The Humanitarian Law Center notes that the issue of "cleaning up" in Kosovo has been brought up for the first time in Serbia. At a trial before the Military Court in Nis, the presiding judge, Colonel Radenko Miladinovic, asked a witness what his diary note "two persons cleaned up" meant. Yugoslav Army reservist Nebojsa Dimitrijevic replied that it meant the bodies were burned.

When the trial opened on 1 November, Judge Miladinovic said some documents were stolen from the record but that he was able to recover them. These were statements made by the accused reservists to Military Security officers in which they described how they were ordered to kill an elderly Kosovo Albanian couple, Rukije and Feriz Krasniqi. In place of these documents, statements in which the defendants made no mention of the murders were inserted into the record.

One of the defendants, Captain Dragisa Petrovic, denied in court that he had ordered co-defendants Tomica Jovic and Nenad Stamenkovic, both reservists, to liquidate Rukije and Feriz Krasniqi in the Kosovo village of Gornja Susica in late March 1999 after the couple refused to leave their home. The reservists also denied having killed the Krasniqis. Another reservist, Dimitrijevic, who appeared as a witness, retracted his statement to the investigating judge that Stamenkovic and Jovic killed the two Albanian civilians. However, Lieutenant Stojiljkovic, testifying as a witness, reiterated his statement to the investigating

judge in which he said that the Stamenkovic and Jovic had told him they had killed the Krasniqis but had not mentioned receiving orders to do so. Another two witnesses, Svemir Mladenovic and Bratislav Zdravkovic, also reservists, stated that Capt. Petrovic had ordered them to dig up a carbonized body and rebury it in another location.

According to the defendants' statements to Military Security officers who carried out an on-site investigation on 31 March 1999, and Captain Petrovic's statement to the investigating judge, the murder of the Krasniqis may be reconstructed as follows: A Yugoslav Army battalion under the command of Capt. Petrovic came to Gornja Susica on 27 March 1999. The Albanian population of the village was ordered to leave. When the elderly couple refused, Capt. Petrovic personally ordered them to go, to which Feriz Krasniqi replied that they had no place to go to and that his wife was bound to her bed. Angered by the response, Capt. Petrovic ordered Stamenkovic, Jovic and Dimitrijevic to liquidate them. The three went to the Krasniqi house and found the old man in the yard. Dimitrijevic aimed his gun at Krasniqi but, being confused, did not pull the trigger. At that moment, Jovic fired a burst and killed Krasniqi.

Stamenkovic then went into the house and killed Rukije Krasniqi in her bed. "I killed the old woman," he said when he came out. A unit assigned to remove bodies and "finish burning" remains was part of the Yugoslav Army battalion stationed in Gornja Susica. Lt. Stojiljkovic was in charge of removing remains. When he came to the village on 27 March, he found Krasniqi's body by the road and ordered two soldiers to bury him. Another three bodies were found in the village somewhat later. Reservist Dimitrijevic was in a group of soldiers who were charged with burning remains that had not been completely destroyed.

At the trial, Capt. Petrovic said he was in a poor psychological state when he arrived in Gornja Susica with the battalion and remembered "things as through a fog." He said he recalled a soldier mentioning to him an old man but did not remember giving orders for anyone in the village to be liquidated. When the judge asked if he had ordered the Albanian population to leave, Capt. Petrovic replied that he did not remember when or why the Albanians left the village, and denied that he had issued such an order. The accused reservists said they had told the Military Security officers that they killed the Krasniqis on Capt. Petrovic's order in order to get back at him since they were on bad terms. They also claimed that Lt. Col. Ljubisa Micic of Military Security, who carred out the on-site investigation, knew that their statements were untrue. Witness Dimitrijevic told the court that he was forced to say Jovic and Stamenkovic had killed the Krasniqis because the investigating judge threatened him with five y

ears in prison if he did not corroborate the statements of Petrovic and Stamenkovic.

The trial is scheduled to resume on 16 November when Lt. Ljubisa Micic is to give testimony.