The New York Times

Wednesday, May 19, 1999

Atrocities

ALLIES CHECK SATELLITE PICTURES FOR EVIDENCE OF WAR CRIME

By ERIC SCHMITT

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- NATO is examining new clues to try to determine whether Yugoslav forces may be digging up mass graves and reburying the bodies to hide evidence of war crimes against Kosovo Albanians, an allied spokesman said Tuesday.

Allied officials are poring over spy satellite photographs to determine if they show a grave-digging conspiracy or merely villagers trying to give murdered friends and relatives a proper burial.

"We are studying detailed intelligence that seems to confirm that graves have been disturbed," an American official said, referring to sites which NATO presumes are mass graves. "However, we have to confirm whether it's a case of someone trying to destroy evidence or simply a case of an individual reburying a loved one."

At the end of the war in Bosnia in 1995, Yugoslav forces there dug up mass graves in an apparent effort to evade prosecution for war crimes, a grisly fact of which NATO spokesman Jamie Shea reminded reporters Tuesday.

Shea stated that four days ago, Yugoslav troops exhumed 50 ethnic Albanians from a site near a ferrous-nickel factory at Glogovac. In another mass grave of Albanians killed on April 18 near Lipljan, he said villagers recently were ordered to dig up bodies and rebury them in individual graves.

When the United States or NATO have most convincingly accused the forces of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic of mass executions and mass graves in the past, officials have produced spy photographs showing freshly disturbed earth. Shea produced no such photographs Tuesday, but told reporters that his information was based on more than news accounts or refugee reports. An American official said Tuesday night that intelligence analysts were cross-checking satellite photographs with refugee accounts to piece together what happened.

Shea said there were additional unsubstantiated reports from refugees of Yugoslav troops reburying bodies from mass graves at the sites where NATO has bombed and in areas formerly controlled by Kosovo rebels.

If the accounts prove true, NATO officials and some human rights advocates said they would signal that Yugoslav authorities fear being indicted by the U.N. tribunal at The Hague, Netherlands. They could also be a sign that Milosevic is preparing to accept a diplomatic settlement to the crisis, and allow an international peacekeeping force into Kosovo.

Shea said Yugoslav forces were still expelling, and executing, ethnic Albanians. "As fast as they try to destroy the old evidence, new evidence is being created," he said.

Speaking separately to reporters here, David Scheffer, the U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues, said conservative estimates based largely on refugee reports indicate that 5,000 people have been killed in mass executions since the air war started on March 24.

Scheffer said that 225,000 Kosovar men, between 14 and 59 years old, were now unaccounted for, twice the estimate that American officials gave last month. Some may be dead, and some may be hiding in the hills, he said.

"We do not know what their fate is," Scheffer said, adding that starvation and disease were now widespread among the 550,000 ethnic Albanians who were driven from their homes but who remain in Kosovo.

From the accounts of refugees who fled to Albania or Macedonia, Scheffer provided new details on how Yugoslav troops are using refugees as shields to protect their war operation.

In some cases, he said, Yugoslav troops dress in Red Cross uniforms, cover their vehicles with tarps taken from relief organizations, and intersperse with refugee convoys. In others, he said, soldiers have placed refugees in munitions and cement factories, not necessarily to ward off NATO bombing.

"The ethnic Albanians reportedly are not being used in a ostentatious manner to deter attacks, but rather are kept concealed in NATO target areas apparently in order to generate civilian casualties that can be blamed on NATO," Scheffer said.

Bad weather overnight Monday hampered NATO warplanes, which conducted 190 bombing raids. Shea announced that 72 F-15s and F-16s were going to Turkey by month's end, giving NATO the ability to strike Yugoslavia from all directions.