BELGRADE, Serbia, Oct. 19 (UPI) -- Serbia’s prosecutor said four former members of Serbian police were arrested on suspicion they killed 14 ethnic-Albanian civilians in Kosovo in March 1999.
Vladimir Vukcevic, Serbian war crimes prosecutor in Belgrade, said the four men of the special police unit, known as Scorpions, were suspected of killing 14 people, including women and children, at Podujevo, in Serbia’s predominantly ethnic-Albanian Kosovo province, the Serbian news agency FoNet said Friday. Five other children, ranging in age from 1 to 14, were seriously injured.
Vukcevic told reporters the four were arrested in the northwestern Serbian town of Sremska Mitrovica, 50 miles west of Belgrade.
Another member of the Scorpions unit, Sasa Cvjetan, was sentenced in 2005 to 20 years in jail for the killing of ethnic-Albanian civilians in their home’s courtyard in Podujevo.
The massacre of the Podujevo civilians was committed during NATO airstrikes to stop Serbian security forces’ campaign against Kosovo’s Albanian armed separatists and civilians in 1999.
U.N. administrators and NATO troops have been deployed in Kosovo ever since to contain ethnic conflicts.
