French find mass grave in Kosovo

©New York Times

© St. Petersburg Times, published September 28, 1999

MITROVICA, Yugoslavia -- French police serving as peacekeepers in Kosovo on Monday notified the families of 26 men missing from this town for five months that the men had been killed by Serbs and dumped in a mass grave and that four suspects have been arrested.

The case is the first time in Kosovo that foreigners have completed a war crimes investigation, working from the first reports of missing people to finding the graves and making arrests. Their speed demonstrates a greater commitment than was the case in the former Yugoslavia to catch those responsible for war crimes.

The killings occurred on April 14, when, according to the French, the Serbian police forced families out from their apartments on Popovic Street and separated the men from their wives and children. Minutes later, after the others in the families had been ordered to flee, the men were all executed. Their bodies were dumped in a grave 10 miles away, outside the Serbian town of Zvecan. Investigators from the War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague, who have been digging up the bodies this week, have established that they were the men from Popovic Street.

On Monday, the relatives reconciled themselves to the news. "They are dead for sure," said Sala Meha, a peasant in a head scarf, whose two brothers and nephew were among those missing. "Seven of them had identification papers on them, including Rexhep," she said, naming one of her brothers.

The news ended a three-month investigation by the French. "Usually, the bodies are found first," said Lt. Col. Philippe Tanguy, spokesman for the French forces. "This time, it was the other way around. We followed a judicial process, with a judge's issuing warrants, and eventually one of the witnesses brought in for questioning revealed where the bodies were."

Some of the most important witnesses were relatives of the victims. "The special police came and kicked in the door," said Naila Sejdiu, who was at home at noon on April 14 with her husband and five children, as well as a brother-in-law and a nephew who had been chased from their own apartment days before.

"They ordered us out," Sejdiu recalled. "In the street, paramilitaries put all the children to one side. They lay all the men face down on the street. They were shooting in the air. Our men were beaten on the head, because they were looking around."

Gesturing to her son Besnik, 20, Sejdiu said, "He is the only man of his age who survived, who was not taken."

Crouched down and surrounded by his sisters and younger brothers, Besnik Sejdiu managed to avoid the gaze of the police.

From where he hid against a shop window, he could see his father, uncle and cousin among the men on the ground in an alley. Watching over them with an automatic rifle was a Serbian neighbor, Serzen Aleksic, the Albanians say. The man was masked. But Besnik Sejdiu said that he knew the man well, because they used to play basketball together, and that he had recognized him instantly, as did his sister Mirvete, 16.

"They were all there," Sejdiu said of his Serbian neighbors. Some held Kalashnikov rifles, and some held hammers, he said.

After having been turned out of their houses, the family members fled and began a frantic four-day flight on foot as far as the Albanian border, only to be sent back, they said. For two months they roamed from village to village, trying to escape Serbian forces.

When the townspeople returned in June and when NATO forces arrived, they found no trace of the men. Neighbors began to report the missing to the French peacekeepers.

Eventually, the French said, there was enough evidence to pinpoint several Serbs who were living here. On Monday morning the local judge and the French gathered the families and told them that seven men had been killed by knives or bayonets. It is still unclear how the rest died, but some had bullet wounds.

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