Kosovo’s Special Prosecution has, on the eve of the 27th anniversary of the killing of at least 42 Albanians – including one woman and one child – in the village of Račak near Štimlje (Uroševac), filed an indictment against 21 members of the 243rd Mechanized Brigade of the Yugoslav Army and the Serbian Ministry of Interior (MUP). The accused will be tried in absentia before the Basic Court in Pristina.
According to the indictment, they are jointly responsible for the killing of at least 42 civilians, as well as for inhuman treatment, destruction of property, deportation and ethnic cleansing of the civilian population. Based on the initials, those indicted include the commander of the 243rd Mechanized Brigade, retired General Krsman Jelić, and the commander of the Račak operation, retired police general Goran Radosavljević, known as “Guri”.
The allegations in the indictment are in direct contradiction with the official position of Serbia, which for almost two and a half decades has been promoted by former investigating judge Danica Marinković, who relies on the findings of the investigation she conducted. In public and as a defence witness before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) – in the cases of Slobodan Milošević, Milutinović et al. / Šainović et al. (IT-05-87) and Đorđević (IT-05-87/1) – she has claimed that those killed in Račak were “members of a terrorist gang” rather than civilians, and that her testimony led the judges to abandon the presentation of evidence on the Račak killings.
The trial in Pristina provides another opportunity for Danica Marinković to “defend” the accused – among them generals and other high-ranking officers of the Yugoslav Army and Serbian police – some of whom, including the commander of the 243rd Mechanized Brigade, Krsman Jelić, previously appeared before the ICTY as defence witnesses.
Commenting on the indictment by Kosovo’s Special Prosecution, Danica Marinković categorically claimed that the Yugoslav Army did not take part in the Račak operation: “Lies, lies and lies. First, they claim that the army surrounded and shelled the village, which is not true. On 15 January, only the Serbian police took part in the action. The army was not involved at all, nor was the village shelled. I entered the village – not a single house was destroyed, and there were no traces of shelling.”
In contrast to her claims and to the official position of Serbia, an Operational Report of the Yugoslav Army General Staff dated 16 January 1999 states: “Part of the forces of the 243rd Mechanized Brigade was engaged in blockading the village of Račak, where MUP forces were carrying out an operation against Albanian terrorist forces.”
In the proceedings against Slobodan Milošević, the testimony of Canadian General Michel Maisonneuve, then head of the OSCE Verification Mission Regional center in Prizren, was cited. He stated that Lieutenant Colonel Petrović, the liaison officer between the 243rd Mechanized Brigade of the Yugoslav Army and the OSCE VM, told him that “Račak was carried out by the police,” and that the army provided fire support with one tank and an anti-aircraft gun.
In the case against Vlastimir Đorđević, the ICTY Trial Chamber found: “First, Yugoslav Army forces, which had been deployed for weeks on the hills above the village, opened fire on the village and the surrounding hills using T-55 tanks and anti-aircraft guns (‘pragas’). After that, probably after 8:00 a.m., MUP forces, composed of PJP and SAJ units, entered the village on foot and searched house by house.”
The same Chamber concluded that even if the operation in Račak had a legitimate military or counter-terrorist purpose, the type of weapons used by the Yugoslav Army and the Serbian police, the lack of any indication that fire was coming from Račak, the large number of Albanian victims, and the fact that Yugoslav Army and MUP forces suffered virtually no losses, all point to a gross disproportionality between the force used in Račak and any conceivable military or counter-terrorist objective. This is the legal definition of an attack on civilians.
With regard to the victims in Račak, Danica Marinković testified before the ICTY that, based on the crime-scene inspection and autopsies, she concluded that those killed were not unarmed civilians but “members of a terrorist gang killed in combat from a distance,” claiming as supposed evidence that all of them wore “identical leather belts.”
By contrast, the ICTY Trial Chamber in the case against Vlastimir Đorđević found that at least 45 Albanians were killed during the Račak operation, that approximately 20 to 24 bodies had gunshot wounds to the head from close range, that at least one victim had been beheaded, and that among the dead were one woman and one child.
The Chamber also found that on January 18, 1999 the police staged a fake crime scene for Judge Danica Marinković, designed to create a false impression of what had actually happened, leaving open the question of whether the investigating judge participated in or gave legitimacy to this false presentation.
Immediately after the events in Račak, the district prosecutor in Pristina filed criminal charges only for the wounding of one Serbian police officer, while concluding that there were “no grounds” to initiate any proceedings regarding the killing of dozens of Albanian civilians.
On June 18, 2001, an international panel of the District Court in Priština sentenced Serbian police officer Zoran Stanojević to 15 years in prison for the murder of one civilian and the wounding of two civilians in Račak. Stanojević served his sentence in Priština until 2002, when he was transferred to a prison in Prokuplje as part of a prisoner exchange. On August 25, 2009, he was pardoned by Serbian President Boris Tadić and released from prison.
When a state conceals war crimes and shields those responsible, trials in absentia become a way to name the perpetrators — while preserving their right to request a retrial in their presence.
Peščanik.net, 15.01.2026.
