Mass grave of 250 Kosovo war victims found in Serbia

SERBIA HAS discovered a mass grave believed to contain the bodies of some 250 ethnic Albanians killed in the 1998-9 Kosovo war between Belgrade’s forces and separatist rebels.

Serb officials said the site was located after information was received from witnesses and from Eulex, the European Union’s security and justice mission in now-independent Kosovo.

Vladimir Vukcevic, Serbia’s chief war crimes prosecutor, said the bodies were located under a building and car park laid over the mass grave near Raska, a town in southern Serbia close to the border with Kosovo.

This was the sixth mass grave found since 2000. The largest, containing the bodies of more than 800 Kosovo Albanians, was found in 2001 in pits at a police training ground outside Belgrade.

Serb forces moved many Kosovar corpses to Serbia to hide evidence of mass killings during the war, which claimed the lives of more than 11,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands.

“Serbia’s war crimes prosecution office and Eulex together uncovered the mass grave with presumably 250 bodies of Kosovo Albanians,” said Mr Vukcevic.

“This is more proof that Serbia does not shy away from its dark past and is ready to bring to justice all those who have committed crimes.”

Kosovo officials welcomed the discovery as a chance for victims’ relatives to finally find out what happened to them, and to bury them in Kosovo and mourn them properly. But they also urged Belgrade to do its utmost to discover the location of other graves that could reveal the fate of more than 1,800 people still missing from the war, including several hundred Serbs and Roma.

“This is evidence that Serbia was the perpetrator of the crime and was trying to hide its crimes, but they cannot hide them for ever,” said Kosovo’s deputy prime minister, Rame Manaj.

“We have information on another mass grave near the town of Medvedja in southern Serbia,” he added. The discovery came ahead of tomorrow’s planned visit to Belgrade of chief UN war crimes prosecutor Serge Brammertz, whose reports on Serbia’s co-operation with the court in The Hague are crucial to the country’s hopes of EU membership.

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 after nine years of UN administration.

Its sovereignty has been recognised by the United States and most EU nations, but not by Belgrade.