SERBIA: Serbia begins investigation into mass grave believed to contain Kosovo war victims

Record ID: 794978

  • Title: SERBIA: Serbia begins investigation into mass grave believed to contain Kosovo war victims
  • Date: 5th June 2007
  • Summary: SERB INVESTIGATIVE JUDGE TALKING TO JOURNALISTS (SOUNDBITE)(Serbian) SERB INVESTIGATIVE JUDGE MILAN DILPARIC SAYING: "Whether there are bodies buried, we need to confirm, if there are than we will stop the process until we have better conditions for further work. This means that for now our only goal is to make sure whether there are remains of people here."
  • Embargoed: 20th June 2007 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Serbia
  • Country: Serbia
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement,War / Fighting
  • Reuters ID: LVAB9WU3QRF85YQ2RKPDAS8FQB69
  • Story Text: Serbia has begun an investigation into a mass grave near the boundary with Kosovo which is believed to contain up to 500 ethnic Albanian victims of the Kosovo war. : The probe began on Tuesday (June 5) at an abandoned quarry in no-man's land between checkpoints on the two-kilometre (1.2-mile) wide boundary dividing Serbia from its southern province, now a United Nations (UN) protectorate whose future independence is being considered. The site was still unmarked, and journalists were led right over it. Officials would first mark the site and then do a test dig over four to five days, bringing in forensic specialists if they find human remains. The grave was first mentioned in testimonies given to UN authorities in 2004. Work on the site was due to start months ago, but was postponed because rain water had collected in large puddles that made digging impossible. "Whether there are bodies buried, we need to confirm, if there are than we will stop the process until we have better conditions for further work. This means that for now our only goal is to make sure whether there are remains of people here," investigative judge Milan Diplaric told reporters. A senior Serbian official told Reuters on Monday (June 4) that, based on data collected through remote sensing on the site, he expected "between 300 and 500 bodies" to be found. He said he believed the bodies were originally buried elsewhere, then dug up, loaded onto four trucks, and dumped at the quarry on June 3, 1999. That was a week before NATO called a halt to its 78-day bombing campaign over Serbia, after finally forcing strongman Slobodan Milosevic to pull his forces from the territory. The grave would be the largest discovered in Serbia since 2001, when more than 800 dead Albanians were found in in two sites in Serbia, to which the bodies had been trucked. The new investigation is a reminder of the rationale behind NATO's first "humanitarian" war in 1999, when 10,000 Albanians died and one million fled to Albania, Montenegro and Macedonia as Serb troops tried to crush an Albanian insurgency. More than 2,000 people are missing, the majority ethnic Albanians.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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