Reçak Survivor Skeptical of Trial: No Justice Without the Accused in the Dock

Ramë Shabani, 60, a resident of the village of Reçak in the Municipality of Shtime, says he learned through the media that the trial of 21 people accused of war crimes in connection with the massacre in his village is expected to begin in Kosovo.

Shabani is one of the survivors of the Reçak massacre, in which Serbian forces killed 45 Albanian civilians in January 1999.

“No one from the institutions has informed me about the court proceedings, and I have not received a summons to testify,” he told Radio Free Europe.

The proceedings against the 21 defendants will be held in absentia and are expected to begin on Friday, July 31. However, Shabani does not believe such a trial can deliver justice.

The Escape That Saved His Life

Gunfire woke Ramë Shabani on the morning of January 15, 1999. He was 33 years old at the time.

In an earlier account given to RFE in Reçak, he said that gunfire had become commonplace during the war. But at around 7:00 a.m., his family realized that something out of the ordinary was happening in the village this time.

A large number of Serbian police forces were attacking Reçak and entering its neighborhoods.

To protect themselves from Serbian forces’ bullets, Shabani and his family members hid in the basement of a neighbor’s house.

According to him, the house was initially fired upon, after which Serbian forces entered it.

“They shelled the house, forced us outside, beat us and took everything we had in our pockets. After that, they took us to the place where the massacre occurred,” Shabani recounts.

He says Serbian forces began killing Albanian civilians after the group reached a place known as Bebush Hill, on the outskirts of Reçak.

“They insulted us in Serbian, and I managed to escape by running down a slope. The seven or eight people behind me were killed,” he says.

When the Serbian forces withdrew, Shabani returned to the scene. There, he learned that his brother, Bajrush Shabani, had been killed along with 11 cousins and more than 30 other fellow villagers.

Doubts That Justice Will Be Achieved

The massacre that took place in Reçak 27 years ago prompted strong international reactions and increased pressure on the regime in Serbia. This led to negotiations between representatives of Kosovo Albanians and the Serbian authorities, held with international mediation at the Rambouillet Conference in France.

After the parties failed to reach an agreement, NATO intervened by bombing military and police targets in the former Yugoslavia for 78 days. International forces later entered Kosovo, while Serbian forces and the Serbian administration withdrew from the country.

Although 27 years have passed since the events in Reçak, Shabani remains skeptical about the trial in absentia expected to begin on Friday against the 21 accused.

In his assessment, justice will not be served even if the court finds the defendants guilty and sentences them.

“I want there to be a fair ruling, but this cannot bring justice. Those 21 people whose names have been mentioned will no longer enter Kosovo, and we, the Kosovo authorities, will never manage to apprehend them. If they are not in the dock, nothing can be done,” Shabani says.

Nevertheless, he sees the launch of the proceedings as a form of relief and institutional recognition of what happened.

“Even so, it is like a breath of fresh air. For me, it amounts only to recognition by our institutions of what happened in Reçak and shows that they want to do something, but nothing more,” he says.

The Reçak Massacre Before the Courts

At the end of December last year, the Kosovo Special Prosecution filed an indictment against 21 people, proposing that they be tried in absentia for the killing of 42 civilians during the operation by Serbian police forces in Reçak on January 15, 1999.

The indictment for the criminal offense of “war crimes against the civilian population” includes O.S., R.M., K.J., G.R., ZH.T., B.J., M.L., R.M., D.GJ., B.M., D.J., M.SH., D.A., S.V., B.M., Z.S., M.J., G.P., D.N., Ç.A. and Z.J. None of the accused is accessible to Kosovo’s justice institutions.

Because the legal requirements had not been met, the trial in absentia was unable to begin on July 20 at the Basic Court in Pristina.

It was not known who the defense lawyers were for four of the defendants. Their lawyers were to be appointed ex officio by the Kosovo Bar Association.

At the hearing beginning on Friday, the Special Prosecution will present the indictment. According to the prosecution, during 1998-1999 the defendants, as members of the former Yugoslav army’s 243rd Mechanized Brigade of the Third Army, known as the “Pristina Corps,” as well as Serbia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, committed inhumane treatment, destruction of property, mass expulsion and ethnic cleansing of the civilian population.

The indictment states that Reçak was surrounded from the directions known as “Pishat,” “Gështenjat” and “Çesta,” and was then shelled.

The forces continued by searching each house individually. The men were separated from the women and children; the women and children were forced to leave the village, while the detained men were executed.

However, this is not the only judicial proceeding connected to the Reçak massacre.

Five people were arrested on June 12 during a joint operation by the Kosovo Police and the Special Prosecution, conducted as part of war crimes investigations in the case known as “Reçaku II.”

The prosecution announced that the five people arrested are of Serbian nationality. Meanwhile, police were unable to detain a sixth person because he was not found at his residence.

Those arrested are suspected of having served in the Serbian police special units that took part in the January operation in Reçak.

Regardless of how the proceedings related to the events in Reçak conclude, Shabani says one issue remains hostage to the circumstances.

“Nearly most of the victims’ parents have already died. They did not see justice and left this world with their eyes open,” he concludes. / RFE