Bytyqi trial: Police continue to testify

4 police officers continued to give evidence at the trial of those accused of the 1999 murders of the Bytyqi brothers. After the NATO bombing in 1999, the police officers underwent military training at a base in Petrovo Selo, where the three brothers were murdered. Bytyqi trial: Police continue to testify Police officers Mile Malesevic, Zoran Drajic, Zeljko Knezevic and Aleksandar Milosevic told Belgrade's District Court War Crimes Chamber that they found out about the murdersof the Bytyqi brothers, American citizens of Albanian descent, through the media. The witnesses said that, during the NATO bombing, they were engaged in special police units in Kosovo but that they did not know of the transport of corpses from Kosovo to Central Serbia, nor about the mass graves in Petrovo Selo. Former police officers Sreten Popovic and Milos Stojanovic have been charged with being accomplices to the murder of the brothers on July 9, 1999. They are charged with denying the Bytyqis the right to a fair trial because they arrested them as they were leaving Prokuplje prison, after serving a 15-day sentence for illegally entering the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SRJ) from Albania, and handed them over to unidentified police officers who killed them by shooting them in the back of the head. The Bytyqi brothers were members of the so-called “Atlantic Brigade” within the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) from April 1999. Their bodies were found in 2001 in a mass grave in Petrovo Selo. Their hands were tied behind their backs with wire. The defendants pleaded not guilty to the charges at the beginning of the trial in November 13, 2006 and were released on bail. The trial continues on April 7.

Bytyqi trial: Police continue to testify

Police officers Mile Malešević, Zoran Drajić, Željko Knežević and Aleksandar Milošević told Belgrade's District Court War Crimes Chamber that they found out about the murdersof the Bytyqi brothers, American citizens of Albanian descent, through the media.

The witnesses said that, during the NATO bombing, they were engaged in special police units in Kosovo but that they did not know of the transport of corpses from Kosovo to Central Serbia, nor about the mass graves in Petrovo Selo.

Former police officers Sreten Popović and Miloš Stojanović have been charged with being accomplices to the murder of the brothers on July 9, 1999.

They are charged with denying the Bytyqis the right to a fair trial because they arrested them as they were leaving Prokuplje prison, after serving a 15-day sentence for illegally entering the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SRJ) from Albania, and handed them over to unidentified police officers who killed them by shooting them in the back of the head.

The Bytyqi brothers were members of the so-called “Atlantic Brigade” within the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) from April 1999. Their bodies were found in 2001 in a mass grave in Petrovo Selo. Their hands were tied behind their backs with wire.

The defendants pleaded not guilty to the charges at the beginning of the trial in November 13, 2006 and were released on bail.

The trial continues on April 7.