Thaci Trial ‘Should Have Happened Before’, Victims’ Families Say

However, few of them seem to have big expectations, two decades after losing their loved ones.

Silvana Markovic, whose husband was abducted on June 19, 1999 in the Kosovo town of Gracanica, said Thaci and his allies "should finally start answering for the crimes committed against the Serbs".

"There is still some suspicion, like last time, that it [trials] will start and then stop. We are surprised [by news of the charges], so there is some hope in God; I guess everyone who is responsible for the crimes will be punished," Markovic told BIRN.

She said her husband, Goran, had been preparing to leave Kosovo but was meantime kidnapped along with two others.

At the same time, in June 1999, after the war in Kosovo was effectively over and international peacekeeping forces had moved in, Natasa Scepanovic saw her parents alive for the last time. She received the remains of her father in 2003. Her mother is still listed as missing.

Scepanovic, as president of a survivors' group, the Victims of Kosmet Association in Belgrade, says the charges offer "a small glimmer of hope" for her and other Serbian victims and their families.

"We have hope that some kind of justice will be reached and that those who are guilty for the crimes that happened in Kosovo will be punished. We expect these indictments to get their court epilogue … There is a lot of evidence, a lot of material," she said. "This should have happened earlier," she added.

Funeral procession for the 14 Serbs massacred in Gracka e Vjeter/Staro Gracko in July 1999. PHOTO: EPA/LOUISA GOULIAMAKI.

A press release from Wednesday from the Hague-based Specialist Prosecutor's Office, SPO, said it had filed a ten-count indictment with the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, KSC,...