Excavations begin in Serbia for found persons

The director of the Institute of Legal Medicine and a member of the Kosovo Dialogue Group for Missing Persons with Serbia, Arsim Gerjaliu, has told Radio Free Europe that by the beginning of the week a team from Kosovo is doing research in the country called Kizevac in Serbia. He said that this country has been digging for four years from time to time. “

We've been working at the Chizevac mine for almost four years, but we know that in 20 years, mine waste and stones have been dumped and relief has changed. We're constantly having a witness problem because of changing relief, but in the places you're showing them, we're digging. We're going to stay in Kizevac at least three weeks doing it and changing teams and depending on the need, we're going to stay further”, Gerjaliu said.

Co-operation with authorities in Serbia on the issue of the found, Gerjaliu has been expressed, continues at the same pace.

“We have been co-operating with working groups with Serbia and this co-operation has never been halted, despite political shifts in both countries, because all work is based on humanitarian issue”. “When, as far as other issues [political dialogue Kosovo] are concerned, there are other organs that decide even though the issue of the missing should not be neglected, but the normal one should be given a particular priority because actually 20 years passed and we know very well that the families of the missing have begun to leave this world and simply require a greater job update<3>, Gerjaliu stressed.

More than 13 thousand and 500 are estimated to be the number of persons killed and missing during the 1998-99 conflict in Kosovo. These figures were published by the Humanitarian Law Fund, which has usually been exploited by institutions and other relevant instances. Of these victims, 76 percent are believed to be civilians.

Meanwhile, in ethnic terms, 10,000 and 794 are Albanians, two thousand and 197 Serbs, while others belong to other ethnic affiliations. Another plague of war is about 1,000 and 600 people found.