The Special Prosecutor's Office of Kosovo said on Saturday that five people have been arrested on suspicion of war crimes against the civilian population.
In an announcement from the prosecutor's office, it is stated that after several months of investigations, together with the Kosovo police, they have arrested the persons with the initials DC, DN, NS, SJ, M.Sh., for the criminal offense of war crimes, but without disclosing their nationality .
The Office for Kosovo in the Government of Serbia identified four of those arrested as Dragan Cvetkovic, Dragan Nicic, Milosh Shosic and Slobodan Jevtic from the village of Pasjan in eastern Kosovo.
The prosecution said that the arrested persons “in collaboration with other unidentified members, armed and dressed in camouflage uniforms and non-regular uniforms of the Serbian police or army, on April 5, 1999, in the early hours of the morning, they had undertaken an action in the villages Inatoc (Kokaj), Llovcë, Pogragë and Uglar, where they had deliberately killed, wounded, burned alive Albanian civilian victims, taken hostages, raped, beaten, ill-treated, physically and mentally tortured, looted, destroyed the properties of Albanians their burning, they had expelled the Albanian civilian population, destroyed and abused cultural and religious objects”the announcement states.
The Special Prosecutor's Office said these crimes are punishable under local laws, customs of war and the Geneva Convention.
The Office for Kosovo in the Government of Serbia denied that the arrested were involved in war crimes and accused the Prime Minister of Kosovo, Albin Kurti, that, as stated “continues to terrorize the Serbian people in Kosovo”.
“It is clear that with the new arrests in Pasjan, the anti-Serb regime from Pristina wants to escalate the situation on the ground and make the life of Serbs in Kosovo unbearable”. it is stated in the reaction of the Office for Kosovo in the government of Serbia.
Over 10,000 people were killed and over 5,000 were considered missing at the end of the war in Kosovo, which ended with the intervention of NATO forces, which put an end to the atrocities of the Serbian forces.
According to the data of the Humanitarian Law Fund, since the end of the war, the local and international judicial system has convicted about 70 people for war crimes, most of them of Albanian nationality.
