Mass Grave Holding Kosovars Found
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - Authorities have discovered another mass grave with some 50 to 60 bodies from Kosovo in a cover-up of war crimes linked to former President Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian government announced Saturday.
The government's Internet site quoted a ranking police official, Capt. Dragan Karleusa, as saying that the bodies, apparently Kosovo Albanians, surfaced in April 1999 from a hydropower lake at Perucac, about 90 miles southwest of Belgrade, and were later buried in a nearby mass grave in Serbia proper.
Authorities later discovered the mass grave, he said, without saying when.
``First, seven bodies surfaced,'' Karleusa was quoted a saying. ``Later, a freezer truck with more than 50 bodies surfaced as well.''
``Witnessed by numerous people, and with unbearable stench, the bodies were transferred to a new location where they were buried in a mass grave,'' Karleusa said, adding that the crime remained secret for more than two years.
Another case of a freezer truck containing some 80 bodies dumped into the Danube River near the Romanian border in April 1999, hundreds of miles outside Kosovo, was revealed by police earlier this year.
Police, now controlled by pro-democracy authorities who unseated Milosevic in October, have accused the former Yugoslav president of ordering top police and military commanders in a March 1999 meeting to remove all evidence of civilian casualties from his Kosovo crackdown that could be subject to investigation by the U.N. war crimes tribunal.
Several mass graves, believed to contain some 800 bodies, have recently been discovered in Serbia proper, far from the province of Kosovo where Milosevic's security troops are believed to have killed up to 8,000 ethnic Albanians in a 1998-99 crackdown. The crackdown ended with the 78-day NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.
Milosevic was extradited to the U.N. tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, on June 28. He is charged by the court with responsibility for the murder of more than 600 people and the displacement of 740,000 ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in 1999.
Serbian Justice Minister Vladan Batic said Saturday that local Serbian courts will start bringing war crimes suspects to trial as early as next week.
He did not identify those facing trial or say if any of them are also sought by the U.N. court.
He said the Serbian government - after extraditing Milosevic - will demand that other Yugoslav war crimes suspects be tried at home.
Milosevic's extradition was believed to be the result of intense U.S. and other Western pressure on Belgrade's new, pro-democracy authorities, increasingly dependent on Western aid to master the economic crisis left by more than a decade of Milosevic's ruinous rule.
There are other high-ranking indicted suspects who remain at large and live freely in the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade. Those include Serbian President Milan Milutinovic; former army chief of staff Col. Gen. Dragoljub Ojdanic; former Serbian Interior Minister Vlajko Stojiljkovic; and former Yugoslav deputy prime minister Nikola Sainovic.
All were close aides of Milosevic and were indicted along with him by the tribunal on charges of crimes against humanity in Kosovo.
Batic said that 58 people in Serbia will be questioned by The Hague court investigators in early August as part of investigations of war crimes against Serbs in Kosovo.
Originally published July 14, 2001.
