Yugoslav Police Disclose Grave Site

A mass grave believed to contain dozens of bodies of ethnic Albanians is located at a police training camp outside Belgrade, Yugoslav police disclosed Wednesday.

Also Wednesday, President Vojislav Kostunica said a law to extradite war crimes suspects such as former President Slobodan Milosevic to a U.N. tribunal in the Netherlands is likely to be approved by the Cabinet and forwarded to parliament.

The mass grave, believed to contain the remains of ethnic Albanians slain in 1999 in Kosovo--a province of Serbia, the dominant Yugoslav republic--is in the Belgrade suburb of Batajnica, police Capt. Dragan Karleusa said. Authorities had previously announced exhumations but would not say where the grave was.

The bodies had been dumped into the Danube River in a truck near the Romanian border in April 1999, the Interior Ministry said.

“Bodies were then pulled out of the river, loaded in two trucks, transported to Batajnica and buried,” Karleusa said.

Police have said Milosevic ordered top commanders at a meeting in March 1999 “to remove all evidence” of civilian casualties from the Kosovo crackdown that could be subject to “possible investigation.”

Official TV footage presented to journalists showed a front-end loader removing brush and dirt from the mass grave and forensic technicians and archeologists investigating dismembered body parts found in several deep holes.

Serbian Interior Minister Dusan Mihajlovic said Wednesday that investigators had determined that “there are probably more mass graves at the same location.”