Bozidar Delic, the former commander of the Yugoslav Army’s 549th Motorised Brigade, which was involved in some of most notorious attacks of the Kosovo war, died in Moscow, where he was having medical treatment.

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Kosovo War-Era Yugoslav Army General Dies in Russia

Bozidar Delic at the presentation of the ‘Warrior’ book series about the Kosovo War, published by the Serbian Defence Ministry, in Belgrade, 2019. Photo: mod.gov.rs

Bozidar Delic, a retired Yugoslav Army general and Kosovo war veteran who this month became one of seven vice-presidents of the Serbian parliament, died on Tuesday, Serbian media reported.

Beta news agency reported that Delic died in Moscow, where he went for medical treatment.

The New Democratic Party of Serbia, the leading party in the NADA coalition, which nominated Delic for the parliamentary role, told Danas newspaper that he died after a long and difficult illness. The exact nature of the illness was not specified.

During the Kosovo war in 1999, he was commander of the Yugoslav Army’s 549th Motorised Brigade, which has been accused of involvement in war crimes.

This year on August 3 he was elected as one of the parliamentary vice-presidents with 197 votes out of 250, including votes from ruling and opposition parties.

On August 16, a local NGO from the Kosovo town of Gjakove/Djakovica handed three lawsuits to Kosovo’s Special Prosecution accusing Delic of war crimes.

A representative of the War Crimes in Gjakove NGO, Shkendije Hoda, told media that it had collected evidence about crimes “which Delic is suspected of committing against Albanian civilians” in the town in 1999.

The Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre NGO published a file in 2013 containing the most comprehensive documentation so far of the eight military offensives involving the 549th Motorised Brigade in Kosovo villages in March and April 1999, which resulted in a total of 885 deaths.

In an attack on the villages of Meja and Korenica on April 27, 1999, troops, police and paramilitaries, including soldiers of the 549th Brigade, killed at least 377 civilians, 36 of whom were under 18 years old.

The Serbian war crimes prosecutor’s office told BIRN in 2013 that Delic was under investigation more than once. He was never indicted.

He never denied being commander of the 549th Brigade, but denied committing war crimes.

“I know what was happening in my area of responsibility. I was always in the first line of attack,” Delic told the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, claiming however that he had “no knowledge of the mass killings of Albanians”.

Speaking about another Yugoslav Army assault on the village of Landovica on March 26, 1999, Delic told the Serbian Commission for Cooperation with the ICTY that the attack was launched in response to the Kosovo Liberation Army’s killing of his soldiers.

“I ordered the engagement of an entire army squadron… and ordered Major Nikolic to send one tank,” Delic wrote in a statement to the commission, explaining that the village was a base for “terrorists”.

Delic retired in 2005 and later a become member of the nationalist Serbian Radical Party. When Tomislav Nikolic and Aleksandar Vucic, who were both later to serve as president of Serbia, left the Radical Party and set up the Serbian Progressive Party, Delic was one of the people who joined them.

However, he left the Progressive Party in 2011 and returned to the Radical Party, but then left again in 2020.

He was elected as a Serbian MP several times since 2007, and twice served as parliamentary vice-president.

While in office, President Slobodan Milosevic honoured the 549th Brigade for its role in the war in Kosovo, giving the brigade a People’s Hero medal for the “heroic defence of the country”.

Source link: balkaninsight.com