Kosovo: Pathologist Tells of Civilian Killings

Kosovo: Pathologist Tells of Civilian Killings

More than 100 Kosovo Albanians were gunned down in the village of Izbica, says witness.

By Aleksandar Roknic in The Hague (TU No 478, 24-Nov-06)

A pathologist who examined the bodies of more than 100 Albanians who died in an attack on the Kosovo village of Izbica this week told the Hague trial of six former Serbian high-ranking officials that the majority were civilians who had been shot by automatic weapons.Gordana Tomasevic from the Belgrade Army Medical Academy, VMA, said it was the former chief of the general staff of the Yugoslav Army, Nebojsa Pavkovic, who ordered her to conduct the post mortems, nearly two months after their deaths in March 1999.

According to the indictment against Pavkovic, Milan Milutinovic, Nikola Sainovic, Dragoljub Ojdanic, Sreten Lukic and Vladimir Lazarevic, 4,500 villagers from Izbica and the surrounding area found refuge in a meadow when Yugoslav forces shelled the village on March 27. One hundred and sixteen men were separated from the women and children and killed the following day by Serbian troops near the village, the indictment says.The six are accused of responsibility for war crimes in Kosovo during 1998 and 1999, including the killing of hundreds of Kosovo Albanians and the forcible transfer of an estimated 800,000.

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Kosovo: Pathologist Tells of Civilian Killings

technorati tags:Kosova, Kosovo, war, crimes, Yugoslavia, Serbia, trial, ICTY

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