The Special Prosecutor’s Office of Kosovo said on Friday that since assuming responsibility for prosecuting war crimes, it has filed 33 indictments involving 89 people, most of them accused in absentia. Among them are the accusations raised recently for the massacre of Meja in the municipality of Gjakova and that in the prison of Dubrava in the municipality of Istog, described as two of the most serious events during the war in Kosovo.
“A total of 53 people have been charged in the indictment for the massacre in Meja. The first part of the indictment includes the group of five people who planned the massacre of Meja. The second part includes the group of 11 defendants who, in collaboration with the first group, implemented the plan for the massacre of Meja. The third group with 37 defendants are direct executors who committed the massacre or in some other way contributed to its commission,” said Drita Hajdari from the War Crimes Department within the Special Prosecutor’s Office.
On April 27, 1999, in the village of Mejë in the municipality of Gjakova, 370 Albanians were killed and disappeared by Serbian forces.
Meanwhile, from May 19 to 24, 1999, 160 Albanian prisoners were killed and more than 300 others were injured inside Dubrava prison.
“There are 88 defendants under investigation for the case of the Dubrava massacre and this investigation has been going on for a long time because it is a case inherited from the EULEX mission. At the moment, we have only one defendant in custody and the urgency of proceeding with the case against him is a legal reason”, said prosecutor Ilir Morina, underlining that the investigation and collection of evidence for the other defendants is ongoing and will be treated with priority during next year.
After the end of the war in Kosovo, the responsibility for the prosecution of war crimes was initially held by the United Nations Mission, and then by the European Union Mission for the Rule of Law. Somewhere from the beginning of 2016, the Special Prosecutor’s Office of Kosovo started receiving cases, to take responsibility for all cases at the end of 2018.
According to the officials of this prosecution, the low number of prosecutors and the lack of cooperation from Serbia present two of the biggest challenges in the prosecution of war crimes.
“The perpetrators of these criminal offenses were not in Kosovo, most of them are in Serbia, while the victims and witnesses are in Kosovo. This has presented a great difficulty in bringing indictments because we have not been able to do such a thing without interrogating the defendants. But this has not stopped us and we have continuously developed the investigations, collected the evidence, interviewed the witnesses and even obtained the evidence from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia”, said Mrs. Hajdari.
According to the Fund for Humanitarian Law in Kosovo, more than 70 people have been convicted by local and international institutions for war crimes.
The head of this institution, Bekim Blakaj, told the Voice of America that the criminal prosecution of war crimes is far from the right level.
“We are not satisfied, and we are even less satisfied with the epilogue of these processes. Recently, there are some processes that have been completed in a faster time frame, but in general they are taking too long, they are returning to retrial and so on. So there are no verdicts as there are indictments filed so far”, he said.
The main factor that causes stagnation in this process is the lack of cooperation between the prosecutor’s offices in Kosovo and Serbia, says Mr. Blakaj.
“The prosecuting bodies of Kosovo have not been able to reach the vast majority of suspects because they do not live in Kosovo, most live in Serbia and since there is no such cooperation between the prosecutor’s offices, the Kosovo prosecutor’s office does not have access, they do not even know the addresses and the latter, even if he knows the addresses, cannot send an invitation to the suspect to be notified,” he says.
During the first open meeting of the Institute for the Research of Crimes Committed during the War, which is expected to be operational soon, Prime Minister Albin Kurti said that peace requires justice and rehabilitation, emphasizing that neither has happened in Kosovo.
“No one should pretend that we will easily solve all the problems that have been caused for 24 years. It will be hard, very hard. People are tired, victims have lost faith in the system, generations are dying every day, and thus the primary memory of the war is being lost. This is a great danger, which threatens us and which we dare not allow to happen”, he said.
Kosovo emerged from the war that ended with the intervention of NATO, with over 10,000 killed and over 5,000 missing. A large part of the bodies were found in mass graves in Serbia where they were sent by the Serbian forces in an attempt to hide the traces of their atrocities.