 |  |
| Return to: NATO-Yugoslav War Internet Resources | Return to: Left History: a digital archive |
| |
| Return to: NATO-Yugoslav War Internet Resources | Return to: Left History: a digital archive |
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia, Aug. 31 (UPI) Deputy Serb Justice Minister Zoran Balinovac said Monday evening that forensic experts from Nis University in Serbia have not been allowed to go to Pristina to examine 15 bodies of civilians found in a mass grave and said to be those of Serbs massacred in Kosovo, the Belgrade newspaper Blic reported.
Balinovac said that in consequence the Serbian pathologists set off for Kosovo on their own.
This followed a Serbian government request to the International Court of Justice in The Hague to allow Serbian pathologists to examine the grave at the village of Ugljare and other "suspect" mass grave sites to which no answer had been received, Balinovac said.
KFOR troops discovered the bodies in a mass grave at Ugljare on July 24 but moved them to the Pristina hospital morgue only on Aug. 11, Balinovac said. He was quoted by Blic as saying this was contrary to all agreements between Yugoslavia and the international community.
Some Belgrade media have said KFOR acted dishonestly for it had looked for Albanian victims and found Serbian, a fact it had tried to conceal from the world public.
Balinovac also accused the American KFOR peacekeeping force of acting arbitrarily in rejecting a request by several hundred relatives of the victims to attend the autopsies and identification of the bodies. He said the victims mostly came from the village of Raniluga, near Gnjilane.
Blic said it understood KFOR had secured another mass grave in the Ugljare area.