SERB POLICEMAN DESCRIBES MASSACRE IN KOSOVO
By Nicholas Wood

December 11, 2003 – (NYT) For the first time since the end of the 1990's wars that broke up Yugoslavia, a former Serbian policeman went before a local court on Wednesday and described how his police reserve unit had taken part in the massacre of at least 14 people, including 7 children.

The policeman, Goran Stoparic, said his unit, known as the Scorpions, was sent to the town of Podujevo in eastern Kosovo on March 28, 1999 — five days into the war with NATO over Kosovo — and rounded up a group of women and children and shot them. The unit was withdrawn from Kosovo into Serbia proper the same day, he said.

The trial of one member of the unit, Sasa Cvjetan, who is accused of killing 19 people, is the eighth in Serbia to tackle crimes committed in the three main Yugoslav wars of the 1990's. While witnesses at the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague have detailed the involvement of police officers and soldiers in war crimes, Serbian courts so far have excluded accusations pointing to government involvement.

Even senior members of the Serbian government that succeeded the wartime administration of Slobodan Milosevic deny that the government had any role in massacres or brutal expulsions of non-Serbs in the conflicts in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

Mr. Stoparic described how his unit had been deployed to Kosovo after the start of NATO's bombing campaign. He said the unit had been issued weapons close to the border of Kosovo, Serbia's southern province, which is inhabited mostly by Albanians. He said the men had been driven in two buses to Podujevo and told that they were to seize territory captured by the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army.

Once they entered the town, he said, the unit's commander instructed them to find accommodation in local houses. In one house, Mr. Stoparic said, Mr. Cvjetan led a group of women and children into the backyard, where they were joined by several other unit members.

A minute later, Mr. Stoparic testified, he heard four to five bursts of automatic gunfire. He said that he had not seen any bodies, but that Mr. Cvjetan and three other unit members left shortly afterward, reloading their guns as they went.

A member of a special antiterrorist unit, identified only as Vuk, then entered the backyard and reappeared with a wounded girl, Mr. Stoparic told the court.

The man called Vuk stopped a colleague trying to enter the yard, saying: "They've killed them. There is nothing to see." The colleague then asked Vuk if everyone was dead, and Vuk said yes, Mr. Stoparic added.

Five children survived the shootings, though, including one girl who had 16 bullet wounds in her arms, legs and back. All five, who now live in Britain, gave testimony in July when the trial started and identified Mr. Cvjetan as having been among the killers.

Enver Duriqi, a Kosovo Albanian man, lost his mother, father, wife and four children from 21 months to 9 years old in the massacre. The seven other known victims were all members of the Bogujevci family, also from Podujevo.

Mr. Stoparic was to have given his testimony on Monday but pleaded illness at the last minute. Questioned by a lawyer for the victims' families if he had been threatened before the hearing, he said the unit's commander had approached him outside the courtroom. "He did not say he would kill me," Mr. Stoparic said. "He said the consequences would be drastic."

Throughout his three and a half hours of testimony, Mr. Stoparic was guarded by bodyguards, and the court ordered protection maintained for him.
Asked why he had decided to testify now, he said he felt obliged to do so because children had been killed.

"Now I am a Serbian traitor," he said. "Even if I am killed, it would be worth it because of the children who were killed. I participated in wars for 10 years and never saw anyone kill children."

Last Friday several other former members of the unit, including its commander, Slobodan Medic, testified that none of them had been present at the shootings. Only two unit members are on trial, Mr. Cvjetan and Dejan Demirovic, who is in Canada and is being tried in absentia. Mr. Cvjetan could face up to 15 years in prision if convicted.

From: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/11/international/europe/11SERB.html