The Government Commission on Missing Persons has announced that it has followed the public statements of human rights activist Natasha Kandić and that any data that could help clarify the fate of people who went missing during the war in Kosovo is taken with the utmost seriousness.

Speaking to ‘Bota sot’, Kushtrim Gara, head of the Unit at the Government Commission on Missing Persons, said the locations mentioned still remain among the areas considered of interest and a priority for verification.

“Aware of Ms. Natasha Kandić’s public statements, the Commission values any information that may contribute to shedding light on the fate and whereabouts of persons forcibly disappeared during the war in Kosovo. The locations mentioned also continue to be among the areas of interest and priority for verification,” Kushtrim Gara, head of the Unit at the Government Commission on Missing Persons, told ‘Bota sot’.

According to Gara, the investigative work carried out so far regarding mass graves has shown that in certain cases state structures were used to conceal the bodies of war victims.

“Our experience, including the confirmation so far of five mass graves on the territory of Serbia, has shown that facilities and structures under the control of the Serbian state apparatus were used to hide the bodies of war victims,” the Commission stressed.

However, the institution says that checking suspected locations continues to be a complicated process, especially when it comes to military areas where access is limited.

“These are large military complexes with restricted access, therefore their verification is challenging and is made more difficult by the lack of documentation and the lack of full cooperation in allowing assessment excavations,” it further said.

The Government Commission on Missing Persons also stressed that it will continue efforts to secure access to all information and archives related to this issue, within the framework of international commitments.

“We will continue to seek access to the documentation of the former Yugoslav Army and the relevant institutions of Serbia, in line with the Joint Declaration on Missing Persons of May 2, 2023. Only through this access can the process of clarifying the fate of missing persons move forward,” the response said.

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On the other hand, Serbia, within the framework of the same commission, has requested more data and the development of investigations, especially for cases after the official end of the war.

The Joint Commission is expected to meet again during this month, under the mediation of the European Union. This will be its third meeting since its creation, while Kosovo insists that these two requests will show whether Serbia has truly begun implementing the declaration signed three years ago, which also предусматривает access to archives.

The head of the Missing Persons Unit in the Office of the Prime Minister, Kushtrim Gara, said that opening the classified archive would help in the search for missing persons from the massacres carried out by this brigade in the Drenica area, which at that time was commanded by General Lubisha Dikoviq.

“Many of the victims of the massacres in Rezallë, Çikatovë e Vjetër, and Zabel i Ulët carried out by this brigade were found in Raška,” Gara told Radio Kosovo.

“The entire archives of this brigade were reclassified in 2014, when we were excavating in Raška, where this brigade had its base,” he added.

Gara also said that the Kosovo side is seeking the resumption of excavations in Batajnica, after new data was secured that raises suspicions about the presence of a number of victims missing from the war.

“Based on the new data we have secured and the analysis of the information, we have concluded that in Batajnica, near the training ground, there should be another site with 58 bodies of missing persons,” he said.

In the period 2001-2002, in Batajnica, near Belgrade, the remains of 744 victims buried in 9 pits were found near the military training ground, hundreds of kilometers away from the place where they had been killed.

The office of the European Union mediator for the Kosovo-Serbia Dialogue, Peter Sorensen, told Radio Kosovo that the EU “strongly urges the parties to cooperate and engage” in implementing the 2023 Declaration on Missing Persons. It was also underlined that the Joint Commission “provides a framework to support this process and to address practical issues related to implementation.”

According to the Declaration on Missing Persons, Kosovo’s obligations also include investigating cases of missing persons, particularly those after the official end of the war.

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