US Bars Serbian Ex-Commander Over Kosovo Crimes

The US State Department said on Tuesday that it is designating Goran Radosavljevic ineligible to enter the country due to what it alleged was "his involvement in gross violations of human rights".

"Radosavljevic was credibly implicated in the 1999 murder of the Bytyqi brothers, three Albanian-American brothers killed in Serbia after the Kosovo War," the State Department said in a statement.

In July 1999, three US citizens of Albanian origin - Ylli, Agron and Mehmet Bytyqi - were captured by the Serbian police on the border with Kosovo after the war ended while helping a Roma family to escape Kosovo.

Their bodies were later found in a mass grave at a police training centre in Petrovo Selo in eastern Serbia.

Many witnesses claimed that at the time, the man in charge of the Petrovo Selo training camp was Radosavljevic, although he insisted he was on vacation when the brothers were killed.

Radosavljevic, who now runs several security companies in Belgrade and is a senior official of the ruling Progressive Party, was briefly investigated over the crime by the Serbian prosecution, but never indicted.

He said he did not want to comment on the US State Department decision.

"I gave statements to the investigative authorities, I spoke about that a hundred times, so it doesn't make sense that I speak about that," Radosavljevic told Radio Free Europe.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has been promising progress in the Bytyqi brothers case since 2012, but until now no one has been indicted for their murders.

Praveen Madhiraju, an adviser to the Bytyqi family, said that the US was sending a message that it will not forget the case and Vucic's promises to resolve it.

"Today, the United States sent an initial signal...