Kosova commemorates today the 25th anniversary of the Krelan massacre, when on April 2, 1999, Serbian military and police forces separated hundreds of boys and men from the group of 1,500 Albanians who had left their homes to escape from the Serbian genocide that had engulfed the whole of Kosova.

While the rest, women, children and old people, were ordered to travel to Albania.

Two days later, on April 4, a group of boys and men were surrounded by tanks and left without water or food.

A large number was released, while 86 of them were detained, including 11 minors.

From that day, from that moment, none of them was been seen alive.

In 2013, the Fund for Humanitarian Rights (FDH) filed criminal charges against several Yugoslav Army superiors for war crimes in Krelan.

On this occasion, it was announced that the bodies of 18 detained boys and men were found in a mass cemetery near Lake Peruça, in Bajina Bashta, in Serbia.

The FDH, based on the statements of dozens of witnesses, identified six superiors of the Serbian army and police, who were in the highest positions of the units that are suspected of having committed the crimes.

Regarding the Serbian crimes in Krelan, in December 2014 a letter was sent to the chief prosecutor of The Hague by the head of the Association “Family and Hope” Arifete Bytyqi. On behalf of the families of the 86 victims of the massacre, Bytyqi requested that the murdering of 86 Albanian civilians by the Serbian police on April 4, 1999 in Krelan be investigated.

In her letter, Bytyqi reminds that even to this day, none of the perpetrators of the massacre have been brought to justice.

/a.p./