09 Oct 14
A Kosovo official said no bodies were found near the town of Gjakove/Djakovica, where it was suspected that Serb prisoners killed by guerrillas during the 1990s war could be buried.

BIRN
Belgrade, Pristina

The head of the Kosovo government's missing persons commission, Prenk Gjetaj, said that investigators had failed to find any human remains at the site in the village of Piskota, near Gjakove/Djakovica.

"The search of the terrain was finished yesterday at the site of the suspected mass grave. However, nothing was found," Gjetaj told Radio-Television KiM on Wednesday.

Serbia's war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic also confirmed that no bodies had yet been found, but said that the site needs further investigation.

"So far... 30 metres have been searched at a site the size of a stadium," said Vukcevic, Tanjug news agency reported.

Vuckevic pointed out that human remains were only found at the Rudnica quarry in southern Serbia, where bodies of Kosovo Albanian war victims were buried in a mass grave, when the site was searched for the seventh time.

The EU rule-of-law mission in Kosovo, EULEX, which was also involved in the search at Gjakove/Djakovica, declined to comment on the results of the probe.

The Serbian war crimes prosecution said on Monday that it had information that Serbs killed by Kosovo Liberation Army fighters at a detention camp in Likovc/Likovac during the war could be buried in the suspected mass grave.

Crimes against prisoners held at the Likovc/Likovac detention camp form part of the indictment in the ongoing trial of several senior Kosovo Liberation Army ex-officials, including Sylejman Selimi, Pristina’s former ambassador to Tirana and security forces commander, and Sami Lushtaku, the mayor of the Kosovo town of Skenderaj/Srbica.

However the former guerrillas, known as the Drenica Group, are only accused of crimes against Kosovo Albanian prisoners. They have denied the charges.

Previously Selimi and three other KLA fighters were acquitted in another case related to the abuse in the Likovc/Likovac camp.