It’s been over 16 years since the attacks of Serbian forces against the civilian population in the valley of Reka during the war in Kosovo – before the courts in Serbia no one has been prosecuted. No one has been prosecuted either for concealing the bodies of the victims in a mass grave in Batajnica.
The Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) in its recently published dossier “Operation Reka” recalled that the War Crimes Prosecutor at the beginning of his work in 2004 announced an investigation into this case. However, the same has not been launched.
The Prosecutor’s Office said to Danas daily that they cannot speak about the details of the case which was in the preliminary investigation.
On the other hand, the ICTY has sentenced for the crime almost all military and police leadership of the FRY.
Interesting about this case are the HLC allegations about the role of General Momir Stojanovic, the SNS deputy and the President of the Parliamentary Committee for the control of the security services. Specifically, the HLC believe that Stojanovic has initiated a campaign in retaliation for the murder of four police officers and that he had commanded the 52nd Military Police Battalion, which participated in the action, and he did not investigate the crimes, although he was obliged, because of the function which he had at the time.
However, earlier this year, the War Crimes Prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic, on the occasion of the Interpol warrant against Stojanovic and another 16 people suspected of war crimes in the Djakovica/Gjakova municipality, said that the Prosecution “treats crimes in Meja in Djakovica” and in this sense there are “some knowledge about the possible perpetrators” and that Stojanovic did not appear as “a potential perpetrator” of the criminal offense of war crimes.
Otherwise, Stojanovic last Friday, the same day that the HLC announced dossier “Operation Reka”, stated that “it is nonsense and notorious lie”. “As Chief of security of the Pristina Corps, I could not participate in combat, nor have I commanded any soldier. They can accuse me that I molested population and that I personally broke into houses, what is hard to believe,” said Stojanovic.
Sandra Orlovic, the HLC Executive Director, told Danas that Stojanovic has given an inaccurate interpretation of the HLC’s dossier, or sources, which the HLC analysed, and that among those sources has been and and his testimony before the Tribunal.
– Crimes in the operation Reka are the largest of its kind, with a large number of units that were involved and the command line, which reaches to the top of the then government – says Orlovic.
According to the dossier “Operation Reka”, in a joint operation of the Yugoslav Army and MUP, 27 and 28 April 1999, in the villages Racaj, Dobros, Ramoc, Korenica and Meja were killed at least 350 Albanian civilians, and thousands of them were deported to Albania. The remains of 309 victims were exhumed from a mass grave in Batajnica in 2001 and 2002.
The trial for the crime in Trnje
In the Special Court today will continue the trial against the officers of Army of Serbia Rajko Kozlina and Pavle Gavrilovic for crimes against civilians in the village of Trnje. After the delay the previous five trials, victims and witnesses of crimes will testify for the first time, reports the Humanitarian Law Center. Gavrilovic and Kozlina were accused of killing at least 27 civilians of the village Trnje near Suva Reka in Kosovo on the 25th March 1999, as the former members of the 549th Motorized Brigade of the Yugoslav Army.
