Fw: New mass grave of Kosovo Serbs found

[Andrej Tisma]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4563551.stm


BBC News
May 20, 2005


Long search for Kosovo's missing  
By Matt Prodger 
 

Over recent weeks investigators in Kosovo have
discovered mass graves containing the bodies of 37
civilians murdered in 1998. 

It is the largest discovery of Serb victims of
atrocities from the Kosovo war, which pitched the
Kosovo Liberation Army and Nato on one side against
the Serbian security forces and Yugoslavia on the
other. 

On the outskirts of the town of Malisevo, a few dozen
metres from newly-built homes, a forensic scientist
pulls back a tarpaulin and starts photographing a hole
in the ground. 

In the shallow grave are 13 human skeletons piled on
top of one another amid a tangle of clothes. Bullet
holes in the skulls and ligatures around the wrists
show that these were violent deaths. 

Legacy of war 

In fact investigators from the UN Office on Missing
Persons and Forensics had a good idea of what happened
to these people even before they found them. 
  
In July 1998 they believe guerrillas from the Kosovo
Liberation Army abducted Serbs in the Orahovac area of
Kosovo and took them to their headquarters in Malisevo
with the intention of swapping them for ethnic
Albanian prisoners held by the Serbian security
forces. 

But the deal never happened. Instead the Serbs were
murdered and buried in two locations - 13 in Malisevo
and 24 near the town of Klina. 

In 1998 Kosovo was controlled by Serbia, though most
of its people were not Serbs, but ethnic Albanians. 

Guerrillas from the Kosovo Liberation Army were
embarking on a campaign of violent resistance that,
with Nato's help, drove Serbian security forces out of
the province.... 

Seven-year search 

For Olgica Bozanic, a Kosovo Serb now living in
Belgrade, her search is over. The bodies of her two
brothers and a cousin are almost certainly among the
dead. DNA tests are expected to confirm it soon. 

I had interviewed Olgica a few months ago when she was
still looking for them. I did not expect to hear her
family's name again so soon. 

"On 18 July 1998 my brothers were taken by the
Albanians - by members of the KLA and the neighbours
we grew up with," she says. 

"I spent seven years searching for them and for the
truth about what happened to them." 

"I had hoped that the KLA were keeping my family alive
for their political goals, for negotiations - and to
show the world that the KLA were not criminals, but
the liberators of Kosovo, which they called
themselves." 

Olgica visited the exhumation near Klina a couple of
weeks ago. 

"When I reached the cave I felt that my search had
ended, and that I no longer had a reason to live", she
said. 

"I wanted to be with them there, to hold them, but I
couldn't. I screamed at the bodies as if they could
hear me. I was clawing at the ground." 

"I'll never forget that feeling." 
....