecute lower-level perpetrators the U.N. tribunal in The Hague does not have the time or resources to deal with.
posted by Snezana @ 05:18
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