Relatives mourn Serb victims

INTERNATIONAL forensic teams yesterday confirmed the remains of 22 Serbs had been recovered from a mass grave in western Kosovo, the latest "missing" victims of the 1998-1999 war to be found.

Laying white roses and lighting candles, a small group of black-clad Serbs gathered at the dank and muddy entrance to the cave hidden in oak forests near the village of Dush in western Kosovo where the bodies were discovered.

Scattered around them in the sodden earth lay small white numbered tags, each indicating the exact spot in the rocky soil where the remains of a body had been found.

International United Nations policemen from America and Latvia stood behind them, while a team of forensics experts from Peru, Canada, Ireland, Guatemala and France stood back and let the Serbs examine the last resting place of their relatives.

On the rocks around them and on the top of the cliff above the cave, Indian riot policemen and German soldiers kept watch, while a NATO military helicopter thwacked through the hot spring sun overhead.

Cow bells rang as groups of brown and grey cattle drifted through the woods, grazing, the pastoral scene masking the macabre truth of the mass grave.

For the agonised and crying relatives who were bussed to the site yesterday under heavy UN police escort it was a chance to express grief for menfolk not seen for nearly seven years.

By yesterday afternoon the black, sodden mud of the cave floor had yielded up the remains of nearly two dozen people.

Dumped under a camouflaging layer of old cars, animal bones, earth and rubbish, the human remains and fragments of clothing were meticulously gathered in plastic evidence bags by the white boiler-suited experts, digging away on their hands and knees.

"This is the substance of missing people," said the team leader, Peruvian forensic anthropologist Jose-Pablo Baraybar, who heads up the office of missing persons and forensics, or OMPF, in Kosovo.

The issue of "the Missing", as it is colloquially known in post-conflict zones like Kosovo, is hugely emotive and politicised.

The two-year conflict between Kosovo’s Albanians and the atrocity-prone Serb soldiers and policemen of ex-president Slobodan Milosevic left up to 11,000 people dead, mainly ethnic Albanians.

Kosovo has been administered as an international protectorate by the UN since June 1999, where some 18,000 NATO troops ride shotgun for security.

More than 3,000 people, both Serbs and Albanians, are still officially registered as "missing or disappeared", and the Serb bodies found in the mine are possibly those of people abducted by Albanian guerrilla fighters from the Kosovo Liberation Army, or KLA.

They have been identified by cross-referencing DNA from the bodies with that gathered and kept in a data bank from their relatives.

"Between 17th and 18th July, 1998, fighters from the KLA abducted a number of people from families from two [Kosovo] villages around Orahovac," said Vesna Boskovic, a Serb representative who had accompanied the relatives on the bus trip from Nis in neighbouring Serbia.

"They’ve been in the dark for the last seven years," she added, saying that when the families got a phone call last week from Mr Baraybar’s office they knew that there was no more hope.

The Serbs had gathered in the spring sun on the litter-strewn ridgeline overlooking the ravine where the bodies were dumped and, sobbing and clutching bundles of flowers, were escorted down the muddy, precipitous path to the cave.

The scene around them on the ridge was one very typical of internationally-administered post-conflict areas like Kosovo.

German NATO soldiers were responsible for providing the physical security of the site; as The Scotsman arrived, a German paratroop lieutenant snapped to attention and saluted smartly.

Trim and dapper Indian riot policemen in blue and black camouflage had escorted the Serb families, and sat quietly in their white UN armoured vehicles eating picnics from lunch-boxes.

German soldiers served up fish-burgers with tartar sauce from a mobile canteen, Swiss soldiers lounged by a stone wall, a polite Nepalese UN policeman noted everybody’s names down on a clipboard, and two Italian soldiers stood around taking pictures.

As the Serb families were led back up the slope, their screaming and wailing grew louder, culminating in an apogee of grief when one woman, sobbing hysterically, dramatically fainted. "She wanted to kiss the bones," said Ms Boskovic, standing nearby and watching.