Unlawful killings and extra-judicial executions during police/military operations
Likosane and Cirez villages, 28 February and 1 March 1998
On 28 February and 1 March 1998 Serbian police killed 26 ethnic Albanians in the villages of Likosane and Cirez (Likoshani and Qirez in Albanian).
Among others, 10 male members of the Ahmeti family, aged between 16 and 50 years, were killed, apparently in extrajudicial executions, in Likosane. Mirsije Ahmeti, whose father and three brothers were killed, was reported in the Belgrade weekly Vreme as describing how the police came to their house at about 4pm on 28 February, ordered the occupants onto the floor at gunpoint, locked the women and children in one room and took the men out. The men were at first believed to be missing and were apparently not counted in the 16 dead first reported by the police (the police in any case did not issue the names of the dead). On 2 March their bodies were seen in the morgue in Pristina (Prishtinë in Albanian), the capital of Kosovo Province, by somebody who was able to identify them and they were returned to the village for burial on 3 March.
Visitors to the scene including representatives of the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre (HLC) observed and photographed blood, teeth and what they believed to be brain tissue on 1 March in the yard of the Ahmeti house. They also observed the words: "This is what will happen next time, too," written in Serbian on the wall. It is unclear whether all of the blood and body parts came from the Ahmetis; one local journalist who visited the scene believed that some traces may have come from an injured KLA fighter who may have come to the yard at some point and that his trail of blood may have led police there.
According to the HLC, 70-year-old Muhamet Djeli and his son Naser were killed in the house opposite that of the Ahmetis. Muhamet was killed in an outbuilding and Naser was killed in the next room in the presence of his wife and two children. He had been hit by a bullet which came through a window that had been covered with a mattress. A trail of blood indicated that he had been dragged outside, but his body was taken to the Pristina morgue by police.
The HLC also reported that although many of the bodies were taken to the morgue, there were no signs that autopsies had been performed on them, nor on the bodies which were left in the village. To Amnesty International's knowledge, to date no investigations have been carried out into the killings.
Killings in Donji Prekaz, 5 and 6 March 1998
Photo:
"Unidentified victim" of
Donji Prekaz massacre.
On 5 and 6 March special police forces carried out another operation around the village of Donji Prekaz, some 10 kilometres from Likosane. At least 56 ethnic Albanians were killed in this operation. The main target of this operation was the home of Adem Jashari. He had been convicted in absentia of “terrorism” in an unfair trial in a court in Pristina in July 1997 and was sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment (the trial is described in the accompanying document Unfair trials and abuses of due process, #4 in this series, AI Index: EUR 70/35/98). In public statements by the police since the trial he had been referred to as being a KLA commander. At the trial itself he was alleged to have received military training in Albania, to have recruited men to fight with the KLA and to have ordered and taken part in armed attacks against the police. [...]
Although the full information about what happened in Donji Prekaz on 5 and 6 March is still not available, Amnesty International is seriously concerned that at least some of those killed were extrajudicially executed and that others may have been unlawfully killed as a result of the excessive force which was used without regard to the fact that women, children and men who were not armed were among those in the houses at the point they were attacked by the police. There appears not to have been any intention to effect the arrest of armed suspects in the village with proper precautions and while minimizing the use of force in order to protect life, as both national and international law requires. Rather, the operation appears to have been carried out as a military operation by forces under apparent orders to eliminate the suspects and their families.
The police operation was carried out or at least led by officers of the Special Police Units (Posebne Jedinice Policije - PJP). These are elite units which are trained for special operations, such as dealing with hijacking. It is impossible to ascertain how many police officers were involved, but it seems likely that there were several hundred men. They were dressed in combat uniform, operated in military formations, and were supported by armoured personnel carriers (APCs) armed with heavy machine guns and cannons of at least 20 millimetre calibre. Besides vehicle- mounted weapons it appears that the police also carried heavy machine guns, rocket- propelled grenade launchers, assault rifles and sniper rifles. Some reports indicate that 81 millimetre mortar rounds were also fired in the attack. Witnesses claimed that much of the police's firing at the village emanated from the disused hunting ammunition factory in the vicinity of the village where they had previously established a presence. This factory appears to have been used as the base for the operation.
