Montenegro arrests Kosovo war crimes suspect

Montenegro police have confirmed to BIRN that one person who had arrested on Friday was a former Yugoslav Army member named Predrag Vukojevic “Madzo”, who was wanted in Serbia for war crimes in Kosovo.

According to the police, he was arrested in the town of Bar.

Vukojevic was first arrested for illegal fishing. He gave a false name, but on Sunday, following security checks, police determined his true identity and that he was wanted in Serbia for numerous criminal acts, including war crimes in Kosovo's village of Lubenic on April 1, 1999, when 46 Albanian civilians were killed.

Serbia's war crimes prosecutors have been seeking Vukojevic since 2014, when the war crimes office indicted three former Yugoslav Army members Vladan Krstovic, Lazar Pavlovic and Milan Ivanovic, and issued arrest warrants against Vukojevic and Nenad Lekiq, who was believed to be in Sweden at the time.

The prosecution said he believed this group was part of a Yugoslav Army-led attack, JNA, in the village of Lubeniq, which killed 46 people and injured 11 others.

The attack was carried out during NATO bombings in Yugoslavia, aimed at ending the president's offensive, Slobodan Milosevic, against Kosovo Liberation Army fighters, KLA.

The bodies of 34 of the victims from Lubeniqi were later found in a mass grave in Batajnica, near the Serbian capital, Belgrade. Four victims are still listed as missing.

Lubeniki's case is under way before the Belgrade Supreme Court and is one of the largest and longest cases of war crimes in connection with Kosovo, being pursued by Serbian authorities.

The Serbian prosecutor doubts that 11 former members of the JNA unit have committed war crimes in the villages of Sikku, Pavlan, Zahac and Lubeniki in the spring of 1999.

The group was first sentenced in 2014 to a total of 106 years in prison for killing at least 118 Kosovo Albanian civilians.

The appeals court overturned the court in 2015 and sent the case into retrial.

A BIRN documentary film, “The Unidentified”, revealed the extent of crimes committed in the four villages of Kosovo in 1999, also revealing the command structure of police units and military involved in the crimes.

“Heuman Rights Watch” initially documented the crimes in 1999 and identified some of the direct authors who were indicted in Serbia in 2011.

Vukojevic expects the possibility of extradition to Serbia in the coming months, at the request of Belgrade authorities.

He is also wanted for other criminal acts, including robbery and possession of drugs, due to his alleged links to organised crime groups.