Serbia mass grave probed, thought to hold hundreds
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
SERBIA started an investigation yesterday into a mass grave believed to contain up to 500 Albanian victims of the Kosovo war, a reminder of why the United Nations is considering independence for the province.
The probe began at an abandoned quarry in no-man's land between checkpoints on the 2km wide boundary dividing Serbia from its southern province, now a UN protectorate.
"We came to check claims that at this location lie the remains of an undetermined number of people," investigative judge Milan Diplaric told reporters. "We don't know if there is even one body."
The site was still unmarked, and journalists were led right over it. Officials would first mark the site and then do a test dig over four to five days, bringing in forensic specialists if they find human remains.
The grave was first mentioned in testimonies given to UN authorities in 2004. Work on the site was due to start months ago, but was postponed because rain water had collected in large puddles that made digging impossible.
A senior Serbian official told Reuters last Monday that, based on data collected through remote sensing on the site, he expected "between 300 and 500 bodies" to be found. He said he believed the bodies were originally buried elsewhere, then dug up, loaded onto four trucks, and dumped at the quarry on June 3, 1999.
That was a week before Nato called a halt to its 78-day bombing campaign over Serbia, after finally forcing Slobodan Milosevic to pull his forces from the territory.
The grave would be the largest discovered in Serbia since 2001, when more than 800 dead Albanians were found in two sites in Serbia, to which the bodies had been trucked. The investigation is a reminder of the rationale behind Nato's "humanitarian" war in 1999, when 10,000 Albanians died and one million fled.Reuters
The probe began at an abandoned quarry in no-man's land between checkpoints on the 2km wide boundary dividing Serbia from its southern province, now a UN protectorate.
"We came to check claims that at this location lie the remains of an undetermined number of people," investigative judge Milan Diplaric told reporters. "We don't know if there is even one body."
The site was still unmarked, and journalists were led right over it. Officials would first mark the site and then do a test dig over four to five days, bringing in forensic specialists if they find human remains.
The grave was first mentioned in testimonies given to UN authorities in 2004. Work on the site was due to start months ago, but was postponed because rain water had collected in large puddles that made digging impossible.
A senior Serbian official told Reuters last Monday that, based on data collected through remote sensing on the site, he expected "between 300 and 500 bodies" to be found. He said he believed the bodies were originally buried elsewhere, then dug up, loaded onto four trucks, and dumped at the quarry on June 3, 1999.
That was a week before Nato called a halt to its 78-day bombing campaign over Serbia, after finally forcing Slobodan Milosevic to pull his forces from the territory.
The grave would be the largest discovered in Serbia since 2001, when more than 800 dead Albanians were found in two sites in Serbia, to which the bodies had been trucked. The investigation is a reminder of the rationale behind Nato's "humanitarian" war in 1999, when 10,000 Albanians died and one million fled.Reuters
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