Eurasia Press & News
The Serbian War Crimes Prosecutor’s Office has called for an investigation to begin at a mass grave site in the southwestern Serbian town of Raska.
Ten days ago Serbia announced that with the help of the EU rule of law mission in Kosovo, EULEX, it had uncovered a mass grave believed to contain the bodies of 250 ethnic Albanian victims from the 1998-99 conflict.
According to a prosecution statement issued on Tuesday, if the existence of a mass grave is confirmed by the investigative judge, exhumations of the remains should begin and autopsies should be conducted in order to identify the victims. It has been suggested that the judge perform the investigation in the presence of EULEX officials.
It has not been determined who killed the people buried at the site in Raska but the bodies are believed to have been unearthed and then re-buried in order to hide evidence of war crimes committed during the rule of Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic.
Referring to previously collected data, daily Danas reported yesterday that members of the Yugoslav Army participated in the transfer of bodies from primary graves around Drenica in May or early June 1999 to a mass grave near Raska.
Meanwhile, the Association of Families of Missing Serbs from Kosovo has announced that it will try to block the exhumation of the grave unless certain conditions are met.
The coordinator of the association, Milos Trifunovic, said that the group will attempt to block the excavation of the grave near Raska if authorities don’t simultaneously exhume mass graves in Kosovo where the group believes Serbs have been buried.
