31 Jul 14

The relatives of the three Bytyqi brothers, killed by Serbian forces after they fought for the Kosovo Liberation Army, urged the UN to pressurise Belgrade to prosecute their murderers.

Marija Ristic
BIRN
Belgrade

Lawyers for the relatives of Ylli, Agron and Mehmet Bytyqi, who were killed in Serbia in 1999, have filed a complaint to the UN, demanding “Serbia’s compliance with its international obligation to investigate and prosecute those responsible for the disappearance and murder of the brothers”.

“This is a step towards obtaining justice for the Bytyqi family and raising international attention about a country [Serbia] which is on the way to joining the European Union,” said Silvia Palomba of the Destination Justice legal consultancy, which filed the complaint.

The Bytyqi brothers, US citizens of Albanian origin, joined a volunteer branch of the Kosovo Liberation Army called the Atlantic Brigades which was active during the conflict with Belgrade’s forces in 1999.

Alongside other members of the Atlantic Brigades, who mainly came from the US, the brothers travelled to Kosovo to fight against Serbia. According to their brother Fatose Bytyqi, after the July 1999 peace agreement that ended the Kosovo war, they then agreed to escort several Roma neighbours to Serbia.

But when they strayed over an unmarked boundary line near Merdare, they were arrested by Serbian police for illegally entering what was then Yugoslavia.

After serving their sentences, they were re-arrested, taken to the police’s Petrovo Selo training centre and detained in a warehouse there.

During the evening of July 9, 1999, they were tied up with wire by unknown assailants and driven to a garbage disposal pit, where they were executed with shots to the back of the neck.

Their remains were exhumed in June 2001 from a mass grave in the village of Petrovo.

The Serbian war crimes prosecution indicted two police officers, Sreten Popovic and Milos Stojanovic, for allegedly transporting the brothers from Prokuplje to Petrovo Selo. In 2012, both men were acquitted.

During the trial, Stojanovic and Popovic claimed that they received the order to drive the brothers to Petrovo Selo from Vlastimir Djordjevic, who at the time was Serbia’s assistant interior minister.

In January this year, the Hague Tribunal sentenced Djordjevic to 18 years in prison for war crimes in Kosovo.

The initial investigation into the brothers’ killings focused on three people: Djordjevic, Vlajko Stojiljkovic, a former interior minister who killed himself in 2002, and Goran Radosavljevic, known as ‘Guri’, the former commander of a special police unit and of the Petrovo Selo training centre.

Radosavljevic is now retired, but remains active in politics as a member of the executive board of Serbia’s ruling Progressive Party.

He has been interrogated in relation to the Bytyqi brothers’ deaths, but an indictment against him has not been issued. He has denied any involvement in the crime.

Fatose Bytyqi said on Wednesday that he believed that those responsible for the killing of his brothers are still living in Serbia. Last year, he met current Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, the leader of the Progressive Party, and said that he was promised progress in the case.

“For 15 years, Prime Minister Vucic, Deputy Prime Minister [Ivica] Dacic and their predecessors personally promised me and my family that they would resolve the case.  Yet Goran Radosavljevic remains free and shielded from responsibility while my family remains in an endless state of mourning. We have no justice,” he said.

Serbia has been pressured several times by the US to find the perpetrators, most recently in a resolution in April last year from the US House of Representatives’ Committee on Foreign Affairs.