Posted on 07/10/2003 6:18:03 AM PDT by mark502inf
BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro (AP) - Four ethnic Albanian children told a court Wednesday how Serb forces rounded up and gunned down their families with automatic weapons in one of the most brutal acts of the 1998-99 Kosovo war. Their testimony came during the trial of a Serb police officer accused of leading an assassination squad through their community during the war. The children, who were said to have positively identified the officer, Sasa Cvjetan, in his prison cell Tuesday, watched as Serb troops slaughtered 19 ethnic Albanian relatives, including their mothers, siblings and grandparents, on March 28, 1999, in the town of Podujevo. The children were also wounded.
The Serbian government's decision to prosecute those responsible for the crimes appears to mark a new willingness to punish Serb troops who slaughtered ethnic Albanian civilians during the conflict. The troops were under the command of then-President Slobodan Milosevic, who is being tried on genocide and war crimes charges at the U.N. tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands.
Reflecting the sensitive nature of the trial in Belgrade, security has been tight. The children, who arrived Monday from their homes in Manchester, England, were driven to the courthouse in jeeps with dark-tinted windows, under top police security and shielded from cameras.
Reporters were denied access to the trial Wednesday, making details of the proceedings sketchy. But one witness at the trial, Natasa Kandic, whose Humanitarian Law Center has provided legal assistance to the victims, said the children and their fathers described to the court how their families were rounded up and gunned down.
A fifth child who witnessed the killings, 10-year-old Genc Bogojevci, arrived with the others this week but ended up not testifying. "Psychologists decided that he is too young" and sent him to stay with surviving relatives in Kosovo, Kandic said.
The five children, aged from 10 to 18, individually identified Cvjetan, at his Belgrade prison on Tuesday, Kandic said.
"The children ... all showed a maturity and consistency in their statements," Kandic told The Associated Press. "They were able to identify the suspect with great precision."
Cvjetan's lawyer, Djordje Kalanj, confirmed the children had identified his client, but told AP he would seek to bar their identifications as evidence.
"They could easily have seen his photographs in any of the papers since the killing," Kalanj said.
The trial against Cvjetan began last October. Another former officer, Dejan Demirovic, is being tried in absentia for the same charges after fleeing to Canada.
"As victims, they (the children) will be the first in this trial to offer firsthand evidence on the massacre," Kandic said. Other witnesses at the trial so far were Serb policemen who denied the killings.
Cvjetan has denied the charges against him. He testified that his unit ordered a group of ethnic Albanians to leave their houses in Podujevo so Serb troops could move in. He said he did not see who fired the shots that killed the victims.
Both officers were members of the notorious Serbian special police units known as Scorpions. The indictment accuses them of carrying out the massacre four days after NATO launched a bombing campaign on March 24, 1999 to punish Belgrade for its crackdown on Kosovo Albanians
In reference to the Serbian Nationalist position on events in the Balkans vs. factual evidence to the contrary: like I said, bizarre.
NEW YORK -- Friday – A KFOR report submitted to the UN Security Council forecasts a summer crime boom for Kosovo.
In particular, the Kosovo force predicts increases in smuggling and illegal border crossings, as well as the appearance of large quantities of drugs and counterfeit money.
The report notes several ethnically-motivated incidents in May, but insists that the overall security situation in the province was mainly stable. The report reads:
"The number of murders, kidnappings and rapes increased compared to last month, but the number of thefts dropped, while the total number of incidents is less than in May 2002".
KFOR draw attention to ethnic tensions evident in the northern part of Kosovska Mitrovica, highlighting the as yet unsolved murders of two Serbs in the Klokot region, near Vitina. The international force also notes 27 attempted illegal border crossings in May – a two-fold increase on the previous month.
Turning to local forces, KFOR added that state union's security forces continue to honour provisions and conditions stipulated in the Military-Technical Agreement, while the Kosovo Protection Corps is under investigation for ties to extremist[s] and terrorist organisations.
[B92]
Kfor agrees that in the Pristina - Podujevo area the entire command of the KLA was responsible for the murder of many Albanians. KLA MajorGeneral Rustem Mustafa and 4 of his henchmen were recently found guilty of killing Albanian civilians.
wonder when Hoplite will finally admit it was the KLA which did most of the killing ?
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