UN

Published by The Wall Street Journal, September 29, 2004

UN Issues First Murder Indictments Over Kosovo Riots

DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
September 29, 2004 11:01 a.m.

PRISTINA (AP)--U.N. prosecutors have indicted six ethnic Albanians for the murder of a Serb and the beating of his elderly mother during Kosovo's worst postwar outbreak of ethnic violence, a senior official said Wednesday.

In the first indictment filed for murder since the mid-March riots, three suspects were charged in the slaying of Slobodan Peric, 51, and five were accused of beating his 77-year-old mother, Anka, said Thomas Monaghan, head of the U.N.-run justice department in Kosovo.

"This is one of the first of the serious cases from March," he said. "There will be further indictments to follow."

The woman later died, but Monaghan said it wasn't yet known whether her death was due to injuries sustained in the March 17 attack in the eastern Kosovo town of Gnjilane, 45 kilometers outside the province's capital, Pristina.

Ethnic Albanian mobs targeted Serbs in a wave of attacks that killed 19 people and left thousands homeless. At least 600 Serb homes and Serbian Orthodox churches were burned, and some 4,000 people -mainly Serbs -fled to safety.

The violence was the worst since the U.N. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization took control of the province from the Serbs in 1999 at the end of Kosovo's war.

Serbian President Boris Tadic and other Serb officials have accused international officials of failing to punish the perpetrators of recent attacks on Kosovo's dwindling Serb minority. They have encouraged the province's Serbs to boycott Oct. 23 elections, citing a lack of security.

Authorities have said they arrested about 270 suspects, mostly ethnic Albanians, in connection with the riots. Fifty-six of the most serious cases -including killings, major arson attacks and organization of violence - are being handled by international prosecutors.

More than 200 cases involving mainly minor offenses, such as theft, smaller arson fires and causing general danger, are being handled by the local judiciary.

International prosecutors and judges in Kosovo are appointed by the U.N. to deal with sensitive cases. The indictments for the murder and beating were filed Tuesday, Monaghan said.



Volume 6 Number 40 - Tuesday, October 4th, 2004	A Publication of the ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN LAITY