Special Prosecution of Kosovo announced that an ethnic Albanian from Serbia has been detained for committing war crimes against civil population.
M.A is suspected to have participated in a massacre in the Izbica village in Kosovo, in which Serbian forces killed 156 Albanians in 1999.
The Izbica Massacre is one of the worst committed by Serbia in Kosovo during the war. The village was seen as a safe place for residents of the surrounding area because of its geographical position, surrounded with mountains.
Thousands of Kosovo Albanians went there in March 1999 when NATO started a bombing campaign against the Serbian regime of Slobodan Milosevic.
On March 27, the village was attacked by Serbian forces. The following day they entered the village, while most Albanian men were able to flee to the mountains.
Amnesty International wrote that group of women, children and elderly men abandoned the town and gathered in a field, carrying a white sheet to indicate that their surrender.
Emona Behramaj, one of the witnesses told Amnesty International that soldiers wearing camouflage uniforms and bandannas approached the group.
Men were separated from the women and taken away. They were lined up in two rows, and told to turn their backs. The soldiers then opened fire on the group with automatic weapons.
“Bodies fell on top of him and he was able to feign death until the soldiers left,” Amnesty International wrote quoting one of the witnesses.
Of the 156 executed, bodies of 131 of them have been identified so far. There are 15 other bodies yet to be found.
