[Kcc-News] Mass Grave Dug Up in Kosovo (AP Dec. 3, 1999)

[Mentor Cana]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991203/aponline224604_000.htm

Mass Grave Dug Up in Kosovo

By Elida Ramadani
Associated Press Writer
Friday, Dec. 3, 1999; 10:46 p.m. EST

TERSTENIK, Yugoslavia -- Villagers in this small northern Kosovo
community began excavating a mass grave Friday, refusing to wait for
international investigators to restart operations in the spring.
     Residents of Terstenik, some 35 miles northwest of Pristina, found
the bodies of four people Friday. They began digging in an effort to
find 13 people who have been missing since forces loyal to Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic swept through their village, only days
before NATO peacekeepers entered the province in June.
     Villagers began the digging after investigators for the
International War Crimes Tribunal suspended their exhumations for the
year, in part because the hard frost of Kosovo's winters makes digging
difficult.
     But villagers anxious to know the truth gathered at a meeting and
decided to exhume the grave themselves.
     Avdyl Qalapeku, 75, who was too old to run, hid from Serb forces
sweeping into the village and heard the bulldozers covering up the
bodies. After the bulldozers left, he heard a Serb policeman in a blue
uniform say, "'Let's go. We're finished here.'"
     "After several days, I was thinking and thinking. I couldn't sleep
at all," he said. He returned to the area where he had heard the
bulldozers.
     "I took my cane and ... just put it down," he said. "I saw (the
ground) was soft."
     Villagers began digging where Qalapeku suggested and found the four
bodies. One child was identified by his shoes, which he had secured to
his feet with a wire cord. A family member recognized the cord, which
was intended to keep his shoes from slipping off his feet as he ran.
     More than 50 people died in the village.

© Copyright 1999 The Associated Press