[Kcc-News] Serb Policeman Describes Massacre in Kosovo

[Kosova Crisis Center News and Information]

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/11/international/europe/11SERB.html

Serb Policeman Describes Massacre in Kosovo
By NICHOLAS WOOD

Published: December 11, 2003

ELGRADE, Serbia, Dec. 10 - For the first time since the end of the 1990's
wars that broke up Yugoslavia, a former Serbian policeman went before a
local court on Wednesday and described how his police reserve unit had taken
part in the massacre of at least 14 people, including 7 children.

The policeman, Goran Stoparic, said his unit, known as the Scorpions, was
sent to the town of Podujevo in eastern Kosovo on March 28, 1999 - five days
into the war with NATO over Kosovo - and rounded up a group of women and
children and shot them. The unit was withdrawn from Kosovo into Serbia
proper the same day, he said.

The trial of one member of the unit, Sasa Cvjetan, who is accused of killing
19 people, is the eighth in Serbia to tackle crimes committed in the three
main Yugoslav wars of the 1990's. While witnesses at the United Nations war
crimes tribunal in The Hague have detailed the involvement of police
officers and soldiers in war crimes, Serbian courts so far have excluded
accusations pointing to government involvement.

Even senior members of the Serbian government that succeeded the wartime
administration of Slobodan Milosevic deny that the government had any role
in massacres or brutal expulsions of non-Serbs in the conflicts in Croatia,
Bosnia and Kosovo.

Mr. Stoparic described how his unit had been deployed to Kosovo after the
start of NATO's bombing campaign. He said the unit had been issued weapons
close to the border of Kosovo, Serbia's southern province, which is
inhabited mostly by Albanians. He said the men had been driven in two buses
to Podujevo and told that they were to seize territory captured by the rebel
Kosovo Liberation Army.

Once they entered the town, he said, the unit's commander instructed them to
find accommodation in local houses. In one house, Mr. Stoparic said, Mr.
Cvjetan led a group of women and children into the backyard, where they were
joined by several other unit members.

A minute later, Mr. Stoparic testified, he heard four to five bursts of
automatic gunfire. He said that he had not seen any bodies, but that Mr.
Cvjetan and three other unit members left shortly afterward, reloading their
guns as they went.

A member of a special antiterrorist unit, identified only as Vuk, then
entered the backyard and reappeared with a wounded girl, Mr. Stoparic told
the court.

The man called Vuk stopped a colleague trying to enter the yard, saying:
"They've killed them. There is nothing to see." The colleague then asked Vuk
if everyone was dead, and Vuk said yes, Mr. Stoparic added.

Five children survived the shootings, though, including one girl who had 16
bullet wounds in her arms, legs and back. All five, who now live in Britain,
gave testimony in July when the trial started and identified Mr. Cvjetan as
having been among the killers.

Enver Duriqi, a Kosovo Albanian man, lost his mother, father, wife and four
children from 21 months to 9 years old in the massacre. The seven other
known victims were all members of the Bogujevci family, also from Podujevo.

Mr. Stoparic was to have given his testimony on Monday but pleaded illness
at the last minute. Questioned by a lawyer for the victims' families if he
had been threatened before the hearing, he said the unit's commander had
approached him outside the courtroom. "He did not say he would kill me," Mr.
Stoparic said. "He said the consequences would be drastic."

Throughout his three and a half hours of testimony, Mr. Stoparic was guarded
by bodyguards, and the court ordered protection maintained for him.

Asked why he had decided to testify now, he said he felt obliged to do so
because children had been killed.

"Now I am a Serbian traitor," he said. "Even if I am killed, it would be
worth it because of the children who were killed. I participated in wars for
10 years and never saw anyone kill children."

Last Friday several other former members of the unit, including its
commander, Slobodan Medic, testified that none of them had been present at
the shootings. Only two unit members are on trial, Mr. Cvjetan and Dejan
Demirovic, who is in Canada and is being tried in absentia. Mr. Cvjetan
could face up to 15 years in prision if convicted.