Natasa Kandic told Politika yesterday that no data was found to support the allegations against Oliver Ivanovic, a Serb leader in northern Kosovo, that he participated in any crimes. Kandic said that it has been determined during extensive research on the project “Kosovo Memory Book” that aims to make a list of all the victims (civilian, police and military) who died during the conflict in Kosovo in the late nineties of the last century. Ivanovic is in custody as of 27th of January this year, on suspicion of having participated in crimes in 1999 and 2000. First he was in a prison in Pristina, and recently, after a hunger strike, he was transferred to the prison in Mitrovica. He denied the EULEX’s prosecution charges, including the crime.
Until recently, the president of the Humanitarian Law Centre, and now an activist for the establishment of a regional commission on all war crimes, Natasa Kandic, said she led the research on crimes committed in Mitrovica, covering the period of January in 1998 until 31 December 2000. The research showed that about 60 to 70 witnesses were questioned on the crime committed. “A witness stated that Oliver Ivanovic told him to be careful because his sons joined the KLA, and one witness said that she recognized the allegedly voice of Ivanovic in a group of masked men who came to her, this cannot be treated as evidence,” said Kandic. She added that the only thing that is against Ivanovic is Halit Berani’s statement, president of the Committee for the Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms in Mitrovica, at the trial of Slobodan Milosevic at The Hague. “Beyond that, we obtained no data during the field research which would confirm the allegations that Oliver Ivanović participated in the crimes,” said Kandic.
Halit Berani was once exposed by U.S. journalists Robert Block and Daniel Pearl from the Wall Street Journal. Writing about the differences between the original story of the alleged genocide and the reality faced by the international community after entering Kosovo in 1999, Block and Pearl specifically referred to the case of Halit Berani. They wrote: “the world should know about Berani, president of the Committee for the Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms in Kosovska Mitrovica”. They described him as a former actor who, during the war with a satellite phone, fed the media and diplomats with half-truths about the suffering of the Albanians.
The Wall Street Journal journalists specifically referred to the case of an alleged massacre in the Trepca mine. Berani started a story that trucks brought the bodies to the mine, saying that he had heard from the farmers near Trepca. The alleged crime was reported in April 1999, and Deutsche Welle radio carried the news. Two months later, according to the Wall Street Journal, the Kosova Press site quoted officials of the U.S. Embassy in Athens, who said that there were “witnesses and photographs” of trucks transporting the bodies. Western journalists have called the embassy, but a spokesperson said she could not find another source.
And the London Observer launched a similar story. They quoted a female KLA commander, who said she received a call from a “local Kosovar” who “learned” everything from the refugees. The Pentagon’s spokesperson said, “There are several reports that in the last ten weeks the bodies were buried at a former industrial place in Kosovo.”
“Some commentators have taken this theory as fact,” wrote Block and Pearl for the Wall Street Journal. The journalists state that the French troops and the ICTY investigators found nothing after the conflict. They quoted and officials of the tribunal who were not impressed: “We found the clothes. Why would Serbs take away bodies and leave the clothes,” investigators said, adding that “there is no need for further investigation.”
An article in the Wall Street Journal ends with the statement of Berani who practically admits that his story was not true: “I told everyone that this is an assumption, and not a confirmed story. For Serbs, anything is possible.”
Launching of a pogrom on 17 March
Halit Barani is known for reporting the death of three Albanian boys who drowned in the Ibar, which was Serbs’ revenge for an incident that occurred in Caglavica (when one Serb was injured and which initiated the March pogrom against Serbs) to a Kosovo journalist on 17 March 2004. The subsequent investigation carried by UNMIK revealed that Serbs were not to blame for the drowning of the Albanian children. Berani was later arrested on suspicion of organized violence, but was released for lack of evidence.
