Bytyqy case begins

Bytyqy case begins

Sreten Popović and Miloš Stojanović, members of an elite Serb police unit during the Kosovo war, pleaded not guilty to the murder of Illy, Mehmet and Agron Bytyqi, three U.S. citizens of Kosovo origin, and dumping their bodies into a mass grave. They could face up to 20 years in jail if convicted.

In 1999, during NATO airstrikes against Serbs to halt their crackdown on Kosovo's ethnic Albanian insurgents, the Bytyqis left their home and pizza business in New York to join the so-called Atlantic Brigade — a unit of about 400 Albanian-Americans fighting on the side of Kosovo rebels seeking Kosovo province's secession from Serbia.

On June 26, 1999, after the NATO airstrikes had ended, the brothers strayed outside of Kosovo's unmarked boundary into central Serbia where they were arrested and sentenced to 15 days in prison for illegally crossing the border.

The two policemen are charged with handing them over to other unidentified Serb paramilitaries who shot and killed them.

Popović, a commander of a special police unit, said he was ordered to hand the three brothers to three men wearing hoods over their faces.

"I did not know where they took them," Popović said. "I did not believe they would be shot. I thought they would be expelled from the country."

The brothers' bodies, with their hands bound and with gunshot wounds to their heads, were discovered in 2001 in a mass grave in eastern Serbia with more than 70 bodies of other Kosovo Albanians. Their remains were later identified by an FBI forensic team.

The U.S. administration pressed Serbian authorities to bring to justice all responsible for the deaths, including those who issued the orders. The investigation into the killings became possible only after the 2000 ouster of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, who had led the government crackdown on the Kosovo separatists.

Bozo Prelević, the victims' family lawyer, said that "it is obvious" that police general Vlastimir Đorđević, who led Milosevic's Kosovo crackdown, "has ordered the murder of the brothers."

Đorđević, who is also sought by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in the Netherlands, is believed to be hiding in Russia.

Bruno Vekarić, the spokesman for the prosecution, said it was difficult to collect evidence in the Bytyqi case.

"Whenever policemen are charged with war crimes, evidence is hard to get as we have often hit a wall of silence." Vekarić said.