UN Urged to Press Serbia over Mass Graves

Prenk Gjetaj, head of the Pristina government’s commission for missing persons, told a UN delegation on Tuesday that Belgrade was still hiding secrets which could illuminate the fate of more than 1,700 people still missing since the end of the 1998-99 conflict in Kosovo.

“We believe there are many more mass graves on the territory of Serbia. Therefore we urge the international community to put more pressure on Serbia so it tells where these mass graves are, because many people are still missing,” Gjetaj said.

Hundreds of victims’ remains have since been found since the war in mass graves in Batajnica and Petrovo Selo in Serbia.

The Serbian authorities recently started to exhume another mass grave at a quarry near the town of Raska, where they have so far found the remains of 50 people believed to be Kosovo Albanians who went missing during the conflict.

The delegation from UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances will report on what it has learned about the missing persons situation in Kosovo during its current fact-finding trip later this week.