Serbia's Kizevac excavations are not yet known when to resume

And because of weather conditions, excavations have been put off to resume the weather, writes Indexline.

Kosovo Institute of Legal Medicine Director Arsim Gerjaliu in a statement to Indexline has said he will meet with the processing group and discuss relaunching the excavations.

We've planned this week to meet with the task force, which we're going to talk about restarting the excavations, but one of the members has proved positive with the coronary, which is why the meeting has been postponed. After this meeting we're going to have with the working group, we're about to know how long it's going to take, due to meteorological conditions”, Gerjaliu said.

Gerjaliu also added that if conditions are good, they will immediately get to work at Kizevac.

Meanwhile, the Kosovo delegation's co-ordinator for missing persons, Ibrahim Makolli, in an interview for Indexline, has said they are awaiting recommendations by legal medical experts.

“We are expecting recommendations from forensic experts, because in support of these recommendations these excavations are suspended, but now they will resume as soon as they give recommendations depending on the weather. If we start now and later there will be a deterioration of the weather then the damage will be over”, Makolli said.

Among other things, Makolli has said the meeting will be early in the first or second week of March.

The “Evertoically has the end of the first week of March, or the second week of March we will have an appointment and agree to further steps”, Makolli said.

Asked how many troops this is about, Makolli has said the Serbian side knows the exact number of troops, because they have made their burial.
For bodies we don't know exactly their number, but the Serbian side knows about the exact number of troops, because they made their own burial in Kizevac. It's true that, according to forensics, there are 4 or 5 bodies, of the mortar remains they value, but they can be even more, because there may be a mixture of bones, but there's still no known exact number, and when all the mortar remains that are there in that cemetery are going to be withdrawn, then there's a forensic analysis to prove their identity and the number of what they are, Makoli has declared.

Otherwise, in support of satellite images, five mass cemeteries have been discovered in Chizevac, and these works have begun since 2015.
Makolli has indicated that within Serbia's territory there are two locations of the mass cemetery, in Staval and the other near the border of Kosovo, in the part of Zubin Potok.

We also have 2 locations within Serbia's territory, which we've requested from the international community of “Red Krishqi”, possibly provide us with satellite images, which will then prove more about these locations. One is in Staval, the other is near the border several dozen kilometers of Kosovo's border towards Zubin Potok”, Makolli suggested.

The Kosovo team, consisting of forensics in Kizevac, traveled without police escorts and physical security:

One of the forensics doctors, who has participated in these excavations, Naim Uka, said that a forensic anthropologist and an anthropologist have participated in Kizevac.

Our various forensic teams during the last few months of 2020 have worked in the composition of two teams (a forensic specialist and a forensic anthropologist), with the weekly rotary system. Legal teams have travelled without police escorts and with no physical security at all”, Uka has declared.

Among other things, he has said that during professional work in Kizevac, the institutional political part dealing with the issue of the missing has been dealt with political and scientific statements from Pristina, even by completely uncompetent people.

He called these statements unprofessional.

These non-professional statements, which have certainly not served state policy, apart from individual media promotion interests, have made our professional work difficult. The forensic teams have started professional work in personal clothes until the last two weeks, when a small portion of the work uniforms has been managed to secure”, the forensics doctor, Naim Uka, said.

Uka for Indexonline said it's becoming a dirty game of numbers for the family of missing persons.

Besides the pressure on forensic teams, through the dirty game of numbers there is tremendous pressure made by the families of missing persons who are anxious for any information coming about the Chizevac cemetery. In professional forensics, we can't prognosis, since numbers are only talked about on the basis of forensic findings, rather than on information that are not confirmed with forensic evidence”, Uka said.

Location of mass cemetery identified in Serbia:

From 2001 to the present, on Serbia's territory, mass cemetery with 941 Albanian troops killed in Kosovo has been found in 4 locations.

According to data from the Office for Missing Members of UNMIK, in Batajnica, near Belgrade, 744 troops have been discovered in 2001. The same year, in Petrovo Selo, in eastern Serbia, 61 troops have been found. At Lake Peruqac in 2001, the mass cemetery of 84 troops was discovered, writes Indexline.

For the last time, the mass cemetery was discovered in 2013 in Rudnica, southwest Serbia, near the border crossing between Kosovo and Serbia, in Jarina. A total of 52 people have been found there.
Also, it is known that more than 1,640 people from Kosovo, mostly Albanians, are still considered undiscovered since the end of the war in 1999.