The remains of three Serbian citizens killed in the war in Kosovo should be handed over to the authorities in Serbia today at the Merdare border crossing, it says. Radio Free Europe.
Director of the Institute for Forensic Medicine of Kosovo, Ditor Haliti, stated that these remains have been in the Institute since the end of the war, but that their identification was a problem.
He said that the bodies could not be identified because the family members did not provide blood samples for identification.
He added that family members' blood samples were taken last year and that, together with additional DNA samples, they yielded results on the basis of which the victims were identified.
The authorities in Belgrade have announced that they will take over the bodies, stating that, according to their data, those three people were killed in Ferosevac, Prizren and Pristina in 1999.
The Commission for Missing Persons of Serbia announced that their representatives will accept the remains of two persons, while the remains of the third person will be taken over by his family.
The most drastic in Kosovo
The President of the Commission, Veljko Odalović, stated at the end of May that, when it comes to the disappeared, the most drastic situation is in Kosovo.
He stated that the Commission for Missing Persons had not been to any location it was interested in for six years, and that there had been no invitation from Pristina to do so.
"Representatives of Serbia dealing with the issue of the missing were not invited to the morgue in Pristina, where there are more than 300 bodies, of which at least 90 are of Serbian nationality," Odalović said.
He assessed that it can be concluded from this that Pristina is obstructing the process of finding and identifying the missing, "always to the detriment of the Serbs".
Odalović said that there are numerous, very precisely described and determined locations, with coordinates, which the Commission knows about and has informed Pristina about, but that there is no will in Pristina to investigate them.
KFOR's responsibility
He pointed out that the biggest problem is with the areas of responsibility of the American contingent of KFOR in 1999, British, French, Italian and German.
Odalović stated that at that time there were 50.000 well-equipped and armed KFOR soldiers who were supposed to ensure peace and provide security, and that he particularly insults that they allowed the crimes to happen.
He stated that in the zone of the American KFOR contingent, 64 more people are missing, and that 54 people have been identified, while 120 people are missing in the territory secured by the German KFOR contingent, of which 117 have been identified.
He added that in the zone of the British KFOR contingent, 119 people are missing, and that 73 people have been identified, while in the territory under the control of the French KFOR contingent, 46 people are missing, of which 23 have been identified.
In the area of jurisdiction of the Italian contingent of KFOR, 219 persons have disappeared, and 115 have been identified.
"This means that another 565 people are missing." These are people who were 60, 70, 80 years old. It speaks of that bestiality, the monstrosity of everything and the silence of the international community over it. We are asking them to give us information, to give us documentation, to simply be someone who will solve part of these severe inherited traumas and problems, and all in the function of solving the fate of the missing for the sake of their families," Odalović said.
About 13.000 people were killed in the war in Kosovo
According to data that Radio Free Europe had access to, during the war in Kosovo, around 13.000 people were killed, of which 10.794 were Albanians and 2.119 were Serbs, while the rest belonged to other ethnic groups.
Of the approximately 6.000 people who forcibly disappeared at the time, more than 1.600 people are still missing today.
According to the data of the Commission of the Government of Kosovo for Missing Persons, in 2023, 15 locations related to the process of elucidating cases of missing persons and one location in Serbia were excavated in Kosovo.
