http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4244631,00.html

THE GUARDIAN (UK)
Friday 24 August 2001

Missing Serbs compound Kosovo's pain

Thousands cling to the hope that their loved ones are alive. But often a
grim truth awaits them in Belgrade

Rory Carroll in Belgrade

Dragan Piljevic did not expect or want to discover his mother's fate inside
the plastic yellow folder, but he opened it anyway, and examined the 60
photographs of clothing it contained.

Dirty, crumpled and laid out on white sheets, the garments were from corpses
exhumed in Kosovo. Petrija Piljevic, 57, was kidnapped from her flat on June
28 1999 and Dragan thought she might be in a secret prison for Serbs.

Photograph JA 042/038 extinguished hope. He recognised the blue Adidas
tracksuit bottoms, navy socks with two red stripes, cream blouse and black
jacket.

Dragan stared and felt his head burning. He shrieked. For five hours he sat
slumped in the Belgrade office of the association for missing Serbs, sipping
sugared water and taking tranquillisers.

The Guardian published his plea for help a fortnight after his mother
disappeared from Pristina, but two years later it turned out that she had
already been killed: shot twice in the chest at point blank range by ethnic
Albanians.

Last week her body was returned to the family and buried in Prokupje, in
southern Serbia. The photographs of clothing were taken by the Organisation
for Security and Cooperation in Europe to help the UN identify corpses.

"My dad died a year ago from cancer, but that was done by God. But my
mother, she was killed by inhumans. I don't want you to know how I feel, I
wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy," Dragan said.

Dragan's mother was swept away in a tide of ethnic Albanian revenge against
Serbs after Nato troops ousted Slobodan Milosevic's forces from Kosovo. The
killing has tapered off, but many of those abducted have never been found.

Revenge attacks

Others whom Dragan left sitting in the Belgrade office, like him refugees
from Kosovo, regard him as lucky. They have yet to find out what happened to
the 1,300 Serbs they claim are missing.

They contrast their plight with the attention the world is giving to to the
exhumation and identification of the 1,000 or so ethnic Albanians buried in
mass graves in Serbia. Their relatives were abducted partly to avenge those
murdered Albanians.

Some hope that the wheel is turning and that soon fighters of the Kosovo
Liberation will follow Mr Milosevic to the Hague tribunal to answer charges
of atrocities against civilians.

A tribunal official confirmed that 40 Serbs with missing relatives had been
recently interviewed in Belgrade with a view to indicting KLA members.

But inside 55A Kralja Milutina Street, the office of the relatives'
association, prosecution is not the priority.

"Our strategy is to find people who need to be saved. We are ready to forget
those responsible if they return those who are alive," said Olivera Budimir,
whose husband Rade disappeared in August 1999.

About a tenth of the missing Serbs were abducted before Nato arrived, but
its failure to impose order made it an open season for hunting those who
refused to flee, she said.

"You cannot imagine what it was like. They took us from fields, streets,
offices and homes, usually in front of witnesses. We had no one to help us."

Families vanished


Typically the kidnappers were neighbours. "My husband thought he had
Albanian friends. He paid the highest price for believing in friendship. He
was not a military man, he was a travel office manager."

Entire families which vanished are not on the Red Cross list, because there
are no close relatives left to report them, Mrs Budimir said, citing the
Kojic and Sutakovic families as examples.

The Yugoslav and Serb governments, grappling with political and economic
crises, have been criticised for not doing more, but the relatives are
angrier with the western authorities in Kosovo.

They say that DNA samples are not taken from Serbs and that their cases are
not investigated properly, if at all.

"If we returned to Kosovo we would probably end up on the missing list
ourselves. We cannot understand how 50,000 soldiers cannot find out what
happened," Mrs Budimir said.

An official of K-For, the Nato taskforce, said there was no discrimination
but the environment was extremely hostile to tracing Serbs.

The relatives' association has no money for a newsletter, advertising
campaign or lobbying. Its 1,000 members are mostly refugees scattered across
Serbia.

Rumours abound. There are stories of secret prisons, labour camps and
chain-gangs in mines and fields in Kosovo and northern Albania. K-For raids
fail because Albanian translators tip off the captors in advance, they say.

Dragan Karleusha, a police captain in the interior ministry, said he had
been told of corpses taken to Albania to deny evidence to Hague
investigators. There is no proof of these claims.

Predrag Baljosevic, 32, hopes that the ethnic Albanians being exhumed near
Belgrade can be swapped for Serb prisoners or corpses, among them his
father.

Branko Markovic, 67, clutched a faded photo of his son, Branko. At 5.35pm on
June 12 1999 he was kidnapped 200 metres from the family home in Pristina.

"He was taken away by his best friend, an Albanian. His father told me they
wouldn't hurt him but I've heard nothing. I expect him to return." If alive,
he is aged 39.

Lidjia Omeragic, 46, was a Muslim kindergarten teacher who, her sister
Ljatif said, paid the price of befriending Serbs. She had fled to
Montenegro, but returned home to collect a university degree, which she
thought would help her to build a new life. She was pulled from a car on
June 30 1999.

Since Dragan's near breakdown the association has stopped showing the yellow
folder to members, thinking it is better left to western agencies with duty
psychologists. He remains the only member to have traced a relative through
the OSCE photographs. He occasionally gasps when speaking, but expresses
gratitude.

After receiving the coffin he had his first night's undisturbed sleep in two
years.