Chairman of the Serbian parliament’s Committee on Kosovo- Metohija (KiM) Milovan Drecun said Wednesday that despite extensive documentation on the July 1999 murder of 14 Serb reapers in the village of Staro Gracko, in the municipality of Lipljan, no one had yet been convicted for the crime.
“There is extensive documentation from an investigation conducted by the UNMIK police, and there are persons suspected to have committed the crime,” Drecun told Belgrade-based TV Pink on the occasion of 15 years since the murder of the Serb reapers.
He pointed out that “nothing is being launched, and much is being concealed,” and no one had yet been found guilty of the cold-blooded liquidation of the villagers who had been harvesting a field when they were murdered.
Drecun criticized the judicial authorities of Serbia for not dealing with the crime and pointed out that they could have issued indictments despite the suspects not being available.
The KiM Committee chairman said that now, following the first Brussels agreement and commitment to normalizing relations with Pristina, Belgrade had a much more serious capacity and it should finally begin to prosecute those from the former ethnic Albanian terrorist organization KLA who had committed crimes against Serbs and other non-Albanians.
The 14 Serbs were killed on July 23, 1999. The youngest of them was 17 years old.
In October 2007, UNMIK police arrested Mazljum Bitici from the village of Veliki Alas near Lipljan, on suspicion of taking part in the murder.
Bitici was released from custody two months later “due to lack of evidence.”
