Hundreds of Kosovo Albanians gathered in the village of Recak/Racak to mark the 16th anniversary of the massacre of 44 people by Serbian security forces in 1999.

Petrit Collaku | BIRN

Pristina

Survivors, victims’ relatives and Kosovo officials attended the commemoration at the memorial complex in Recak/Racak on Thursday to mark the anniversary of the massacre which helped to inspire NATO’s military intervention against Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
“Sixteen years after the massacre, on this horrible day, we remember it as horrendous,” said Agron Mehmeti, one of the survivors, who testified about the massacre at Milosevic’s trial at the Hague Tribunal in 2002.
Kosovo Prime Minister Isa Mustafa, who also paid tribute to the victims, said it was “one of the most morbid acts of the former Serbian regime”.
“Military, police and paramilitary forces killed and massacred unarmed people, old and young,” Mustafa said.
Serbian security forces surrounded Recak/Racak and started attacking it on the morning of January 15, 1999 , then entered the village and raiding houses. Some men tried to hide but were discovered, beaten then taken away and shot. A total of 44 villagers were killed.
Belgrade initially insisted that the casualties were Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas.
But William Walker, chief of the OSCE ceasefire verification mission to Kosovo, who visited the scene the following day, reported that it was a “crime against humanity”, and that the victims were civilians.
The attack was part of the Hague Tribunal indictment against Milosevic in The Hague, but the verdict was never delivered because he died in 2006.
The operation was led by Serbian special police commander Goran Radosavljevic, alias Guri.

Radosavljevic, who is now retired and serves on the executive board of Serbia’s ruling Progressive Party, has denied that any civilians were murdered, insisting that all those who died were terrorists.