War Crimes Investigators Set Up Shop in Albania

Some crimes alleged to be taking place in Serbia’s Kosovo province are horrific: mutilations, parents killed before their children’s eyes, a 2-year-old girl burned alive.

Then there are the more common, if numbing, acts: nearly half a million people forced from their homes and driven for days in an atmosphere of terror; whole towns and villages set ablaze; possessions looted and cars stolen at gunpoint, wedding rings stripped from women’s fingers.

Investigating such acts is the meat-and-potatoes work of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, which has declared the current Kosovo crisis within its jurisdiction.

This week, the tribunal launches its investigation into the crimes and terror that have accompanied the expulsion of nearly half a million ethnic Albanians to neighboring countries over the past two weeks.

Two international war-crimes investigators began meeting with local prosecutors and refugee officials in northern Albania on Tuesday, working on procedures to find and interview witnesses who can help the prosecution in any future war-crimes trials.

The investigation team, one a professional police officer from Australia and the other a veteran of South Africa’s post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission, did not have to look far in their inquiries: From where they stood in this border post, they could easily see a Kosovo village going up in smoke.

At midday, Serbian police ignited the Kosovo village of Vernic, only a few hundred yards from the border, within view of international journalists and aid workers. Smoke from a dozen burning houses combined into an enormous plume that blotted the sky. The sight intensified the wailing and panic of the refugees, who hurried to cross into Albania.

Watching the spectacle, investigator Tim Kelly, the Sydney police officer, vowed that the probe will proceed as soon as the potential witnesses among the refugees have their immediate humanitarian needs addressed.

He said the tribunal is looking into killings, summary executions, rapes and persecution based on ethnic and religious grounds.

“One of the clear issues is forcible deportation of people,” Kelly said. “By all reports, that has happened on a systematic basis” in the Kosovo crisis. “People having their documents taken, the licenses removed from their cars--that terribly contradicts Yugoslavia’s official line that they want the people to come back.”

The commission’s main target will be those people who directed the crimes, he said. “You cannot prosecute every soldier. You have to aim for the people in command.”

Both men said the Kosovo investigations will have an advantage over other war-crimes probes because they will be taking place within days of when the crimes were committed. Witnesses’ memories are fresh, and relevant evidence can be easily secured.

“It’s almost an ideal situation for us, because we’ve got a lot of physical evidence,” said Rajie Murugan, the South African who worked on the commission that uncovered many of the crimes of the apartheid regime. One piece of evidence that has already been obtained is the videotape of an alleged massacre scene in Krusa e Madhe, smuggled into Albania on Saturday.

Kelly said that based on the investigators’ preliminary knowledge, a great many war crimes are taking place. There were more shocking reports from refugees Tuesday of atrocities committed against ethnic Albanians, according to humanitarian workers. Among them:

* Dren Caka, a wounded, traumatized 10-year-old boy from Djakovo, told refugee officials here that he had been shot by Serbian forces in a massacre in which his mother and two sisters died along with three other families. The boy said he survived by lying amid the bodies until he could run away, but he was unable to rescue his 2-year-old sister, who at that stage was still alive. The boy, taken by helicopter to Tirana for medical treatment Tuesday, believed his sister died later when the Serbian police burned the bodies, according to Dr. Flori Bakali, a doctor working for the aid organization Medecins du Monde who interviewed the boy.

* Another refugee who crossed the border had had both hands cut off, said Andrea Todesco, the general director of the Italian Civil Protection Agency, which has erected a transit camp to temporarily house the sickest and weakest of the refugees reaching Albania. “He told us that he was lucky, because the other people there with him were killed,” Todesco said.

In its investigations, the war-crimes tribunal intends to focus on major incidents that would illustrate the chain of command that caused such events to happen. That is the only way possible, the investigators said, because there have been too many crimes to prosecute each one.