Criminal Complaint in Murder of Two Albanian Civilians in Peć on March 26th, 1999

The Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) filed a criminal complaint on March 8^th, 2013 with the Republic of Serbia Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor against seven persons, on account of a war crime against the civilian population committed in Peć/Pejë on March 26^th, 1999.

The complaint charges two identified and five unidentified persons because of the reasonable suspicion that these persons, in their capacity of members of Serb forces, bearing arms and in camouflage uniforms, entered the family house of Albanian E. K. in Peć/Pejë in the afternoon hours of March 26, 1999, and killed two members of E.K’s family in the presence of other family members.

According to the HLC’s information, in the period March 24^th-28^th, 1999, Serb forces in the city of Peć/Pejë carried out an organized violent action against the Albanian citizens of Peć/Pejë.  Members of Serb forces used force to enter Albanian homes; they conducted unlawful searches, confiscated money and other valuables, beat and abused the civilians that they found in the houses, and then made them leave their homes and go to Albania. In Brežanik, Kapišnica, Pećko Polje and other suburbs, members of Serb forces killed 74 Albanian civilians (70 men and four women), often in front of their families. The bodies of 42 of these people were found in 2001 in the mass gravesites in Batajnice, while the bodies of another four persons are still missing. None of the perpetrators of these murders have been brought to justice so far.