Village of Klečka, August 27, 1998.
Serbian police discovered a cremation furnace in a lime factory, used for burning killed Serbs. In Klečka, there was also a base of the terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), with a training center and ammunition storage. Captured KLA terrorists from Mališevo, Lijan, and Bekim Mazreku stated in their testimonies that during July 1998, 22 Serbian civilians were captured, killed, and burned in Klečka. The civilians were taken before a firing squad and executed, while the cremation furnace was used in the hope that the high temperature would destroy evidence. However, several partially burned bodies remained in the furnace.
In Klečka, the bodies of 22 Serbian civilians were found.
At the end of August, during military-police operations in the area of Mališevo, the “rebel stronghold” of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in the middle of Kosovo and Metohija, the burned remains of 22 people were discovered in the village of Klečka. The very next day, August 28, the spokesperson of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MUP) of Serbia informed a large number of journalists, who were granted access to the village lime factory where the remains were found, that these were civilians executed by Albanian extremists.
An avalanche of fierce condemnation followed immediately. The remains of the unfortunate victims in Klečka were the “final proof” of the terrorist nature and criminal methods of the KLA; however, almost all political parties and all officials of the Serbian government condemned the international community, humanitarian organizations, certain states, and their leaders with equally harsh words for closing their eyes to the “genocide,” “crematoriums,” and undeniable terrorism of Albanian separatists. On the other hand, the Albanian side not only rejected the possibility that KLA members committed the crime in Klečka, labeling the atrocity as a fabrication, but at the same time attributed it to the Serbian police and authorities.
In this war of statements, hardly a single sober voice was heard. International investigative and forensic expertise was requested by the Human Rights Committee from Priština, the Humanitarian Law Fund from Belgrade, as well as marginalized opposition parties in Serbia. In proportion to the restraint of the international community and their own dissatisfaction with the coverage of the Klečka crime in foreign media, Serbian authorities openly exerted pressure to achieve “national unity” among the strongest political parties. This goal was the easiest to accomplish; its achievement was not hindered, however rare the warnings, that human tragedy must not be exploited for political propaganda purposes.
Two weeks after the discovery of the burned bones in Klečka, the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MUP) informed the public about another mass grave found during the capture of a KLA stronghold in the Đakovica area. Initial police reports, once again given in the presence of journalists who were escorted to the site just a few hours after the fighting ended, spoke of the discovery of at least 12 bodies in and around the canal that feeds Radonjić Lake, near the village of Rznić. There was expressed concern that the number of victims might be at least three times higher.
Once again, a series of condemnations followed against the criminals, political parties, and other groups identified as “Albanian terrorists,” whose victims were “Serbian civilians.” The international community was once again mentioned in the condemnations, this time also due to the European Union’s ban on flights by Yugoslav Air Transport, imposed because of the ongoing conflict in Kosovo and Metohija.
On the other hand, the denials from spokespersons of Albanian political parties regarding possible KLA involvement in this crime were much less explicit. KLA representatives, while reiterating that this crime was orchestrated by the Serbian police, also threatened their own compatriots not to cooperate with Serbian authorities, not to return weapons, and not to give up the fight. At first, it seemed that the tragic case of the victims from Klečka would repeat itself, who practically disappeared amid a flood of statements, condemnations, appeals, and broken expectations.
However, in this case (at least to some extent), things took a different course. The investigative judge from Peć, Radomir Gojković, announced an investigation that will include victim identification, to be carried out by a team from the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine in Belgrade, led by Professor Dr. Dušan Dunjić.
Besides skeletons and bullet casings, parts of cables were found at the site, likely cut from milking machines from a nearby farm barn, as well as barbed wire tied into a noose on which a long strand of black hair and human tissue were found. The wire was used to bind one of the discovered skeletons. Around 14 gunshot wounds were identified, mostly on the skulls and, in one case, on the pelvis.
“In identification, regarding anthropological data, the most useful were the information about teeth and previous illnesses or injuries,” said anthropologist, Associate Professor Dr. Marija Đurić-Srejić for AIM. “One elderly woman was identified, among other things, based on head injuries from a traffic accident that happened twenty years ago; one person was identified based on a shin tumor that caused limping; a third person was identified based on an old rib fracture.” The entire team devoted all their knowledge, sometimes driven by an irresistible need to return at least names to the unknown victims.
The final phase of identification involved comparing the experts' findings with data obtained from relatives of missing persons from the period between April and September of this year, which is the estimated age of the victims’ remains. “Identification is a nightmare,” said Marija Đurić-Srejić, “and the responsibility we all felt was as if their lives depended on it.” Out of at least 34 people found in the canal of Radonjić Lake near Rznić, 12 have been identified so far. These include four Albanians (one woman among them), one Roma, and seven Serbs (including two women). After completing identification and taking samples for potential subsequent DNA analysis, 22 people were buried as unknown. Meanwhile, at the end of September, remains of another five individuals were discovered at the crime scene. The same team of experts is currently working on their identification.
Mazreku Brothers, 40 years old
19. 04. 2001. (blic)
Mazreku Brothers, 40 Years Old
The cousins Ljuan (22) and Bekim (22) Mazreku from Mališevo were sentenced yesterday by the District Court in Niš to 20 years in prison each for terrorism. They were found guilty because in 1998 they became members of the ‘Ljumi’ gang, part of the terrorist organization ‘UCK’ (Kosovo Liberation Army), and later participated in the shooting of kidnapped civilians in the village of Klečka near Lipjan.
Ljuan was charged with participating with other gang members from July 17 to 22, 1998, in an attack on Orahovac, during which 43 civilians were kidnapped and taken to Mališevo, and later taken with other abductees from other places to Klečka where they were tortured. Ljuan was found guilty of raping a Serbian girl between 12 and 15 years old in Klečka and cutting off the ear of an eight-year-old boy, while Bekim was found guilty of participating in the rape of women. The Mazreku brothers, as announced by the president of the judicial panel, Milimir Lukić, participated in a group of 20 gang members in the shooting of around 100 civilians.
“When I received this case and read the description of the acts, I was in disbelief and found it hard to understand how anyone could commit such a horrific crime in the name of some cause. However, the facts established in this trial proved without a doubt that terrible crimes happened in Klečka and that the perpetrators were Ljuan and Bekim Mazreku. The guilt of the accused was not fabricated or planted, as they claim in their defense; it is individual and precisely determined by Ljuan’s confession to the investigating judge. This is not a mere confession but a clear and logical sequence of events with precise details, description of places, objects, things, and people that only a participant in the events can provide,” Judge Lukić stated in his reasoning for the verdict. Among other things, he said there are no witnesses to the mass shootings and there will be none because no one survived.
One of the defenders of the Mazreku brothers, lawyer Čedomir Nikolić, announced an appeal and added that such a verdict was expected because the court refused to accept defense evidence “that the body remains do not originate from Klečka but, according to Belarusian pathologists, from the village of Volujak.” Nikolić added that this verdict simultaneously justifies numerous flaws in the investigation process.
As Judge Lukić announced, the time the Mazreku brothers have already spent in custody, since August 2, 1998, will be deducted from their sentence.
“We’ll See in The Hague”
“I have nothing to say, we’ll see at the court in The Hague,” said Ljuan Mazreku with a smile and open arms in the courtroom after the verdict was pronounced. At a previous hearing, Bekim Mazreku said he was ready to present his defense, along with the allegations against him, also at the court in The Hague, as he claimed complete innocence. During the main trial, the Mazreku brothers fully denied all charges, stating that their statements during the investigation were given under duress and after mistreatment, and that the whole case was fabricated by the police.
Fatmir Limaj Released
March 22, 2012
The judge of the District Court in Pristina ordered the release from custody of Fatmir Limaj and nine other accused of war crimes against civilians in the former Kosovo Liberation Army camp in the village of Klečka, as announced by EULEX.
Previously, the panel of judges, composed of international and local judges, decided that the statements and diaries of Agim Zogaj, the prosecution's key witness, were inadmissible. The panel included two EULEX judges and one local judge. The judges determined that the prosecution failed to meet certain procedural standards, so the evidence provided by Agim Zogaj, known as witness "Z," was not acceptable. Both the prosecution and defense were asked to submit their closing arguments before a verdict in the case is issued.
Zogaj was the prosecution’s most important witness against the accused in the Klečka case. He was found hanging in a park in Germany, and it was announced that it was a suicide.
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