"New York Times journalist saw kidnapped Serb reporters"

This is according to the Association of Journalists of Serbia (UNS), that is quoting Milivoje Mihajlovic, a former Radio Pristina editor and head of the Media Center in this town, that was "a key source of information for all media in 1998 and 1999 in Kosovo."

"By a coincidence, I saw a report by the Yugoslav Army on the KLA wiretapping. On the day when Ranko Perenic and Djuro Slavuj were kidnapped, the report noted: 'Two packages were brought to Bela Crkva' (settlement in Orahovac). I immediately sent there a New York Times journalist Mike O'Connor. When he returned, he asked me for the serial number of their voice recorder. I knew the number because I personally bought it. He saw the "Sonny" that Ranko and uro took to the field. O'Connor saw blue Zastava 128, and the voice recorder was in it. He asked the KLA commanders where are the people were from the car, and they replied that they did not know anything, that this is how they found it," Mihajlovic said, UNS reported on its website.

It is unknown if Mike O'Connor testified to anyone else about this event. He died in 2013, and there is no word about kidnapped journalist in the available online archives of the New York Times, nor about the event from Bela Crkva.

Speaking about the circumstances under which two Pristina journalists were kidnapped, Mihajlovic recalled that this was the only case when he did not send the team to the field because he was not in Pristina that day.

"When I came to the office, they said to me - 'They are gone since yesterday!' I called all hotels, ambulances, hospitals. I called Cathy Morton, wife of Richard Holbrooke, president of the Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ). She alarmed the whole world, called every day. I asked Adem...