Son of kidnapped, murdered Serbs takes stand

Son of kidnapped, murdered Serbs takes stand

On September 12, 1998, their bodies were found in a canal close to the Radonjić Lake.

Milojica Vlahović, their son, took the stand at the trial of three former KLA leaders Ramush Haradinaj, Idriz Balaj and Lahi Brahimaj, charged with this crime in the indictment.

The witness saw his parents for the last on April 21, 1998. A few days later he learned that the situation around Glođani was getting worse. Armed Albanians took control of the roads in that part of Kosovo and kidnapped their friends from a neighboring village, Miloš Radunović and Slobodan Radošević.

Their bodies were later found on a village road.

After April 21, 1998, the witness repeatedly tried to find out what had happened to his parents. As a Serb, he was afraid to go to Ratiš as it was controlled by the KLA.

Vlahović decided to ask his Albanian friends to visit his parents and try to bring them over to Đakovica or Dečani. When his friends returned from Ratiš, they told him that his parents were alive but guarded by armed Albanians.

When the Serbian military and police forces pushed the KLA back from this area, the witness talked to his Albanian neighbors and learned that armed Albanians had taken his parents towards Glođani sometime in late April or early May, despite the efforts of two of their Albanian neighbors, who tried to save them.

Apart from describing to the Chamber what he had learned indirectly about the deaths of his parents, and the death of Miloš Radunović and Slobodan Radošević, the witness described a number of other incidents with Serb as victims.

His neighbor Novak Stijović told him that his father and sister-in-law had been taken to the village of Glođani together with two other Serbs in April 1998 and beaten up.

Asked by the prosecution whether Stijović told him who had beaten them up, the witness said that he had not asked him that.

Stijović told him that they had been released after Hilmi Haradinaj’s intervention. He is the father of the accused Ramush Haradinaj.