by S.R.
"The murder of those 14 individuals in a field, during a harvest, in Staro Gracko, took place on July 23, 1999. When I arrived there KFOR decided that Serb forensic scientists were not to be permitted to observe the autopsy. They wanted to bury the victims as soon as possible, because the murder took place right in front of them, and the murderers were not found. Already on July 24, it was announced that 15 corpses were found in Ugljari.
"I went to Gnjilane to talk to American officers form the military investigative service. It seemed clear that the victims found in Ugljari were Serbs murdered between July 10 and 14. I found out that people from the Hague Tribunal were also coming based on the invitation of Rugova's LDK.
"Corpses were exhumed from four graves. Autopsies were cursory. Then, on August 11 the corpses were moved to Gnjilane to a freezer. The very same day ethnic Albanians broke those freezers and they were never repaired. So that the freezer not only did not serve its intended purpose but because of heat, which was much worse inside the freezer than outside, the corpses were decomposing faster than they normally would.
"Only on August 30 it was decided that the corpses be moved to Pristina. That day, I went with an American officer, who was in charge of the investigation, I cannot reveal his name, to Pristina to inquire: why was it necessary to move the corpses to Pristina, when it would be better to move them to the village of Ranilug, to the local school? There, the relatives would attempt to identify the corpses and they could be buried in the local cemetery immediately after positive identification. We stopped at the local barracks in Gnjilane where the officer was supposed to report to his superiors. He came back disgusted, threw his helmet on the ground and told me that he had just been taken off the case. 'Because they are Serbs,' I asked. 'Of course they are Serbs,' he said. Soon afterwards two officers who worked on that case were sent back to their bases in Italy and Germany.
"What was going on? It would have been disastrous for the international community if in two days two massacres of Serbs were reported by the media, and that is why they obstructed the identification of the victims from Ugljari. Then on September 2 experts in Pristina had two minutes to inspect each corpse. It was established that six men were not circumcised, i.e. they were not Muslims and most likely were Serbs. Other corpses were in such an advanced state of decomposition that nothing could be established about them."
A depressing story. So far three corpses have been delivered to the families, while nothing is known about the remaining 12.