Those guilty of war crimes must face justice, Kosovo interior minister says

Those responsible for war crimes in Kosovo must be brought to justice, said Minister of Internal Affairs Xhelal Svecla following the arrest of an ethnic Serb who was a prison guard during the 1998-1999 Kosovo-Serbia war.

Svecla said the arrest occurred following a lengthy investigation during which significant evidence was gathered that the suspect had committed war crimes against civilians.

“In his capacity as prison guard in Pristina and the parallel separated from Pristina, specifically in Lipjani prison, during that period, in a systematic way, he is suspected of having exercised torture and inhumane violence against Albanian prisoners, in collaboration and with other persons,” he said.

“During the checks conducted and the raid on the suspect’s apartment today, illegal weapons were found and confiscated in the person’s possession,” he added.

The suspect was apprehended in Gracnica, a Serb-majority enclave in the south of Kosovo. Police officers raided the suspect’s residence and confiscated various items as evidence, including a Zastava 9mm-calibre revolver, gun cartridges, a military knife, a metal bar, documents, and a mobile phone.

Although the suspect was only identified by initials, the Serbian government’s office for Kosovo verified that the individual in question is Dragisa Milenkovic.

According to a statement, Milenkovic was apprehended as part of Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti’s alleged retaliatory scheme aimed at causing suffering to the Serbian population. The statement further claimed that Kurti aimed to coerce the Serbs into abandoning their ancestral home.

Following the arrest, local Serbs gathered to protest and blocked a road leading to the nearby city of Gjilan.

The war was fought between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, led by Belgrade, and the Kosovo Liberalisation Army, made up of ethnic Albanians sparked by persecution, a mass campaign of expulsion and repression against Kosovars, and the murder of up to 2,000 civilians.

Over the course of the war, over one million ethnic Albanians were displaced, thousands were killed, and some 20,000 were raped by Serbian forces. The war ended following a NATO air strike and the signing of the Kumanovo Agreement.

Both sides committed many war crimes during the war, but Human Rights Watch reported that the vast majority were attributable to the government of Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian police, and the Yugoslav army. These include multiple civilian massacres, rape, identity cleansing, forced expulsion and torture.

(Alice Taylor | Exit.al)