Dozens interrogated in mass grave probe

B92 News ^ | 27 January 2004

[mark502inf]

BELGRADE -- Tuesday – Police in Serbia have questioned 65 people in connection with a mass grave on the outskirts of Belgrade, B92 learns from the office of the war crimes prosecutor.

The individuals have been interrogated as part of a preliminary criminal investigation, while 44 of 88 potential witnesses have also been interviewed.

According to information seen by B92, so far the remains of 707 ethnic Albanian victims have been exhumed from the mass grave on a police training ground in Batajnica.

The remains of 186 corpses have been identified, and 120 returned to relatives in Kosovo.

The Batajnica mass grave is one of several cases being investigated by Serbia’s war crimes prosecutor, who was appointed in July last year.

[Burkeman1]

Oh- this purports to be a history of me and Hoplite. Enjoy!

[Burkeman1]

My point is this- just post the names of the dead at Racek! How many again? How many women and Children at racek? They were not Muslem Albanian rebels killed in battle?

[Burkeman1]

What are the names? Let me ingvestigate them!

[Britton J Wingfield]

Thank you.

[ma bell]

Burkeman1, if the names were disclosed along with an personal background investigation on those dead, those findings will reveal Albanian to Albanian civil war. Is that a correct assumption, in your opinion that is?

[ma bell]

Joan, did you have a link to the Serb who rode his bicycle last summer through that country and do you know what happened?

[Eva]

It's been too long, I don't have any links to the story, but the gist of it was that the Albanian Muslims in Kosovo were attacking the minority Serbs back in the late eighties. The Muslims had been directed to kidnap and rape the Serbian women and kill the young men. This went on for several years, then Milosovic took over and decided to reverse the situation after requesting help from the outside and receiving a cold shoulder. There were lots of stories about this and the name of the Muslim Mullah that ordered the rapes and killings was known also, but I no longer remember the details. The killings in Serbia were very much a matter of mutual combatants, much like the situation in Israel. The Muslims start something that they cannot finish, and then cry that they are being persecuted.
I have very little sympathy for them.

[ma bell]

Did Tito reshuffle the internal borders to form a larger body of Moslems and Croatiens for topo statistical purposes?

[Eva]

This will give you a brief history of Yugoslavia in the 20th century. The roots of the conflict actually go much deeper, back six hundred years to the enslavement of the Slavs by the Ottoman empire. That is where the word, slave, comes from.

2.3 Communist Yugoslavia

The leader of Communist Yugoslavia from 1946 until his death in 1980 was Josip Broz, known by his World-War-II nom de guerre, Tito. He came to power largely by default: in 1937, Stalin had executed the entire leadership of the Yugoslav Communist Party. In 1948 Stalin accused Tito of heretical beliefs, and Yugoslavia was cut off from aid by the U.S.S.R. and its allies. Tito turned to the West for assistance. Viewing Tito as a bulwark between Russia and the Mediterranean, the U.S. began lavishing foreign aid on Yugoslavia.

Communist Yugoslavia, also known as the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia or SFRY, officially had 2 alphabets (Latin and Cyrillic), 3 religions (Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Muslim), 4 languages (Serbo-Croatian, Slovene, Macedonian, Albanian), 6 republics (Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Serbia, plus Serbia's 2 autonomous provinces, Kosovo and Vojvodina), and 7 major nationalities, including Albanians and Hungarians. Of these Serbs were by far the largest group, at about 40%. "Ethnic diversity" was encouraged, e.g., minorities were guaranteed the use of their native language in local government and elementary schools. Although some ethnic groups demanded independence under Tito, he squelched them with a "return to Leninism" - party purges - and threats of military force. Some credit Tito's taboo on nationalism with keeping Yugoslavia united for 40 years. But while he did forcibly suppress ethnic groups who declared independence, his policy of allowing and encouraging ethnic diversity was essentially an affirmation of tribalism. Tribalism was bound to erupt again once the lid was less securely fastened on the pressure cooker.

After Tito's death in 1980 a collective presidency was established, with one member from each of the 6 republics and the 2 autonomous provinces. This system started to unravel when various ethnic groups once again began demanding autonomy. Slovenia, Croatia and Macedonia declared their independence in 1991, followed by Bosnia in 1992. Serbia and Montenegro, with Serbia's autonomous provinces Vojvodina and Kosovo, then joined to form the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY). Kosovo sought independence in 1999, but has for the time being been repressed.

[ma bell]

Since 1999, Kosovo's independance has been suppressed?

[joan]

PiP 2004

After a good start through the RS in Bosnia, his brakes and bike broke during a steep descent in Srebrenica. After that he travelled to Kosovo and was there in August, around the time the Serb kids were machine gunned while swimming in a river.

[Eva]

The article was written in 2000, I am not sure what the current status of Kosovo is, but the only relationship that the situation there has to the US is the fact that two world wars had their start in that conflict. The discension had a much greater signifcance to our ungrateful ersatz NATO allies. And what thanks did we get, from either Europe or the Muslims?

[joan]

It's odd that they keep the names and official forensic evidence so tightly underwraps. If they've truly been identified and autopsied, what's keeping them from disclosing the information - especially since that make such big international news about it.

I suspect that many were KLA soldiers or members of Rugova's party - rival to KLA leaders. Perhaps some would have even met their death after NATO took over Kosovo, like the three mercenary brothers, and it would prove they were fighting in Serbia and/or transferred to Serbia after the Milosevic regime fell.

I've even written the Serbian government to try and get the names, but no luck. Do you know anyone from there that can get the list of ALL who've been identified and the forensic evidence?

[greenwolf]

It's been too long, I don't have any links to the story, but the gist of it was that the Albanian Muslims in Kosovo were attacking the minority Serbs back in the late eighties. The Muslims had been directed to kidnap and rape the Serbian women and kill...

This what you were looking for?

[Eva]

YES! That's it, that is exactly the article that I was thinking of. Thank you.

[duckln]

The degree of barbarism shown by one murdering despot does not mitigate the barbarism of another.

The degree of barbarism is shown by your type, that 'run' with the kangaroo court's politically motivated contrived accusations.

So far, all the accusations have been stopped dead in their tracks by Milosovic as being untrue. Milosevic claimed at beginning of the 'trial', that all he had on his side was the truth, and he has proven that to me, over the last two years.

Avail yourselves to the 'video archives' of the 'trial' on jurist-law-pitt.edu/.

[ma bell]

Thank You Mr Green, I am finding more reasons to fault the Albanians for this nonsense of abhor we call violence!

Although, I contend to say Hoplite is sharp and astute. My findings is he was there during those episodes of conflict, knowing first-hand accounts or viewing reports.

Many are obtuse, but I will not say whom they tend to be.

[Hoplite]

The Muslims had been directed to kidnap and rape the Serbian women and kill the young men.

This is just another version of the "Jews sacrifice Christian children" method of generating hatred amongst a group by telling them they are being targeted by another group.

Unfortunately, it has worked all too well amongst the groups in the Balkans leading up to their various wars, but, given the lack of hard data to support the claims of what was going on in Kosovo in the 1980's, there's really no good reason to repeat those claims today.

The Kosovar Albanians have their myths about the decades leading up to the war, just like the Serbs, and if you want to go on about how the Albanians were being 'ordered' to kill and rape, then you have to deal with the Serbs poisoning Albanian schoolchildren, but at that point, it has ceased to be about facts, and become a mere hyping contest between opposing victimhood mythologies.

[Hoplite]

My findings is he was there during those episodes of conflict, knowing first-hand accounts or viewing reports.

Wow. And I thought I was in California the whole time and had picked up my information through researching the subject. Whatever - now all you have to do is figure out if I was actually an ustashe, a balija, or a shiptar.

Have fun, and let me know what you figure out, 'cause I'm obviously suffering from an identity disorder if I think I yam what I yam when I ain't.

[Eva]

You may be right, but the source was the NYT, so who knows? No one ever claimed that the NYT was a reliable source, except of course, those on the left.

We never saw any sort of retraction of the story, and this one article that was linked was only one of many. Other articles gave much more details of the rapes and attacks on Serbs. One has to know the agenda of the reporter to judge the accuracy of these stories. Like I said, there was such a long history of conflict in this region that the struggle can best be described as fight between mutual combatants, which we had very little self interest in refereeing. ----and for which we received no thanks from anyone, not even from our ersatz allies in Europe.