293 victims of Albanian extremists identified

Belgrade, Feb 20, 2009 – Today in Pristina the Serbian government Committee for Missing Persons will take over the remains of three victims whom Albanian terrorists kidnapped and murdered in Kosovo-Metohija in 1999.

The committee will hand over the remains of two Serbs and one Roma from Podujevo, Pec and Dragas to their closest relations.

President of the Committee for Missing Persons Veljko Odalovic told the Tanjug news agency that including these three victims, so far a total of 293 victims of Serbian, Roma and other nationalities have been identified, adding that the Serbian side is still looking for another 542 missing persons.

According to the list harmonised by the Belgrade and Pristina joint working group, a total of 3,300 persons went missing in the province during the NATO bombing, said Odalovic, adding that the fate of 1,918 victims has been determined.

He said that the remains of another 400 persons are still in the Pristina morgue because it is impossible to identify them since their DNA does not match the samples given by the families and relatives of the persons who are still missing.

This means we will have to determine whose bodies are these and whether the Hague investigators misidentified some victims in 1999 and 2000, said Odalovic.

The Committee for Missing Persons therefore demands that this matter be resolved as soon as possible and a serious investigation carried out into the trade in organs of around 300 Serbs, kidnapped by the Kosovo Liberation Army and secretly transferred to Albania, where they were murdered, said Odalovic.

Odalovic recalled that Serbia has fulfilled its obligations and handed over the remains of around 800 Albanians from mass graves in Batajnica, Petrovo Selo and Perucac.

However, the Albanian side has not done the same although there are several mass graves in Kosovo-Metohija, noted Odalovic, stressing that the committee will demand that these mass graves be opened as soon as possible.