Flag of Kosovo (Illustration), Photo: Shutterstock
The Kosovo Special Prosecution Office has filed an indictment in absentia against 21 former members of the Yugoslav Army (VJ) and the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MUP) for alleged war crimes in the village of Racak in 1999, it was announced today.
According to the indictment, on January 15, 1999, they killed 42 Albanian civilians in that village in the municipality of Å timlje.
“The accused first surrounded Racak and then shelled the village from a distance, searched house by house and separated men from women and children, forcing them to leave the village, while executing the men they had detained,” the indictment states.
It is added that as members of the Serbian MUP and the 243rd Mechanized Brigade of the Pristina Corps of the VJ, they participated in “inhumane treatment, destruction of property, mass expulsion and ethnic cleansing of the civilian population” during 1998 and 1999.
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