Perparim IsufiPristinaBIRNMay 4, 202317:31Kosovo’s Special Prosecution charged a former member of Serbian armed forces with participating in a massacre in the village of Recak/Racak in January 1999, when 44 ethnic Albanian civilians were killed.
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Anniversary commemoration of victims killed in Recak/Racak, January 2014. Photo: EPA/VALDRIN XHEMAJ.
Kosovo’s Special Prosecution announced on Thursday that it has filed an indictment charging a member of Serbian armed forces with the murder and displacement of ethnic Albanian civilians during the war in 1999.
The prosecution did not provide many details about the charges, but public broadcaster RTK published the indictment which identifies the suspect only by the initials C.A.
It says that in collaboration with a group of unidentified persons wearing police, paramilitary and military uniforms, C.A. “committed war crimes against civilian population” in the period from January to May 1999.
The indictment alleges that on January 15, 1999, the day Serbian forces killed 44 ethnic Albanian villagers in Recak/Racak near the central Kosovo town of Shtime/Stimlje, C.A. participated in the murder of eight civilians in collaboration with other unidentified persons.
Serbian forces surrounded Recak/Racak and started attacking it on the morning of January 15, 1999.
They then entered the village and raided the houses one by one. Some locals tried to hide, but were discovered, beaten, taken away and shot. A total of 44 villagers were killed.
Serbia initially insisted the casualties were all fighters from the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA.
But William Walker, chief of the OSCE ceasefire verification mission to Kosovo, who visited the scene the following day, called it a “crime against humanity” and insisted that the victims were civilians.
The attack formed part of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia’s indictment of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. But no verdict was delivered because Milosevic died in 2006 before the trial ended.
Serbian special police commander Goran Radosavljevic, alias Guri, led the Recak/Racak operation.
Radosavljevic, who has since retired but still serves on the board of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, has denied that his men gunned down civilians, insisting that all those who died were KLA fighters.
The prosecution also charged C.A. with ordering the deportation of the civilian population of a neighbourhood in Shtime/Stimlje and with participating in the execution of four brothers and the burning of houses in the neighbourhood.
The indictment also says that on May 13-15, 1999, in the village of Petrove/Petrovo near Shtime/Stimlje, the suspect participated in an organized armed group that “caused suffering” to the civilian population and that he pointed a weapon at a village resident who was later found dead.
This is the second war crime indictment filed by Kosovo’s Special Prosecution filed this week.
On Tuesday, the prosecution announced that it has indicted a suspect identified by the initials D.R., a former Serbian armed forces reservist, with committing against the civilian population and proposed to try him in absentia, as he is not available to the Kosovo judicial authorities.
Source link: balkaninsight.com
