Xhorxhina BamiPristinaBIRNJune 23, 202317:08The Kosovo Prosecution said it has filed a war crimes accusing a former Serbian policeman of involvement an attack on ethnic Albanian civilians that caused 19 deaths.
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The Kosovo Special Prosecution Office in Pristina. Photo: BIRN
The prosecution announced on Friday that it has charged a Kosovo Serb, who it identified only by the initials M.Dj., with participating in an attack on ethnic Albanian civilians during the war in 1999.
The former policeman Mfrom the village of Vitomirica in Kosovo Peja/Pec municipality has been charged with war crimes against the civilian population.
The prosecution said in a statement that on May 7, 1999, as a member of the Serbian police and military forces, he was involved in surrounding the village of Ozdrim of the municipality of Peja.
The statement said that “they then started a military-police offensive by shooting at the civilian population, in which 19 civilians of Albanian nationality were killed”.
It added that the indictee is currently in detention.
Meanwhile after an arrest of a Serb in an unconnected war crimes case earlier this week, dozens of people staged a third protest near the municipality building and the police station in the Serb-majority town of Gracanica on Friday.
“Nowhere in the criminal code does it say that it is a criminal offence to be a Serb,” said one of the protesters, Dusan Borisavljevic, the head of the Youth Centre in Gracanica, Serbian-language news website Kossev reported.
The arrested man, who was identified by Serbian media as Dragisa Milenkovic, was held on Wednesday on suspicion of torturing and abusing ethnic Albanian detainees while he was a prison guard during the Kosovo war. He was then remanded in custody for 30 days by Pristina Basic Court on Thursday.
According to the Kosovo Memory Book, created by the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre and the Humanitarian Law Centre Kosovo, a total of 13,535 people were killed or went missing between January 1998 and December 31, 2000, including civilians and members of armed forces.
The list includes 10,812 Albanians, 2,197 Serbs, 528 Roma, Bosniaks and other non-Albanians. Over 1,600 missing persons have yet to be found, mostly ethnic Albanians but also some Serbs, Roma and others.
Source link: balkaninsight.com
