Witness Says Kosovo Massacre Unplanned

Serb interior ministry and paramilitaries responsible for Meja deaths, says prosecution witness.

By Caroline Tosh in The Hague (TU No 464, 18-Aug-06) A prosecution witness told the trial of six Serbian and military officials charged with war crimes in Kosovo that the Yugoslav military did not intend to kill hundreds of people during their 1999 operation in the village of Meja.

Meja features in the indictment against former Serbian president Milan Milutinovic, former deputy prime minister of Yugoslavia Nikola Sainovic, former chief of staff Dragoljub Ojdanic, and police and army generals Sreten Lukic, Nebojsa Pavkovic and Vladimir Lazarevic.

They are all charged in connection with crimes allegedly committed in Kosovo in 1999 by forces under their command.

Among other allegations, the indictment says that Kosovo Albanian men from Meja were separated from a mass of fleeing villagers and summarily executed. Survivors are said to have been forced to join convoys crossing into Albania.

Prosecution witness Nik Peraj, a former Yugoslav army,VJ, captain said Operation Meja was run by territorial and civil defence troops and paramilitaries acting together with Serbian interior ministry, MUP, forces.

But he insists the April 27 operation went wrong and the deaths of more than 300 ethnic Albanians were unplanned.

“I don’t think it was the army’s purpose for so many people to be killed,” said Peraj. “The army was misused by the MUP and paramilitary forces [during the campaign in the Djakovica municipality],” he added.

However, the lawyer for Sreten Lukic, the head of the MUP at the time, denied claims by Peraj that the interior ministry was behind the massacre.

“The territorial defence, the civil defence and the paramilitaries are not part of the ministry of the interior, and the ministry of the interior of Serbia cannot control in any way any one of these organisations,” said Branko Lukic.

Peraj testified it was the paramilitary groups that “committed the worst crimes in Djakovica” including burning houses, looting and rape. He denied these groups were acting under the control of the Yugoslav army. “Rape was not a policy or part of any kind of plan,” he said.

Peraj, a captain in the Djakovica artillery and rocket brigade of the VJ at the time of the attack, said that he thought the aim of the operation was the expulsion of the population. “If they hadn’t have burnt down houses, I would have thought that the population was being expelled on a temporary basis,” he said.

Tomislav Visnjic, Ojdanic’s lawyer, said the operation was launched as part of a broader campaign to defend the border from an attack by the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA. Ojdanic was chief of the general staff of the VJ at the time.

Peraj, who also testified in 2002 at the trial of late Slobodan Milosevic, this week directly implicated General Vladimir Lazarevic, saying he was in command of Operation Meja.

Peraj also claimed to have seen army major Zdravko Vinter compile a report after the massacre in Meja and Korenica, which he was to send to the VJ Pristina Corps. "I saw him explicitly writing that on April 27, in the region of Meja, 68 terrorists were liquidated, while in Korenica 74 terrorists were liquidated. This is what he wrote,” said Peraj

Lazarevic’s lawyer Mihailo Bakrac asked Peraj why he had not said until this week that the general had been in command of this operation.

Peraj replied at first that he had never been asked who was in command. He then changed his story and went on to claim that he previously mentioned it to an Office of The Prosecutor representative.

The defence went on to argue that on April 27 and 28, Lazarevic was not in Djakovica, but in Pristina where he had been celebrating a national holiday.

Bakrac tried to undermine Peraj’s credibility by asking him about an incident in which he apparently leaked information to the KLA about a planned VJ ambush. Peraj confirmed that he passed on this information to the KLA through his brother in law.

This man was informing the KLA during the war - see bolded sentenced below - he admitted it, then they went into closed session (the relative he informed appears to have been either KLA or passed the info to them from Nik, and also the KLA guy worked for the prosecution as a translator. Hmmm.) Do you know much about his origins/ethnic background? I know there are a lot of Albanians from Montenegro with part Serbian/Montenegrin or mixed-type names. What do you make out of the name Nik Peraj? It doesn't seem typical Serbian.

DEFENSE ACCUSES WITNESS OF SPYING FOR KLA
THE HAGUE, 15.08.2006
Defense counsel for the three military officials from Serbia charged with the crimes in Kosovo are trying to challenge the credibility of Nik Peraj, claiming that as captain 1st class of the Yugoslav Army he was furnishing confidential information to the Kosovo Liberation Army
On 27 April 1999, General Vladimir Lazarevic was in Pristina celebrating the FRY Statehood Day, not in Djakovica. This is the final argument used by the defense counsel for the former commander of the Pristina Corps to challenge the claims made by the former VJ officer Nik Peraj that the accused Lazarevic had commanded Operation Meja from Djakovica on 27 and 28 April 1999.
In his examination-in-chief yesterday, Nik Peraj claimed that on 28 April 1999, he had seen Lazarevic in the basement of a house in Djakovica, “following the course of Operation Meja on a map”. According to the indictment, more than 300 Albanian men and several thousand civilians were expelled to Albania in a two-day offensive in the Ceragoj valley, Djakovica municipality.
Suggesting that the witness collaborated with the Kosovo Liberation Army, Lazarevic’s defense counsel tried to challenge Peraj’s credibility. The witness confirmed that in June 1999 he had informed the KLA about an MUP/VJ ambush. He did that trough a relative of his. The relative, it turned out, was acting as an interpreter when Peraj was giving a statement to the prosecutors in 2000. The questions about “the activities of the witness that might threaten his safety” were asked in closed session.
Nebojsa Pavkovic’s defense counsel pointed in his cross-examination to parts of Nik Peraj’s statement in which he speaks about the participation of the paramilitary units in the operations in the Djakovica municipality. Pavkovic was the commander of the 3rd VJ Army. The witness repeated that, as far as he knew, the paramilitary units were not under the control of the Yugoslav Army. He said that “the reservists committed the worst crimes in Djakovica”, “robbing, abusing, stoning and raping Kosovo Albanians”. The rapes, he says, were not ordered by the army, nor was that “part of the policy or plan of the Yugoslav Army”.
Peraj testified there were Russian volunteers and a unit of the Republika Srpska Army in Kosovo, in addition to the Yugoslav Army troops, the Interior Ministry and the paramilitaries. Dragoljub Ojdanic’s defense counsel pointed to the parts of the transcript from the Slobodan Milosevic trial at which Peraj testified four years ago. At that time, Milosevic put it to the witness that “at that time, Republika Srpska was under the control of the international forces and that it was almost impossible to cross the border and enter Kosovo”. The witness replied that he was sure that a unit of the VRS was in Kosovo, giving specific information where they were deployed.
Tomorrow, Peraj should be cross-examined by the defense for Milan Milutinovic, Nikola Sainovic and Sreten Lukic.

Oh, please. The point of quoting those NGO sources is that they were/are terribly ANTI Serb, yet even they were forced, rarely, to admit the ethnic Serbs suffered terribly at the hands of the KLA.

That's why for the most part, what they did write was drivel, and once in a blue moon, even they had to admit the Serbs had a point.

MATE

" I believe that the Serbs envoked a contingency plan to drive out Albanians when the bombing started."

So you now say the the Serbs DID have a plan?

Any evidence?

And how would you explain local leaders of the KLA being captured and being given a couple of years in prison, being treated well, fed well, etc? KLA leaders in the Hague testified to this in the Slobo trial (for the prosecution to boot)

Surely, if your theory with no evidence were right, the Serbs would have just put a bullet in their head.

So, on the one hand you say (WITH NO EVIDENCE) that the Serbs had A PLAN do drive out hundreds of thousands of innocent ethnic Alb civilians, yet when they captured some KLA leader they'd be treated with kid gloves.

Maybe you should go back to quoting some zany 911 conspiracy theory instead.

MATE

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