Batajnica mass graves

The Batajnica mass graves, are graves that were found in 2001 near Batajnica, a suburb of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. The graves contained 744[1] Kosovo Albanians, civilians, killed during the 1998-99 Kosovo War.[2]

The mass graves were found on the training grounds of a Serbian military unit, the Special Anti-Terrorist Unit (SAJ).[3]

Dead bodies were brought to the site by trucks from Kosovo; most were incinerated before burial.[4] After the war, SAJ restricted investigators' access to the firing range, and continued live-firing exercises whilst forensic teams tried to investigate the massacre.[5]

Background

Reuters published (in 2020) a number of estimated more than 13,000 people died and missing during the 1998-99 war in Kosovo, that ended in 1999 after NATO air strikes against former Yugoslavia. As Reuters reported, the victims of the war were mainly ethnic Albanians.[6]

Discovery of mass graves

The Humanitarian Law Center (HLC), a human rights non-governmental organisation, documenting human rights violations happened on the territories of former Yugoslavia,[7] said in the dossier "The Concealment of Bodies Operation", that four mass graves were discovered in Serbia: at Batajnica (744 bodies — discovered in 2001), Lake Perućac (84 bodies— discovered in 2001), Petrovo Selo (61 bodies — discovered in 2001),[8] at Rudnica, the village near the border with Kosovo (52 bodies — discovered in 2013).[9][10]

The HLC said in the dossier "The Concealment of Bodies Operation", that the bodies of Kosovo Albanians were also secretly burned in two locations in Serbia: the Mačkatica Aluminium Complex near Surdulica, the Copper Mining And Smelting Complex in Bor. Also, HLC called the Feronikl Plant in Glogovac, where bodies of Kosovo Albanians were burned, that located in Kosovo's Drenica region.[11][10]

Press about the covert operation

As the Gusrdian's diplomatic editor Julian Borger claimed in his article in 2010:

Serb forces conducted mass killings in ethnic Albanian villages in 1998 and 1999, burying most of the victims close to the site of the killing. But when it became clear that Nato would intervene, the Milosevic government ordered the bodies to be dug up and moved elsewhere in Serbia and Serb-controlled Bosnia.[12]

Dejan Anastasijevic, an investigative journalist of the Serbian weekly Vreme, said in 2010 about the bodies found near an SAJ base in Batajnica, that there was the "sanitation" programme, involving the removal of thousands of bodies, that was carried out by Serbia's special counter-terrorist unit, SAJ, to hide war crimes.[12]


Investigation. Vlastimir Djordjevic's trial

Vlastimir Djordjevic, who was a Serbian deputy interior minister[13] during Kosovo conflict in Kosovo in 1998 and 1999,[14] was under trial in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in 2010[13] for his role in crimes against Kosovo Albanians, where he admitted that he knew about transferring bodies from one truck found in Danube, and burned bodies found in the second truck in the Lake Perucac, but he didn't know about actual killings. The two trucks were found with bodies of Kosovo Albanians, one in the Danube river in eastern Serbia in early April 1999, from which bodies were transferred to the police's Special Anti-Terrorist Unit Centre in Batajnica, second truck found in the Lake Perucac in western Serbia also in April 1999, from which bodies were burned nearby by Vlastimir Djordjevic. Vlastimir Djordjevic said in the trial he knew that he must investigate the findings of the two trucks, but didn't initiate investigation, that was illegal.[14]

Documentaries
  • "Depth Two" is a documentary directed by Ognjen Glavonić about the mass grave in Batajnica with bodies of Kosovo Albanians, civilians, killed during Kosovo war, the mass grave was discovered in 2001.[2]
  • "The Unidentified" is a documentary shot by Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN[15]). "The Unidentified" received the best short documentary award at the 2016 South East European Film Festival in Los Angeles. The film tells story of killing of Albanian civilians by Serbian fighters in Kosovo in 1999, whose remains were burned, some of them found at the Batajnica in 2001.[1][16]

Batajnica Memorial Initiative

There was created an online website, the Batajnica Memorial Initiative, to gather funds for creation of the Batajnica Memorial Site to commemorate the killed people. The virtual Batajnica Memorial Initiative is publishing photographs, documentary, data of killed people, whose bodies were found in Batajnica.[17]

See also

References
  1. Stojanovic, Milica (November 16, 2020). "BIRN to Hold Art Exhibition About Kosovo War Mass Graves". Retrieved December 7, 2020.
  2. ""Depth Two" A Barrier To Contamination Of Memory of Victims". Humanitarian Law Center/Fond za humanitarno pravo. May 18, 2016. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  3. http://www.b92.net/eng/news/crimes.php?yyyy=2007&mm=02&dd=25&nav_id=39816
  4. http://www.vreme.com/cms/view.php?id=325025
  5. https://www.academia.edu/831207/Fresh_scars_on_the_body_of_archaeology_excavating_mass-graves_at_Batajnica_Serbia
  6. "Serbia unearths mass grave from Kosovo war". Reuters. December 4, 2020. Retrieved December 8, 2020.
  7. "About us". Humanitarian Law Center. Retrieved December 8, 2020.
  8. "Secret mass graves in Serbia". ratusrbiji.rs. Youth Initiative For Human Rights, Belgrade, Serbia. Retrieved December 8, 2020. Petrovo Selo is situated in Eastern Serbia near Kladovo. In 1999, this was the location of the Training Centre for Police Special Units (PJP).
  9. "Secret mass graves in Serbia". ratusrbiji.rs. Youth Initiative For Human Rights, Belgrade, Serbia. Retrieved December 8, 2020. In the quarry in the village of Rudnica near the border with Kosovo, 52 bodies of Albanian civilians were found. The excavations started in 2007, but the first bodies were found only six years later, that is, in 2013.
  10. "Workshop on Secret Mass Graves in Serbia". Youth Initiative For Human Rights, Belgrade, Serbia. December 23, 2019. Retrieved December 8, 2020.
  11. "The Town Of Glogovac". hrw.org. Retrieved December 8, 2020. The largest town in the Drenica region, Glogovac (Gllogofc in Albanian) lies approximately twenty-five kilometers south-west of Pristina. Prior to the outbreak of Kosovo fighting in March 1998, it had a population of approximately 12,000, almost exclusively ethnic Albanians.
  12. Borger, Julian (May 10, 2010). "Kosovo Albanian mass grave found under car park in Serbia". Guardian. Retrieved December 7, 2020.
  13. "Bodies of 250 Albanian war victims found in mass grave". France 24. May 10, 2010. Retrieved February 4, 2021.
  14. Stojanovic, Milica (June 5, 2019). "Vlastimir Djordjevic: Serbian Official Involved in Kosovo Crimes Cover-Up". Balkan Insight. Retrieved February 4, 2021.
  15. "Balkan Investigative Reporting Network: BIRN". BIRN, Balkan Investigative Reporting Network. Retrieved December 7, 2020.
  16. "BIRN's Kosovo War Film Screened in Belgrade". balkaninsight.com. BIRN, the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network. May 16, 2016. Retrieved December 7, 2020.
  17. "Batajnica Memorial Initiative". Batajnica Memorial Initiative. Retrieved December 4, 2020.

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