Prosecutor asks FHP to provide Rudnica files

BELGRADE - The Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor asked the Humanitarian Law Center (FHP) on Friday to provide the files in its possession related to the crimes committed in the Rudnica case, including the witness statements, in order for all the allegations concerning the culprits to be investigated.

War Crimes Prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic told Tanjug his office had started the perliminary criminal proceedings based on the 53 bodies from the Rudnica location that had so far been identified, and he asked for additional documents to facilitate further data and evidence collection about the crimes the FHP claims were committed by members of the Yugoslav Army and police in May 1999.

Vukcevic pointed out that his office had checked the FHP's original allegations back in January 2012 and found no basis to suspect General Ljubisa Dikovic of having committed any of the war crimes listed in the FHP's criminal charges from 2009.

The FHP reiterated on Thursday that it possessed documents that pointed to Serbian Armed Forces Chief of the General Staff Ljubisa Dikovic as someone responsible for war crimes in Kosovo.

FHP head Sandra Orlovic told a news conference on Thursday, while presenting the Rudnica file which contains data about Kosovo Albanians killed in 1999 and exhumed from the mass grave in Rudnica last year, that the file points to the 37th Motorised Brigade of the Yugoslav Army as the culprits, and that Dikovic was the unit's commander at the time.

Photo Tanjug, N. Milosevic (archive)