New Kosova Report

400 bodies still unidentified in Kosovo

Monday, 08 September 2008

Identification of the mortal remains of 400 victims murdered by Serbian forces, now stored at the Pathological Medical Institute in Prishtina, is being delayed due to DNA examinations taking place in Zagreb, Croatia, nine years after the war ended in Kosovo.

The Chairman of the Committee for Missing Persons, Prenk Gjetaj, said that "Kosovar government institutions in cooperation with International Red Cross are working on identifying these mortal remains."

Gjeta gives several reasons regarding the obstacles and delays on identifying the mortal remains of 400 people.

"The identification of corpses after the war has been done in a classic way and there have been cases where bodies were not correctly identified. However, today, the identification of bodies is being done based on DNA tests," said chairman Gjetaj.

Gjetaj appeals to all families of lost persons to come to the Medical Institute of Pathology for blood tests in order to be able to match the DNA of the unidentified mortal remains.

After the war, the International Red Cross obtained evidence of around 6,000 missing persons. Today there are still over 2,000 missing persons, some of which may have been taken away to Serbia when Serb forces retreated from Kosovo in early June 1999.

Except for cases when random bystanders have stumbled on mass graves in Serbia, Belgrade has refused to open security apparatus files dealing with this sensitive matter.

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robert-0 said:

...
This lingering issue of the missing is one near and dear to my heart. i interviewed a formerly prominent Kosovar Albanian politician last month, for a book we are working on (I'm sure his name is familiar to most of you but i prefer not to use it for the moment.) He was, at one time, a major (albanian) figure in Yugoslavia, and also a political prisoner under milosevic.

At any rate, he told me that there are some 2,000 Albanians still missing (2,230) and about 800 Serbs. These figures seems a bit high to me, but he knows more about such matters than I.

As for the albanian missing, he related a very interesting story, and later i found some stories on the web that were along the same lines (not that that proves it.) according to our source, the progressive Serbian politician Nenad Canak once related the details of a meeting that he, canak, attended with (then) Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic and serbian interior minister mihalovic. it was probably around 2002(?) The minister stated, "We know of 14 mass graves in Serbia with Albanian victims from 1999 -- what shall we do about it?" and djindjic was reported to have replied:
"That question should not be opened now..."

i've attempted to confirm this with Canak, with no success (yet). but it would appear to many of us that there remain other mass graves inside Serbia "proper," not to mention the issue of bodies that were industrially incinerated. tragically, most of these graves may never be uncovered unless we can find witnesses that will talk -- and in serbia such "leaks" are a dangerous game, indeed.

as for the Serb missing, there are at least 100s still missing. Even if those sordid tales of kla kidnappings and organ removals were brought mainly to boost sales of La del Ponte's tell-all book, this remains a disturbing statistic, and disturbing reality to many families.

So -- i think that we all have a responsibility to press our individual govt's to do what they can to resolve this so-called enigma.

and i have a special and pressing interest: my mother's family members (jewish) were mass murdered in poland (by the Nazis, presumably with polish collaboration), and their exact fates have remained a mystery; an open sore for us -- for me -- until this day. i feel so strongly that such should not be the fates of all of these hundreds, thousands of families...

thank you and felamendaret. i invite more comments.

robert-o
frisco/sarajevo
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