1000 BODIES IN VALLEY OF DEATH
By Don MacKay
Daily Record (Glasgow, Scotland)
June 18, 1999
TREPCA'S mines will live alongside Belsen and Auschwitz in the memories of those
whose loved ones met with a horrific end.
War
crimes investigators fear as many as 1000 bodies of innocent victims were burnt
in what has now been dubbed Death Valley.
Yesterday, as Foreign Secretary Robin Cook claimed 10,000 murdered Kosovars had
been dumped in mass graves, photographer Mike Fresco and I visited the place
where Serb death squads tried to hide the evidence of their vile crimes.
The
Trepca mines sit in an idllyic valley nestling in green woodland hills 70
kilometres north of Pristina.
Here,
in the dead of night, lorries loaded with bodies poured through the rusting
gates.
The
crossed-hammer emblem of Trepca - believed to be owned by Slobodan Milosevic
himself - could easily be mistaken for a Swastika left over from the last time
fear on this scale stalked central Europe.
As
the Serb tyrant prevaricated over peace, his underlings drove convoys of freshly
dug-up corpses to Trepca's disused gold mines.
The
furnaces were fired up once again to burn the bodies of the men and boys the
Serbs had feared would take up arms against them.
Smoke
billowing from the red and white chimney stack signaled their desperate bid to
escape justice for war crimes, and the ashes were dumped down the maze of
mineshafts and tunnels. By then, however, spy-in-the-sky drones and
reconnaissance planes had spotted the grisly operation.
Now
war crimes investigators will examine the mines for any remaining evidence as
soon as the area is secured by KFOR soldiers.
Yesterday, French troops arrived in nearby Kosovska Mitrovica - but stopped
short of entering Trepca.
But
Mike Fresco and I joined a convoy of fleeing Serb civilians and managed to reach
the mines.
Armed
guards refused us entry but one of them mistook our interpreter Deitar for a
Serb and tried to chat her up.
He
said they were scared of what would happen once NATO arrived.
One
local ethnic Albanian told us: "No one goes near Trepca. It has the smell of
death. But everyone knows what went on during the nights."
War
crimes co-ordinator Paul Risley has named Trepca as a top priority when Serb
death squads are brought to justice at The Hague.
He
said: "These killers think they have got rid of the evidence against them but
burning bodies leaves tell-tale signs. We have the technology to let the dead
talk to us."
Meanwhile, in the Commons, Robin Cook vowed: "We will spare no effort to record
meticulously every atrocity KFOR uncovers."
But
he added: "Having fought this campaign to halt ethnic cleansing of Kosovo
Albanians, we will not now tolerate ethnic cleansing of the Serb population in
Kosovo."