EYEWITNESSES TELL OF MASSACRE OF
FORTY ETHNIC ALBANIANS
BY YUGOSLAV SECURITY FORCES
April 4, 1999
HUMAN RIGHT WATCH -- KOSOVO FLASH #18
Human Rights Watch interviewed
six refugees late on April 2 who reported that Yugoslav forces shot
and killed forty male ethnic Albanian villagers in the town of
Velika Krusa (Krusha e Madhe in Albanian) on Friday, March 26. The
village, on the main road between Dakovica and Prizren, was reputed
to have had sympathies for the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) over the
past year. Human Rights Watch fears the men may have been slain in
reprisal for their village's suspected support for the Albanian
insurgents.
The six witnesses -- three men and three women -- had driven through
the mountains on a tractor for seven days before crossing into
Albania at the Morina crossing point near Kukes in northern Albania,
where they were interviewed by Human Rights Watch. One of the men
was wounded, having suffered shrapnel wounds in his legs and lower
back.
The refugees said Yugoslav infantry raided their village on the
afternoon of Thursday, March 25, the day after the NATO air campaign
began. One of the witnesses, who was in the fields tending cattle,
was shot and wounded as he ran towards the village. He hid that
night with the five others, he said, who were discovered early the
next morning by Yugoslav security forces wearing green camouflage
uniforms.
"They gathered us together with the rest of the people from the
village," said X.S., aged sixty-four. "Then, at about seven in the
morning, they separated out forty younger males and shot them with
machine guns."
The five other witnesses -- C. R., a forty-seven-year-old male, N.
G., a seventy-seven-year old male, R. R., a fifty-year-old woman, Z.
R., a fifty-year-old woman, and X. G., a sixty-five-year-old woman
-- told similar stories.
On April 3, the BBC broadcast exclusive footage of an alleged
massacre in Velika Krusa. The video, smuggled out by an amateur
cameraman and edited because of its graphic content, shows the
bodies of several young men who were, according to the BBC, "killed
with a single bullet to the head after trying to escape." According
to the cameraman, more than one hundred people were killed when Serb
forces shelled the area. He told the BBC: "A group of Serbs were on
top of the hill. Others came from behind. Our men were captured and
the Serbs killed them one after the other." The cameraman gave the
BBC a list of twenty-six victims, many of whom were known to him,
which is reprinted below. He claimed that there were thirty-one
bodies in total, but five of the corpses were burned beyond
recognition.
The consistent and credible reports of killings at Velika Krusa
supplement the testimonies of three other refugees interviewed by
Human Rights Watch on March 30 and 31, who said that they had seen
at least fifteen ethnic Albanians killed on the road around Velika
Krusa (see Human Rights Watch Flash #14). According to these
refugees, the killings took place near a police and army checkpoint
on the main road between the villages of Zrce and Velika Krusa.
In recent days, two international journalists have gathered the
testimonies of eyewitnesses from Mala Kruse (Krushe e Vogel in
Albanian), another village located a few miles to the southeast of
Velika Krusa. CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour interviewed a
badly burned refugee late last night form the village, who said he
had been placed in a pile of 112 bodies that were covered with
petrol and set on fire by Yugoslav forces. The witness survived,
however, and made it out to the border.
New York Times correspondent John Kifner interviewed another witness
from Mala Krusa on March 30. The refugee, N.Z., reported having seen
a mass killing, although no details were provided ("Kosovars Flee to
Beat Serb Deadline of Death," The New York Times, March 31). The
article said that her claims "conformed with other accounts given by
refugees" and with accounts heard by the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe.
Based on its own research, as well as the coverage of the
international media, Human Rights Watch believes that two separate
massacres may have taken place in the two villages, Velika Krusa and
Mala Krusa. It is possible the the killings were security force
reprisals or "revenge killings" for the villages' suspected support
for the KLA. Human Rights Watch researchers have determined that
such a pattern of reprisal killings is indeed underway in
south-western Kosovo, and it has been a pattern over the past year
of the Kosovo conflict.
Reportedly Killed in Velika Krusa:
1.Ramadan Krasniqi
2.Ramadan Shait Hoti
3.Eqrem Jemin Duraku
4.Ibrahim Myrteza Duraku
5.Gjevgjet Syljman Duraku
6.Fahri Haxhilaf Hoti
7.Bajram Ali Duraku
8.Haxhi Halim Hoti
9.Hasaf Nexhat Hoti
10.Habib Haxhilat Duraku
11.Fraidin S. Dina
12.Flyrin S. Dina
13.Nimetullahli i Hoxhes
14.Shaban Rasim Duraku
15.Ali Selim Duraku
16.Azem Jonuz Duraku
17.Haxhi Arif Shala
18.Jeton Abdyl Duraku
19.Faredin Shemsedin Hoti
20.Kresnik Faredin Hoti
21.Sami Sadik Nalli
22.Sali Sadik Nalli
23.Selim Bajrami
24.Dahim Bajrami
25.Qamil Bajrami
26.Ismet Jemin Duraku
****
Kosovo Human Rights Flash is an information bulletin from Human
Rights Watch. It includes human rights updates on the situation in
Yugoslavia generally and in Kosovo specifically. For further
information contact Fred Abrahams at (212) 216-1270.