A trial in absentia began Friday at the Pristina Court against 21 people accused of the Recak Massacre - an event that helped spur international intervention to end the 1998-99 war in Kosovo.
Prosecutors accuse them of killing 42 civilians in Reçak, Shtime, about 30 kilometers from the capital, Pristina, during an operation by Serbian police forces during the 1998-99 war.
The defendants - Obrad Stevanović, Radomir Marković, Krsman Jelic, Goran Radosavljević, Živko Trajković, Bogoljub Janičević, Milan Lečić, Radomir Mitic, Dragan Đorgović, Branko Mladenović, Dragan Jasović, Momčilo Sparavalo, Darko Amanović, Srboljub Vujnović, Božidar Marinković, Zoran Stanojević, Milan Josanović, Goran Petković, Dragoslav Nikolić, Čedomir Aksić and Zvonimir Janičević - are accused of committing war crimes against the civilian population.
They are accused of murder, torture and inhumane treatment of the civilian population, destruction of civilian property and expulsion of the civilian population.
According to the indictment, during the years 1998–1999, in the village of Recak, they acted intentionally, in complicity, individually and within the framework of command responsibility, as members of the Army of the former Yugoslavia.
The prosecution has requested that their trial be held in absentia, saying that they are inaccessible to Kosovo's justice bodies.
In his opening remarks, prosecutor Ilir Morina said that the trial should be held in absentia, as “all conditions” have been met. The request was accepted by judge Violeta Namani-Hajra.
The judge emphasized that all legal actions have been taken to notify the defendants and that, according to the data, they are in Serbia.
Summons, arrest warrant, search for the defendant's address in Kosovo, and international arrest warrant are the legal requirements that must be met before an indictment can be filed in absentia.
In the case of Recak, the prosecution said it has met all of these conditions over the past few years.
Prosecutor Morina said that during 2021, summonses were sent to all defendants through international legal assistance, but no response was received.
A year later, at the request of the prosecution, the court issued arrest warrants against them.
According to Morina, the police report shows that none of the defendants were found at the addresses where they lived in Kosovo before the war, nor at any other address within the country. After the arrest warrants were issued in Kosovo, international arrest warrants were also issued.
Their trial was supposed to begin on July 20, but the Basic Court in Pristina postponed it until this Friday due to the lack of legal conditions.
Ramë Shabani, a 60-year-old survivor of the Recak Massacre, told Radio Free Europe before the trial began that - even if the defendants are found guilty and convicted - justice will be lacking.
"I am for a fair verdict. But this cannot bring justice. Those 21 people whose names have been mentioned will never enter Kosovo again and we [Kosovo authorities] will never be able to catch them... Without them in the dock, you can't do anything," he said.
Trial in absentia
Trial in absentia is possible in Kosovo following changes to the Criminal Procedure Code, made in 2022.
However, such trials can only take place on the condition that the prosecution and the court have exhausted all means to ensure the presence of the accused.
However, this Code stipulates that persons tried in absentia have the right to an unconditional retrial if they are later arrested.
Meanwhile, this trial is not the only development related to the Recak Massacre.
On June 12, during a joint operation by the Special Prosecution Office and the Kosovo Police, as part of the war crimes investigation in the case known as "Reçaku II", five people were arrested.
The prosecution announced that the arrested are of Serbian nationality. Meanwhile, the police failed to arrest the sixth person, who was not found at his residence.
The arrested are suspected of having been part of the Serbian police special units that took part in the January operation in Recak.
The documentation of the crimes committed in Racak was done by William Walker, who in 1999 served as head of the Verification Mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
This massacre caused a strong international reaction and increased pressure on the regime in Serbia, which led to talks between representatives of Kosovo Albanians and Serbian authorities, with international mediation, at the Rambouillet Conference in France.
The failure to reach an agreement prompted NATO to bomb military and police targets in the former Yugoslavia for 78 days.
Subsequently, international forces entered Kosovo and Serbian forces and administration left the country.
The Institute for War Crimes in Kosovo has documented 12,230 victims of the 1998-99 war.
Earlier this year, the Special Prosecution Office filed an indictment in absentia against 21 suspects for the forcible expulsion of over 800,000 Albanian civilians from Kosovo during that war. /Taken from Radio Free Europe
