Batajnica mass graves explained

The Batajnica mass graves are mass graves that were found in 2001 near Batajnica, a suburb of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. The graves contained the bodies of 744[1] Kosovar Albanians civilians that were killed during the Kosovo War. The mass graves were found on the training grounds of the Yugoslav Special Anti-Terrorist Unit (SAJ).[2] Dead bodies were brought to the site by trucks from Kosovo; most were incinerated before burial.[3] After the war, SAJ restricted investigators' access to the firing range, and continued live-firing exercises whilst forensic teams tried to investigate the massacre.[4]

Background

The Humanitarian Law Center (HLC), a nongovernmental organization based in Serbia and Kosovo, published in their research that the total number of killed during the Kosovo war (a length of time in the research studied from January 1998 to December 31, 2000) estimated at 13,517, when of this number of all killed or missing civilians were: 8 661 Kosovo Albanians, 1797 Serbs, 447 Roma, Bosniaks, and other ethnic minorities.[5] [6]

Milica Kostić, who is a former researcher at the HLC and currently working at the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, said in 2019 that still estimated over 1,600 people missing after the war of in Kosovo, from them: 1,100 Kosovo Albanians, around 450 Serbs, and over 100 Bosniak and Roma victims.[7]

Discovery of mass graves

The work of investigating the Batajnica mass grave began approximately in June 2001 when Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs showed the short video of the exhumation of parts of bodies in the Police Training camp located near the town of Batajnica.[8] The mentions of a mass grave discovered in Batajnica started to appear in the newspapers on September 19, 2001, when first 269 bodies were exhumed.[9] [10]

The Humanitarian Law Center (HLC), a human rights non-governmental organisation, documenting human rights violations happened on the territories of former Yugoslavia,[11] said in the dossier "The Concealment of Bodies Operation", that four mass graves were discovered in Serbia: at Batajnica (744 bodies — discovered in 2001), Kizevak (17 bodies discovered in 2020), Lake Perućac (84 bodies — discovered in 2001), Petrovo Selo (61 bodies — discovered in 2001),[12] and at Rudnica, a village near the border with Kosovo (52 bodies — discovered in 2013).[13] [14]

The HLC said in the dossier "The Concealment of Bodies Operation", that the bodies of Kosovo Albanians were also secretly burned in two locations in Serbia: the Mačkatica Aluminium Complex near Surdulica, the Copper Mining And Smelting Complex in Bor. Also, HLC called the Feronikl Plant in Glogovac, where bodies of Kosovo Albanians were burned, that located in Kosovo's Drenica region.[15]

Press about the covert operation

As the Guardian's diplomatic editor Julian Borger claimed in his article in 2010:

Dejan Anastasijevic, an investigative journalist of the Serbian weekly Vreme, said in 2010 about the bodies found near an SAJ base in Batajnica, that there was the "sanitation" programme, involving the removal of thousands of bodies, that was carried out by Serbia's special counter-terrorist unit, SAJ, to hide war crimes.

Investigation

Vlastimir Djordjevic's trial in ICTY

Vlastimir Djordjevic, who was a Serbian deputy interior minister[16] during Kosovo conflict in Kosovo in 1998 and 1999,[17] was under trial in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 2010 for his role in crimes against Kosovo Albanians, where he admitted that he knew about transferring bodies from one truck found in Danube, and burned bodies found in the second truck in the Lake Perucac, but he didn't know about actual killings. The two trucks were found with bodies of Kosovo Albanians, one in the Danube river in eastern Serbia in early April 1999, from which bodies were transferred to the police's Special Anti-Terrorist Unit Centre in Batajnica, second truck found in the Lake Perucac in western Serbia also in April 1999, from which bodies were burned nearby by Vlastimir Djordjevic. Vlastimir Djordjevic said in the trial he knew that he must investigate the findings of the two trucks, but didn't initiate investigation, that was illegal.

He was sentenced to 18 years in jail for the cover-up operation to hide the dead bodies,[18] [19] as well as for illegal persecution, deportation of Kosovo Albanians during the Kosovo war 1998-99.

Investigation by Belgrade

Until present-day times (September 2021), nobody was accused in Serbian courts for the guilt of the concealment of the killed Kosovo Albanians.[20]

Documentaries

Batajnica Memorial Initiative

There was created an online website, the Batajnica Memorial Initiative, to gather funds for creation of the Batajnica Memorial Site to commemorate the killed people. The virtual Batajnica Memorial Initiative is publishing photographs, documentary, data of killed people, whose bodies were found in Batajnica.[25]

See also

Notes and References

  1. Web site: BIRN to Hold Art Exhibition About Kosovo War Mass Graves . Stojanovic . Milica . November 16, 2020 . December 7, 2020.
  2. Web site: Protected witness on Batajnica mass graves .
  3. Web site: Batajnička arheologija - Druga sezona iskopavanja "hladnjača" - Nedeljnik Vreme . November 6, 2002 .
  4. Web site: Fresh scars on the body of archaeology, excavating mass-graves at Batajnica, Serbia Slobodan Mitrovic - Academia.edu. Mitrovic. Slobodan.
  5. Web site: The Kosovo Memory Book, 1998-2000 . Fond za humanitarno pravo . 2021-10-11.
  6. Web site: List of Kosovo War Victims Published . Domanovic . Milka . December 10, 2014 . Balkan Insight . October 11, 2021 .
  7. Web site: The missing from Kosovo . Kostic . Milica . November 23, 2019 . Pescanik.net . Balkan.Perspectives, No 12, November 2019 . April 14, 2021.
  8. Web site: В сербской могиле нашли 269 тел . . September 19, 2001 . BBC World Service . ru . June 15, 2023 . October 16, 2018 . https://web.archive.org/web/20181016214656/http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/russian/news/newsid_1551000/1551664.stm . bot: unknown .
  9. Web site: 269 Bodies Found Near Belgrade . . September 19, 2001 . Los Angeles Times . June 15, 2023.
  10. Web site: Serbia Exhumes 269 Bodies From Mass Grave . September 19, 2001 . New York Times . June 15, 2023.
  11. Web site: About us . . Humanitarian Law Center. December 8, 2020.
  12. Web site: Secret mass graves in Serbia . . May 5, 2020 . ratusrbiji.rs . Youth Initiative For Human Rights, Belgrade, Serbia . December 8, 2020 . Petrovo Selo is situated in Eastern Serbia near Kladovo. In 1999, this was the location of the Training Centre for Police Special Units (PJP). . November 25, 2020 . https://web.archive.org/web/20201125221543/https://ratusrbiji.rs/en/secret-mass-graves-in-serbia/ . dead .
  13. Web site: Secret mass graves in Serbia . . May 5, 2020 . ratusrbiji.rs . Youth Initiative For Human Rights, Belgrade, Serbia . December 8, 2020 . In the quarry in the village of Rudnica near the border with Kosovo, 52 bodies of Albanian civilians were found. The excavations started in 2007, but the first bodies were found only six years later, that is, in 2013. . November 25, 2020 . https://web.archive.org/web/20201125221543/https://ratusrbiji.rs/en/secret-mass-graves-in-serbia/ . dead .
  14. Web site: Workshop on Secret Mass Graves in Serbia . . December 23, 2019 . Youth Initiative For Human Rights, Belgrade, Serbia . December 8, 2020 .
  15. Web site: The Town Of Glogovac . . hrw.org . December 8, 2020 . The largest town in the Drenica region, Glogovac (Gllogofc in Albanian) lies approximately twenty-five kilometers south-west of Pristina. Prior to the outbreak of Kosovo fighting in March 1998, it had a population of approximately 12,000, almost exclusively ethnic Albanians..
  16. Web site: Bodies of 250 Albanian war victims found in mass grave . May 10, 2010 . France 24 . February 4, 2021.
  17. Web site: Vlastimir Djordjevic: Serbian Official Involved in Kosovo Crimes Cover-Up . Stojanovic . Milica . June 5, 2019 . Balkan Insight . February 4, 2021.
  18. Web site: Serbian Officials Accused of Kosovo Massacre Cover-Up . Djuric . Vanja . January 31, 2017 . Balkan Insight . October 10, 2021.
  19. Web site: Suspected Mass Grave of Kosovo War Victims Found in Serbia . Stojanovic . Milica . Bami . Xhorxhina . November 17, 2020 . Balkan Insight . October 10, 2021.
  20. Web site: War Victims Found in Serbian Mass Grave Repatriated to Kosovo . Isufi . Perparim . September 30, 2021 . Balkan Insight . October 12, 2021 .
  21. Web site: "Depth Two" A Barrier To Contamination Of Memory of Victims . . May 18, 2016 . Humanitarian Law Center/Fond za humanitarno pravo . December 4, 2020 .
  22. Web site: de Castro . Collette . 2016-02-01 . Ognjen Glavonić's Depth Two (Dubina dva, 2016) . 2022-06-05 . East European Film Bulletin . en-US.
  23. Web site: Balkan Investigative Reporting Network: BIRN . . BIRN, Balkan Investigative Reporting Network . December 7, 2020 .
  24. Web site: BIRN's Kosovo War Film Screened in Belgrade . . May 16, 2016 . balkaninsight.com . BIRN, the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network . December 7, 2020 .
  25. Web site: Batajnica Memorial Initiative . . Batajnica Memorial Initiative . December 4, 2020.

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