Children to testify in massacre trial

Five children who survived a Kosovo massacre left their new homes in England to testify today at the war crimes trial of a Serb policeman.

Serb forces rampaged through the town of Podujevo on March 28, 1999, leaving 19 people dead, mostly women and children.

The young ethnic Albanian survivors’ testimony in Belgrade was a landmark event in attempts to prosecute those behind the atrocities in the Serbian province.

Sasa Cvjetan, a member of a notorious Serb special police unit called the Scorpions, is accused of gunning down several people in Podujevo.

The massacre came four days after Nato launched a bombing campaign to punish Belgrade for its crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

The five children – four from the Bogojevci family, Fatos, 17, Jehona, 15, Lirie, 13, and Genc, 10, and Saranda Duriqi, 18 – have individually identified Cvjetan at a Belgrade prison.

“They all showed maturity and consistency in their statements,” said Natasa Kandic of the Humanitarian Law Centre, which provided the youngsters with legal assistance during their visit.

Cvjetan’s lawyer said the children might have seen his client’s picture in the papers since the massacre. Cvjetan denies committing war crimes.

Serb police and troops loyal to former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic were widely accused of carrying out atrocities in Kosovo.

Milosevic is now on trial at the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague for his role in the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s.