UN Court Urged to Block Serbian War Criminal’s Release

The family of the Albanian-American Bytyqi brothers said on Monday that they are launching a campaign against the potential early release next month of Vlastimir Djordjevic, a former high-ranking Serbian interior ministry official, who they suspect was involved in their relatives' deaths.

"Until the day Vlastimir Djordjevic demonstrates rehabilitation and substantial cooperation with the Office of the Prosecutor by: helping locate other mass graves, cooperating in ongoing criminal investigations related to the cover-up operations, and making sworn and truthful statements about the Bytyqi brothers murders, he should not be released," the family argued in a letter to the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals.

Djordjevic, who jailed for 18 years for war crimes in Kosovo, could be due for early release on June 17 after serving two-thirds of his sentence.

But Ilir Bytyqi, the brother of Ylli, Agron, and Mehmet Bytyqi, US citizens of Albanian origin who were killed in Serbia in 1999, alleged that Djordjevic was a suspect in the murders.

He said in a statement that the former Serbian official "should not be granted early release until he shows he is reformed".

The three Bytyqi brothers went to fight for the Kosovo Liberation Army against Belgrade's forces and were arrested by Serbian police after the war ended when they strayed over an unmarked boundary line between Serbia and Kosovo.

After serving their sentences for illegal border crossing, they were re-arrested as they were leaving the district prison in the town of Prokuplje in southern Serbia, taken to the police training centre in Petrovo Selo, and detained in a warehouse there.

They were then tied up with wire by unknown persons and driven to a garbage disposal...