Every evening, Flora Rrecaj goes to the large green park with playground equipment in the center of Skenderaj.
Të lidhura
None found
There, a few years ago, a bust of her father, Idriz Rrecaj, was placed. He has been missing since April 19, 1999.
Idriz Rrecaj, honored in 2019 with the title “Hero of Kosovo,” was a political activist. He disappeared together with 22 other Albanians, known as the “group of intellectuals,” at the time when the war by Serbian forces in Kosovo had escalated.
Flora Rrecaj in the park that bears the name and bust of Idriz Rrecaj, her father missing since April 19, 1999.
“My father was not just our parent… He was a distinguished intellectual. My father was a patriot. He was a person who dedicated his entire life to this country and these people,” Flora Rrecaj told Radio Free Europe.
With no grave where her eight-member family could pay their respects, this park in the northwestern Kosovo city has become the only place where she feels her father’s presence and remembers him.
For 27 years, since Idriz Rrecaj’s disappearance, Flora and the other family members have searched for his name on prison lists in Serbia, in testimonies, unconfirmed information, and in areas where mortal remains have been uncovered from time to time.
Now, besides the park and the bust in Skenderaj, her family has another reference point: Zubin Potok, a municipality in northern Kosovo, about an hour away from Skenderaj.
In the villages of Kalludër e Vogël and Jabukë, inhabited mainly by Serbs, authorities recently discovered mass graves.
The children of Idriz Rrecaj near the excavation area, where the mortal remains of their missing father are suspected to be.
The authorities’ initial suspicion is that the recovered remains may belong to the 23 missing Albanians, among them Idriz Rrecaj. The exhumation process was completed on August 21.
However, Kalludër e Vogël had been mentioned earlier in connection with this case.
According to the Humanitarian Law Center, on February 7, 2023, a Serbian witness had provided UNMIK, the United Nations Mission in Kosovo, and the Kosovo Police with information about the killing of 23 Albanian civilians and the concealment of their bodies in the valley of that village.
More than two decades passed before the searches led to the mass graves.
Idriz Rrecaj, missing since the last war, in the center of a photograph with his daughters, Flora and Valbona. The photograph was taken around 1997.
“Except for someone who has a missing family member or relative, no one can describe this pain, despair, and waiting. We have often felt disappointed, and it seemed that no one was doing anything. I don’t want to blame anyone or point fingers at anyone, but I say with all the right in the world that perhaps not enough has been done for these people,” Rrecaj said.
According to her, waiting for a definitive answer carries both the hope that everything might finally end and the fear that DNA analyses could prove that Idriz Rrecaj is not among the discovered remains.
“To put it bluntly, these are mixed feelings. There are feelings of pain, feelings of hope, but also feelings of fear. After so many years, now you have a fear of the answer. But, nevertheless, it is essential and very necessary to know the truth,” she said.
From grave discovery to identification: A process that may take months or years
Institutions stress that finding and exhuming mortal remains is only the beginning of a procedure that can require months and, in the most complex cases, even years.
Even before the recent intervention, authorities had searched the Kalludër e Vogël and Jabukë areas to locate the mass grave.
Agron Limani, head of the Kosovo Government Commission for Missing Persons, told Radio Free Europe that previous investigations had been close to the grave site but had not identified the exact location.
The excavation area of the mass grave in Zubin Potok.
According to Limani, information obtained by the Kosovo Police and the arrest of three suspects for involvement in the crime helped pinpoint three precise locations, where mortal remains were later found.
Even after the discovery of a mass grave, moving from bones to the identity of victims requires the engagement of several institutions and a series of investigative and scientific stages.
First, the police cordon off and mark the site. Then the Special Prosecution is notified, which requests court authorization for excavations. Experts from the Institute of Forensic Medicine conduct the exhumation, examine the remains, record their condition, and take bone samples.
The samples are sent to the laboratory of the International Commission on Missing Persons, ICMP, in The Hague, the Netherlands. There, the DNA profile of the mortal remains is compared with reference profiles taken from the families of missing persons.
“Without DNA analysis, and without matching the bone samples with blood samples, it cannot be said with 100 percent certainty [whose they are],” said Limani.
He explains that in the Zubin Potok case, the number of remains, their location, and the collected testimonies have strengthened suspicions that they might belong to the “Mitrovica group of intellectuals.”
“The circumstances and testimonies match the mortal remains,” Limani said.
In the excavated area in Zubin Potok, mortal remains were discovered that are suspected to belong to persons missing since the last war.
Samira Krehiq, ICMP’s head for the Western Balkans, emphasizes that the identity of victims cannot be determined solely by the number of remains, the place where they were found, or information about how they disappeared.
In an interview with Radio Free Europe, she said that ICMP issues a matching report only when the link between the DNA of the remains and the family samples reaches a certainty level of over 99.95 percent.
“Only after we know with certainty the individual identity of all the victims found can the reconstruction of events begin, not the other way around,” Krehiq stressed.
Institutions do not give a definite timeline for the completion of this procedure.
Its duration is influenced by the condition of the remains, DNA damage due to time and environment, fragmentation or mixing of bones, the quality of samples, and whether ICMP has sufficient reference samples from family members.
ICMP notes that in certain cases analyses may be repeated or another bone sample may be needed. If the family has not provided enough samples, identification may remain incomplete until a sample from another relative is obtained.
For Lutfije Ademi Vokshi, the time that passes from the finding of bones to the confirmation of a name is merely a continuation of the waiting that began in 1999.
Her brother, surgeon Adem Ademi, was among the 23 missing persons. For nearly three decades, she had not completely lost hope that he might be somewhere near the village of Drenë in Zubin Potok.
Lutfije Ademi Vokshi during a visit to the mass grave excavation area, where the mortal remains of her missing brother, Adem Ademi, are also suspected to be.
When remains were found in Kalludër e Vogël, about three and a half kilometers as the crow flies from Drenë, Vokshi says she couldn’t utter a word and just cried.
In an earlier interview with Radio Free Europe, she had said she hoped finally to have a grave where, on holidays, birthdays, or Bajram, she could place flowers and “go talk” to her brother.
Nevertheless, until the analysis results come out, she accepts that Adem Ademi may not be among the found remains.
For families who have waited for 27 years, every further delay means prolonging an anxiety that Agron Limani describes as “torture.”
Limani knows this experience firsthand. He is from Krusha e Vogël in the Municipality of Prizren, where over 60 people remain listed as missing. Among them are three of his own family members.
“We have had cases when family members said: ‘I want at least a finger, a finger bone, to bury it and know where my son’s, husband’s, or brother’s grave is. To know that, on every anniversary or holiday, we can respect and honor them,'” he said.
Agron Limani, head of the Commission for Missing Persons in Kosovo.
After the war ended, many families, according to Limani, still believed the missing relatives could still be alive. As the years passed, this hope turned into an even more painful wait: to find at least their bones.
“When this waiting lasts, it becomes torturous for the families,” Limani said.
According to the Institute of Crimes Committed During the War in Kosovo, the fate of 1,577 persons missing from the 1998-1999 war is still unknown. In total, 12,230 war victims have been documented.
Kosovo has repeatedly asked Serbia for cooperation in clarifying the fate of the missing, as well as access to military archives, which, according to authorities, could help locate other grave sites.
