Serbia Convicts Yugoslav Army Soldiers of Kosovo Village Massacres
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Memorial for Kosovo Albanians killed in the attack on the village of Qyshk/Cuska in 1999. Photo: BIRN.
Belgrade Higher Court on Wednesday found seven former members of the 177th Yugoslav Army Unit guilty of war crimes for their involvement in deadly attacks on four villages in the Peja/Pec area in April and May 1999 during the Kosovo war.
The 177th Yugoslav Army Unit’s commander, Toplica Miladinovic, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for knowingly ordering his subordinates to commit war crimes and other violations of the Geneva Conventions in the villages of Lubeniq/Ljubenic, Qyshk/Cuska, Pavlan/Pavljan, Zahaq/Zahac in April and May 1999.
Six members of the unit were also given prison sentences. Predrag Vukovic was sentenced to 13 years in jail, Abdulah Sokic to 12 years, Sinisa Misic to five years, and Slavisa Kastratovic, Boban Bogicevic and Lazar Pavlovic to two years.
Two other defendants, Veljko Koricanin and Milan Ivanovic, were acquitted.
According to the indictment, the 177th Yugoslav Army Unit attacked the village of Lubeniq/Ljubenic on April 1, 1999 and the villages of Qyshk/Cuska, Pavlan/Pavljan, Zahaq/Zahac on May 14, 1999.
During the attack, the defendants and other unit members allegedly burned houses, killed Kosovo Albanian civilians and forced others to leave their homes. At least 118 ethnic Albanians were killed, according to the indictment.
The defendants were initially convicted in 2014 and sentenced to a total of 106 years in jail, but the appeal court reversed the verdict in 2015 and sent the case for retrial.
Presiding judge Vladimir Duruz said that the retrial tried to address all the remarks made by the appeals court.
“The most important one was to ensure that witnesses physically come to testify in Belgrade, which was not always possible,” said Duruz.
Most of the witnesses were Kosovo Albanians, and some of their previous testimonies were read during the retrial hearings because they did not appear in court in Belgrade.
Wednesday’s retrial verdict came after a marathon legal process that started when the former soldiers first went on trial in 2010.
The retrial then lasted for almost nine years and was marred by delays and the repeated postponements of hearings. Almost half of the 62 hearings were postponed.
Wednesday’s verdict can be appealed within 30 days.
During wartime, 177th Yugoslav Army Unit was under the command of the 125th Motorised Brigade of the Yugoslav Army. Its commander Dragan Zivanovic was investigated over the attacks on the four Kosovo villages but the investigation was dropped.
BIRN’s feature-length documentary ‘The Unidentified’, released in 2015, investigated the commanders who ordered the attacks on the four villages and the removal of the victims’ bodies to mass graves near Belgrade in Serbia in an attempted cover-up.
