[NYC-L] [Kcc-News] [KAN-Info] Serb Officials Admit Involvement

[Kosova Crisis Center News and Information]

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KOSOVA ACTION NETWORK
January 1, 2005
INTERNATIONAL ACTION CAMPAIGN FOR RETURN OF MISSING

"WE ARE ALL MISSING THEM"

SERB OFFICIALS ADMIT INVOLVEMENT

INTL. KAN Statement:

Another 44 bodies were returned from the morgue in Belgrade to the Rahovec
morgue in Kosova (full article below), however the issue is still a long way
from being resolved. Hundreds of bodies remain, inexplicably, in the hands
of the Serb police authorities. All bodies should be returned without delay.
As they were in East Timor, Rwanda, and Bosnia, high level UN leadership
fails to represent and implement the most basic human rights of people in
which they have temporary stewardship over. This failure to demand justice
and an end to the cover-up of the war crimes involved in the transport of
bodies from Kosovo to Serbia in April, 1999, is the result of regional and
international passivity and cowardice.

Now, in 2005, the time has come to demand a Truth Commission, since neither
the UN nor the government of Serbia nor the ICTY has fully addressed the
issue of investigation into the heinous crime of the transport, burial, and
alleged incineration of more than 1,000 Kosovar Albanians. Local Serbs have
been coerced into keeping terrible secrets for years. Lack of justice is a
source of corruption and destabilization on both sides of the border.
RETURN THE KOSOVAR BODIES IMMEDIATELY!

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================= ARTICLES =================
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Balkan Briefs
Thursday December 30, 2004

Serb prosecutor admits massacre during Kosovo war

BELGRADE (AFP) - Some 800 ethnic Albanians exhumed from a mass grave near
Belgrade following the 1998-99 war in Kosovo were the victims of mass
executions, Serbia?s war crimes prosecutor said yesterday, in the first such
admission from a Serb official. "In (the Belgrade suburb of) Batajnica were
found the remains of people who had been victims of mass executions in
Kosovo," prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic was quoted as saying by Beta news
agency. Vukcevic?s statement confirmed long-held claims by non-governmental
organizations as well as Kosovo Albanian officials that ethnic Albanians
were the victims of mass executions during the conflict. "Following the
exhumation and autopsy, it has become clear that those people were not
killed by bomb explosions, but their wounds showed that they had been
executed," Vukcevic said. The prosecutor said his office "will this year
make public what happened there."

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>From Humanitarian Law Center, Belgrade
December 28, 2004
Humanitarian Law Center

Research and Documentation
Nata?a Kandic, the executive director of the Humanitarian Law Center

The cover-up of the war crimes committed in Kosovo in 1998 and during the
NATO bombardments was, above all, a police activity carried out by the most
trustworthy men of the late of the head of Ministry of Interior Affairs of
Serbia, Vlajko Stojiljkovic, of the former President of the Government of
Serbia, Nikola Sainovic, of the one time head of the Public Security,
Vlastimir ?ordevic, and the former head of the State Security, Rade
Markovic. In the south of Serbia, the trustworthy person was Dragomir Tomic,
a high official of the Government and the Parliament of Serbia at the time
of Slobodan Milo?evic, the owner of Simpo Company today, whose understanding
and support were essential for the organization and transport of the corpses
from Kosovo to the area of Vranje and Surdulica. In the implementation of
this "patriotic duty", from Kosovo via Bujanovac, members of the Special
Operations Unit [Red Berets], local heads and chiefs of the State Security,
and the director of the Mackatica factory, its owner today, took part. In
Surdulica, everybody knows that, in the said factory, during NATO
bombardment, corpses from Kosovo were incinerated. (full report below)

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Parts of UNMIK Local Media Monitoring
28 December 2004

Body Remains of Kosovo Albanians Exhumed in Serbia to be Repatriated in
January

The human remains of 44 Albanians that have been exhumed in Serbia will be
handed over to members of their families on January 15. A total of 836
bodies were exhumed from several mass graves in Serbia during 2001, out of
which 398 have so far been handed over after the process of identification.
UNMIK took over 44 bodies from the Serbian authorities in mid-December. The
Forensic Medicine Institute in Orahovac will hand over these bodies to their
families. There are still 3,192 people missing in Kosovo, and out of this
number 2,460 are Kosovo Albanians, 523 Kosovo Serbs and 203 are members of
other ethnicities.

http://www.unmikonline.org/press/2004/mon/dec/lmm281204.pdf

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LOCAL PRESSURE CONTINUES- PRISHTINA

KAN and family groups staged a demonstration in front of UNMIK
administration buildings posting photographs of missing persons

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