Prosecution witness: I shot women and children

Prosecution witness: I shot women and children

He told the court his unit “took part in the cleansing” of the Trnje village near Prizren in late March 1999.

As he said, "the cleansing" meant that the Albanian civilians were expelled and killed and their houses set on fire.

The company the belonged to was a part of the 549th VJ Motorized Brigade. The troops allegedly started setting the hay stacks and houses on fire immediately after entering the Trnje village.

The witness said that about 15 women and children were taken out to a yard soon after. A sergeant ordered the him and four other soldiers to shoot them, he said. They "executed the order" and shot all of them.

He did not mention the sergeant's name today, but in his evidence at the Slobodan Milošević trial in September 2002 he identified him as "Sergeant Kozlin".

According to witness K- 58, this was not the only crime his unit participated in. In February 1999, they were tasked with the "cleansing" of the Jeskovo village. When they were done, the witness saw the bodies of ten dead civilians.

He later heard his comrades talking about 25 to 30 dead. He claimed that the operation was ordered by the commander of the VJ 549th Motorized Brigade, Colonel Božidar Delić.

Delić has been promoted to the rank of general in the meantime. According to the witness, Delić summoned his unit and said that they were ordered "to go and cleanse Jeskovo the next day".

A little earlier, in December 1999, Delić's deputy, Lt. Col. Konjikovac, ordered "the cleansing" of Albanian civilians from the Ljubidža village near Albanian border.

Explaining his decision to testify about the Kosovo crimes the witness said "the screams of a one-year-old baby and other victims still haunted him in his dreams.”

The defense counsel for General Lazarević, former Priština Corps commander, argued that the witness's motive was different: a desire to pull himself out of a robbery charge filed against him by the national judiciary in 2002.

Those issues were discussed in a closed session so the link that the defense counsel suggested existed between the testimony in The Hague and the dropping of the robbery charge against the witness remained unclear.

The trial of six Serbian political, military and police officials continues today with the evidence of protected witness K-87.