[NYC-L] [Kcc-News] News: SERBIA: NEW MASS GRAVES FOUND: More evidence of mass killings of Albanian civilians could soon emerge, but t he perpetrato rs of these crimes may never be prosecuted (fwd)

[Mentor Cana]

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 WELCOME TO IWPR'S BALKAN CRISIS REPORT, No. 343, June 14, 2002

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SERBIA: NEW MASS GRAVES FOUND

More evidence of mass killings of Albanian civilians could soon emerge,
but the perpetrators of these crimes may never be prosecuted.

By IWPR team in Belgrade and London

The authorities are preparing to exhume four new mass graves, which are
expected to contain more bodies of ethnic Albanians killed in the Kosovo
conflict, judicial sources say.

Three of the sites are thought to be located in Batajnica, near Belgrade,
while the fourth is near Vranje, in southern Serbia.

A judicial source said the first exhumation at Batajnica will begin "in a
couple of days".  He said about 400 to 500 people were buried there and
foreign donors had supplied funds for the work.

The latest move by the Serbian judiciary does not imply that the
perpetrators of these crimes face punishment, however.

Judicial sources complain that the police have impeded, rather than
expedited, investigations of mass graves containing the bodies of 470
murdered Albanians, which have already been exhumed.

Judicial officials say no criminal charges have been brought because the
police refused to identify the perpetrators of the killings and their
accomplices.

Serbia's interior minister, Dusan Mihajlovic, said three months ago that
police had finished their share of the job and it was up to the courts to
make any further moves.

But Milan Sarajlic, deputy district prosecutor in Belgrade, said the
police had merely informed the courts of the discovery of the corpses and
provided some information about their personal belongings and documents.

The public prosecutor could not prosecute those responsible for the
killings "because we do not know who the perpetrators are," Sarajlic said.
"The police need to file charges against the perpetrators, including their
names and surnames, for specific crimes but they have done nothing of the
sort."

The courts attribute the obstructive stance of the police to the fact that
little changed in the police department after the fall of Slobodan
Milosevic in 2000, beyond the replacement of a few top officials.

Judicial sources say the Milosevic-era police are "covering up and
removing the traces leading towards those responsible for mass graves",
mainly to protect themselves from potential prosecution.

The process of identifying the killers and their accomplices should not be
difficult, given that at least two mass graves were discovered on police
property in Batajnica, inside a training centre at the base of a special
unit there.

Reports of the first Batajnica site to be discovered were leaked to the
media two weeks before the new government decided last June to hand over
Milosevic to The Hague war crimes tribunal.

Facing heavy international pressure to extradite Milosevic to the
tribunal, but wary of being labelled a traitor by nationalists at home,
the new prime minister, Zoran Djindjic, purposely shocked the public with
revelations of the existence of mass graves to counter expected outrage
over the former Yugoslav president's deportation.

Several days after Milosevic's arrest and hand-over to the tribunal, the
public was flooded with police reports concerning two more mass graves.
One was sited in a special unit compound, at Petrovo Selo, in eastern
Serbia, while the other was near an artificial lake at Perucac, in western
Serbia.

Soon after, news of the second Batajnica site was broken, containing the
largest number of corpses.  Dragan Karleusa, deputy head of the
anti-organised crime squad, said on May 25 last year the bodies belonged
to victims of a "cleaning-up operation" in Kosovo.

Karleusa said Milosevic had ordered the aforementioned operation in March
1999 at a meeting with his interior minister, Vlajko Stojiljkovic, and the
secret police and regular police chiefs, Radomir Markovic and Vlastimir
Djordjevic.

The impression was given that the police were investigating the case with
some energy.  Serbia's deputy prime minister, Zarko Korac, confirmed this
when he said efforts to collect evidence on the killings were being
stepped up to expand Milosevic's indictment for war crimes.

But no criminal charges were brought against any alleged suspects
mentioned by Karleusa.  While Milosevic and Markovic were jailed,
Stojiljkovic committed suicide and Djordjevic was reported to have moved
to Moscow.

Police sources say Djordjevic was in charge of removing the bodies from
Kosovo and burying them at secret locations in Serbia.  They say that when
a refrigerator truck containing the bodies of murdered Albanians
resurfaced from the depths of the Danube, near Tekija, in April 1999,
during the NATO bombing, Djordjevic ordered details of this case to be
kept secret.

Curiously, when Djordjevic disappeared abroad, the police only issued an
internal arrest warrant, not an international one.

The police have become increasingly reluctant to comment on the mass
graves.  Unusually, they have failed even to reveal the names of those who
had dug the graves.

At a news conference on the lorry that was full of bodies, Serbia's
interior minister, Dusan Mihajlovic, blandly said the corpses from the
truck were transported to Batajnica and handed over to "unidentified
officials", without enlarging on who those officials were.

It became clear that the police were determined to pass the "hot potato"
of mass graves to the judiciary, leaving the courts and the prosecutor's
office to take any subsequent blame for inefficiency in the investigation.
Journalists who tried to extract more information on the investigation
found themselves referred to the judiciary.

In late April, the district prosecutor of Belgrade, Rade Terzic, said his
office had requested after the first reports of mass graves that police to
"check all the facts related to the circumstances of death".  He said he
told the police that "if these persons [had] suffered at the hands of
perpetrators of crimes against the civilian population, the circumstances
of their violent death should be investigated".

However, judicial sources suggest that the police are spreading rumours
that Prime Minister Djindjic himself told the prosecutor's office to halt
its investigation, apparently out of fears that his own position might be
jeopardised.  The Palace of Justice, the principal judicial authority in
Serbia, has resolutely denied this, arguing that the premier insisted on
the completion of the investigation.

The Belgrade district court's investigating judge, Nenad Cavlina, who is
in charge of the first Batajnica mass grave site, said the judiciary's
work there  was almost complete.  He said he had issued a warrant for the
36 corpses to be identified through DNA analysis and that forensic experts
had taken samples from all the disinterred human remains, while UNMIK
provided blood samples of the victims' relatives in Kosovo.  "All the
evidence was sent to Madrid for DNA analysis and we're expecting results
from Spain any time now," he said.

Cavlina's colleague, Milan Dilparic, in charge of the investigation at the
second Batajnica site, containing 269 bodies, said his case was also
proceeding satisfactorily.  He also denies the investigation has been
deliberately obstructed and insists that a warrant for the exhumation and
identification of the bodies was issued and that DNA analysis was
underway.

Dilparic said the Red Cross would soon be in a position to compile a
database of the victims' belongings, including watches, necklaces, rings,
cash and personal documents, which would be made available to their
relatives for identification purposes.

A similar procedure is reportedly underway for the 74 corpses exhumed in
Petrovo Selo and the 60 bodies disinterred near the lake at Perucac.

But the police are highly reluctant to answer questions on their own
activities in connection with the mass graves.  Serbia's deputy interior
minister, Nenad Milic, recently said they were "still undertaking all
available measures and actions within their powers to shed light on all
the circumstances related to these events".

Requests for the interior ministry to supply hard information on these
"measures and actions" invariably hit a brick wall.  The response is
always the same, "Given that the evidence is in the possession of the
judicial organs, the police have reached an agreement that judiciary
officials comment on these issues".

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