Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
06PRISTINA282
2006-03-29 14:52:00
UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY
Embassy Pristina
Cable title:  

RETURNS AND MISSING PERSONS FOREVER LINKED IN

Tags:  ICTY KCRM KDEM KJUS PGOV PREF PREL SI YI 
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OO RUEHAG RUEHDA RUEHDF RUEHFL RUEHIK RUEHKW RUEHLA RUEHLN RUEHLZ
RUEHROV RUEHSR RUEHVK RUEHYG
DE RUEHPS #0282/01 0881452
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
O 291452Z MAR 06
FM USOFFICE PRISTINA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 5965
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE
RUCNDT/USMISSION USUN NEW YORK 0629
RHMFISS/CDR USEUCOM VAIHINGEN GE
RUFOADA/JAC MOLESWORTH RAF MOLESWORTH UK
RHFMIUU/AFSOUTH NAPLES IT
RHMFIUU/CDR TF FALCON
RHEFDIA/DIA WASHDC
RUEKJCS/SECDEF WASHINGTON DC
RHEHNSC/NSC WASHDC
RUEAWJA/DEPT OF JUSTICE WASHDC
RUFOANA/USNIC PRISTINA SR
UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 PRISTINA 000282 

SIPDIS

SENSITIVE
SIPDIS

DEPT FOR DRL, INL, EUR/SCE, AND EUR/SSA, NSC FOR BBRAUN,
USUN FOR DSCHUFLETWOSKI, USOSCE FOR SSTEGER

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: ICTY KCRM KDEM KJUS PGOV PREF PREL SI YI
UNMIK
SUBJECT: RETURNS AND MISSING PERSONS FOREVER LINKED IN
WESTERN KOSOVO


Sensitive But Unclassified; Protect Accordingly.

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 PRISTINA 000282

SIPDIS

SENSITIVE
SIPDIS

DEPT FOR DRL, INL, EUR/SCE, AND EUR/SSA, NSC FOR BBRAUN,
USUN FOR DSCHUFLETWOSKI, USOSCE FOR SSTEGER

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: ICTY KCRM KDEM KJUS PGOV PREF PREL SI YI
UNMIK
SUBJECT: RETURNS AND MISSING PERSONS FOREVER LINKED IN
WESTERN KOSOVO


Sensitive But Unclassified; Protect Accordingly.


1. (SBU) SUMMARY. Many ethnic Albanians from parts of Kosovo
that were subjected to violent ethnic cleansing during the
war do not give much thought to the return of their ethnic
Serb neighbors, and they doubt that any of the Serbs want to
come back. For these Albanians any reconciliation with
returning Serbs would have to include the full cooperation of
the returnees in the identification and prosecution of those
responsible for specific atrocities. Albanian leaders from
two southwestern Kosovo villages, ethnically mixed before the
war but completely Albanian since a failed Serbian attempt at
ethnic cleansing in 1999, are coming to grips with their
terrible legacy as the bodies of those killed are slowly
found and returned from Serbia. UNMIK has devoted alarmingly
few resources to pursuit of these cases. In Post's view, the
adjudication of however many of the cases of missing persons
prove to be prosecutable would not guarantee ethnic
reconciliation in Kosovo, but failure to prosecute at least
some of these cases would make the goal of reconciliation all
but unreachable in many parts of Kosovo. END SUMMARY.


2. (SBU) Forty-five individuals whose remains were returned
recently from Serbia were buried in a March 26 ceremony
attended by 2,000, including Prime Minister Agim Ceku, in the
formerly ethnically-mixed village of Krushe e Madhe near
Prizren in southwestern Kosovo. On March 26, 1999, 363 men
and adolescent boys from Krushe e Madhe and Krushe e Vogel
(less than a kilometer away) disappeared after various Serb
forces massed in the area. With the 45 burials on March 26,
107 of the 363 are established as dead and their remains have
been returned to their families. Two men who survived the
1999 events testified during the Hague prosecution of

Slobodan Milosevic that regular Serbian army forces, Serbian
police, and some local Serbs together shot all the Krushe
males after the women and children had been force marched
from the villages. This expulsion-and-murder method of
ethnic cleansing was evidently repeated in several other
villages in western and southwestern Kosovo.


3. (SBU) The entire ethnic Serb populations of the two Krushe
villages fled after the March-June 1999 NATO bombing and no
Serbs have returned. Seven years after these events, the
annual commemorations in both villages have taken on a
strange aspect of celebration mixed with grief. In this
context E/P chief, attending this year's services, found
villagers more than willing to discuss what they see as slim
prospects for ethnic reconciliation in the area. Rexhep
Hoti, who was well known to USOP during his time as a
political advisor to former Prime Minister Bajram Rexhepi,
grew up in Krushe e Madhe and counted four cousins among the
45 victims buried on March 26. Hoti left the village well
before the war but visits often and said his relatives there
were hit hard by the repatriation of the remains because many
of them had been clinging to an irrational belief that their
missing were held captive in secret camps in Serbia. He said
that many of his cousins even now insist that
Harvard-educated Ukshin Hoti, the pride of the extended
family, is alive in Serbia.


4. (SBU) Hoti said his Krushe e Madhe relatives have never
seriously considered the idea of Serbs returning to the
village, adding that he could not imagine that any of them
would want to. He said that most Serb properties were
destroyed in June 1999 when surviving Albanians returned from
their forced exile. Although Hoti thanked E/P chief for
attending the commemoration, he noted that there was
virtually no other international or UNMIK presence, a
circumstance he sees as typical of an international community
he believes has little interest in finding justice for the
victims of Serbian aggression. E/P chief replied that his
own presence was unannounced and that other international
representatives likely stayed away so as not to intrude on
the privacy of the families.


5. (SBU) E/P chief also talked at the commemoration with

PRISTINA 00000282 002 OF 002


Agron Limani, a frequent USOP contact who teaches computer
science in a Prizrin high school and who grew up in Krushe e
Vogel where he still lives. He was away from the village on
March 26, 1999 but lost his brother that day. He now heads
an association of the families of missing persons and
particularly tries to generate employment for the wives of
missing persons. Limani has no illusions about the fate of
his brother and devotes much of his free time to trying to
motivate the international community to investigate and
prosecute these cases.


6. (SBU) Limani knew virtually all the adult Serbs from both
villages. He has carefully interviewed all the women who saw
events unfold from March 24, 1999, when he said Serbian
troops and police first arrived, until March 26 when the
Albanian women and children were marched out. He also talks
regularly with the few men who survived. Limani believes his
research reveals a fairly full picture of those local Serbs
who were complicit in the massacre and those who merely
tolerated it. None of them tried to stop it as far as he can
determine.


7. (SBU) Like Hoti, Limani can't imagine that any Krushe
Serbs want to return. He is open to the possibility and said
he would welcome back some of the Serbs with whom he grew up.
First, though, he says there must be justice. He brought up
the reconciliation process that has unfolded in South Africa
and noted that reconciliation there included a great many
prosecutions in courts of law, something that has not
happened in Kosovo. (COMMENT. Limani seems to be unaware
that confessions of guilt were generally followed by pardons
in the South African reconciliation process. END COMMENT.)
He sees the Krushe e Vogel case as a very simple one
involving eye witnesses, recovered bodies, and the positive
identification of several of the alleged perpetrators.


8. (SBU) COMMENT. The mandate of the International Criminal
Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia to develop new cases
having expired, UNMIK is the sole authority in Kosovo with
jurisdiction over war-related crimes and missing persons
cases. International police and prosecutors have some 5,000
war-related files, most of which derive from 50 or so
incidents. Most of these cases allege Serb-on-Albanian
violence, but some allege Albanians as perpetrators and Serbs
or Albanians as victims. USOP has long pushed UNMIK to wade
through these files with a view to prosecuting those cases
that UNMIK DOJ deems prosecutable. UNMIK has shown little
interest. The briefest of drop-bys to Krushe or area
villages would amply demonstrate the obstacles confronting
international community efforts to encourage returns without
dealing with missing persons cases. END COMMENT.


9. (SBU) Post clears this cable in its entirety for release
to UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari.
GOLDBERG