Too little, too late: After 14 years, the first-instance verdict was pronounced for crimes in the Kosovo villages of Ćuška, Ljubenić, Pavljan and Zahać
Fourteen years after the original indictment was filed by the Public Prosecutor’s Office for War Crimes (PPOWC), the Higher Court in Belgrade, on 24 April 2024, issued a first-instance verdict in the retrial for war crimes committed in the villages of Ljubenić, Ćuška, Pavljan and Zahać during April and May 1999.
The court sentenced to 20 years in prison the defendant Toplica Miladinović, commander of the 177th Military-Territorial detachment (177th VTO) Peć, a unit under the command of the 125th Motorised Brigade of the Yugoslav Army (VJ). In the same verdict, the court also found guilty six members of the 177th VTO Peć, and sentenced Predrag Vuković to 13 years in prison, Abdulah Sokić to 12 years, Siniša Mišić to five years, and Slaviša Kastratović, Lazar Pavlović and Boban Bogićević to two years each. Veljko Korićanin and Milan Ivanović were acquitted of all charges.
The verdict omitted mention of the allegations in the indictment of the participation of the defendants in the murders of 42 civilians, Kosovo Albanians in the village of Ljubenić, as well as of 17 civilians in the village of Zahać, and of the fact that none of the defendants was found guilty of these crimes. Consequently, the number of victims covered by the verdict was drastically reduced, when compared to the number mentioned in the indictment.
The Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) believes that inappropriately low sentences have been imposed on most of the defendants, especially since some sentences are below the legal minimum for the criminal offence of a war crime against a civilian population. This is especially unfortunate when taking into account the number of civilian victims in these crimes, as well as the manner in which they were killed.
The first-instance verdict, pronounced after a fourteen-year long trial, during which three defendants died and two were declared unfit to stand trial, while the defendant Ranko Momić is still on the run, did not bring justice for the victims of the crime, nor adequate punishment for the perpetrators.
We would like to emphasise that the role of members of the Ministry of the Interior (MUP) in organising, committing and covering up crimes remained unclear throughout the proceedings, although several witnesses, as well as some defendants, spoke about the role of the MUP. Despite this evidence, the Office of the Prosecutor did not investigate allegations of their involvement in these crimes. There was no prosecution of other members of the Yugoslav Army who, in the critical period, were in hierarchically higher positions than the defendants. During 2014, the Office of the Prosecutor launched an investigation against Dragan Živanović, commander of the 125th Motorized Brigade of the VJ, in whose zone of responsibility were also the villages of Ljubenić, Ćuška, Pavljan and Zahać, and who was superior to Toplica Miladinović; however, that investigation was suspended in 2017.
The Ćuška case is the last case before the Higher Court in Belgrade for crimes against Albanian civilians in Kosovo, and that the last indictment for these crimes was filed by the Office of the Prosecutor in 2013. Since the beginning of 2013, the HLC has filed 9 criminal complaints for crimes committed in Peć, Mala Kruša, Savine Vode, Vučitrn, Goden, Kraljane, Landovica, Poklek and Đakovica. However, to date, no indictment has been filed for any of these crimes.
Verdict
The court found the defendant Toplica Miladinović guilty of issuing an order to the late Nebojša Minić, commander of the Intervention Platoon 177th VTO Peć, to attack the civilian population of Albanian nationality and organise the displacement of this population, although he knew that members of the unit would destroy and loot civilian property and kill civilians, which indeed they did. Miladinović had direct knowledge of the crimes, and as commander was obliged to “plan, organise and order, but also coordinate and control the execution of his orders and the behaviour of members of his unit in the field”.
Members of the 177th VTO Peć, namely, Vuković, Sokić, Mišić, Kastratović, Pavlović and Bogićević, under the command of Nebojša Minić, were convicted of armed attacks, robbery and expulsion of the civilian population in the villages of Ljubenić, Ćuška, Pavljan and Zahać, as well as of murdering a total of 57 civilians of Albanian nationality. Dejan Bulatović, member of the 177th VTO Peć, who was declared unfit to stand trial in 2016, and other unidentified perpetrators were accused of killing 42 and wounding 11 civilians in the village of Ljubenić. Veljko Korićanin, who was charged by the Office of the Prosecutor with aiding an unidentified member of the 177th VTO Peć during the shooting of 17 civilians in the village of Zahać, has been acquitted. Milan Ivanović, who was accused of participating in the murder of at least 42 and the wounding of 11 Albanian civilians in the village of Ljubenić, has also been acquitted.
Course of the proceedings
The first indictment for crimes in Ćuška was filed by the Public Prosecutor’s Office for War Crimes in 2010, after which it issued several more indictments accusing the subsequently identified perpetrators. The charges were repeatedly expanded, so that these indictments also came to include crimes committed in the villages of Ljubenić, Pavljan and Zahać.
During the course of this procedure, the prosecution indicted a total of 18 persons for crimes in the villages of Ljubenić, Ćuška, Pavljan and Zahać, namely: Toplica Miladinović, Srećko Popović, Zvonimir Cvetković, Slaviša Kastratović, Boban Bogićević, Radoslav Brnović, Vidoje Korićanin, Veljko Korićanin, Abdulah Sokić, Zoran Obradović, Milojko Nikolić, Ranko Momić, Siniša Mišić, Dejan Bulatović, Vladan Krstović, Lazar Pavlović, Milan Ivanović and Predrag Vuković. During the proceedings, the Office of the Prosecutor dropped the criminal prosecution of Zvonimir Cvetković and Vidoje Korićanin; an agreement was concluded with the accused Zoran Obradović on his testifying, in exchange for dropping the criminal charges; the proceedings were interrupted in relation to the fugitive defendant Ranko Momić; the indictments were dropped in relation to the defendants Dejan Bulatović and Vladan Krstović owing to their procedural incompetence; and the defendants Radoslav Brnović, Srećko Popović and Milojko Nikolić died.
On 11 February 2014, the Higher Court in Belgrade rendered the first-instance judgment, but the Court of Appeal cancelled it in 2015 and returned the case to the second-instance procedure, which ended on 24 April 2024 with the first-instance judgment in the repeated procedure. Even after 14 years, this verdict has not completed the proceedings, and it will be final only after the Court of Appeal has rendered a second-instance verdict.
