The initial hearing for the Meja massacre case and other villages in the Gjakova region is being held today, June 16, at the Basic Court in Pristina. This horrific crime occurred in April 1999, when 370 Kosovar Albanians were killed, their bodies later found in eight mass graves in Batajnica, Serbia.
The indictment, filed in December 2023 and supplemented in April 2024, includes 53 individuals. The primary suspect is Momir Stojanović, former Head of the Security Department in the Pristina Corps Command and former director of Serbia’s Military Security Agency. Among the accused are also Franko Simatović “Frenki,” commander of the Special Operations Unit (JSO), formed by Serbia’s State Security Service in the early 1990s; Sreten Čamović, former Head of Security; Verolub Živković, former Chief of Staff of the Pristina Corps; Ilija Todorov, former commander of the 63rd Parachute Brigade; and Dragan Živanović, former commander of the 52nd Artillery Rocket Brigade.
The Role of the JSO in the Kosovo War
In the early 1990s, Serbia’s State Security Service – later known as the Security Information Agency (BIA) – established the Special Operations Unit (JSO). At that time, this service was led by Jovica Stanišić, one of the closest associates of then-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević. His right-hand man was Franko Simatović, known as “Frenki,” the founder of the JSO and responsible for coordinating paramilitary units on the war fronts in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In May 2023, the Hague Tribunal definitively sentenced Stanišić and Simatović to 15 years in prison each for supporting and encouraging war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992. They were found guilty of crimes in Bijeljina, Doboj, Zvornik, Trnovo, Sanski Most, and Bosanski Šamac.
The Special Operations Unit, under this name, also participated in the Kosovo war during 1998-1999. In an interview with Human Rights Watch, a Serbian police officer who served for six months in Kosovo in 1998 described JSO members, also known as “Frenkists,” as “extremely brutal.” “The Frenkists kill everyone. Believe me, you don’t want to see them,” he stated in an interview included in HRW’s book “Under Orders: War Crimes in Kosovo,” published in Serbian in 2003 by Samizdat B92.
Among those accused of crimes in Meja and the surrounding villages near Gjakova are other officials of Serbia’s State Security Service and Ministry of Internal Affairs, who are accused of planning and implementing “Operation Bad River,” during which 370 Albanian civilians were killed. They are accused of murder, physical and sexual violence, torture, looting, and ethnic expulsion of Albanians.
Trial in Absentia and Judicial Challenges
The trial in Pristina is being held in absentia of the accused, as they are not available to Kosovo’s judicial authorities. Former prosecutor Drita Hajdari stated earlier that the Meja case was inherited from the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX), which opened investigations against 18 people in 2013. She announced that, after taking over the case in late 2018, local prosecutors continued and expanded investigations against 35 more individuals, bringing the total number of accused in this case to 53.
A November 2024 EULEX report on rule of law monitoring states that the indictment for crimes in Meja is a high-priority case involving a complex legal doctrine of command responsibility. “For the first time, it also addresses the extermination of entire villages – which further increases its complexity,” the report says.
Accused Reside in Serbia, Protected from Prosecution
Natasha Kandiq, founder of the Humanitarian Law Center in Serbia, says that the crime in Meja has never been sufficiently clarified to bring justice to the victims and contribute to post-war justice in Kosovo. She adds that most of the bodies of those killed in Meja and surrounding villages near Gjakova have been exhumed from mass graves at the Batajnica police complex, but that 15 other people are still missing.
Speaking to Radio Free Europe, Kandiq said that numerous pieces of evidence were presented and verified before the Hague Tribunal, which would have enabled judicial authorities in Serbia to initiate proceedings and prosecute the largest crime in Kosovo, so that those responsible would be punished. However, as she states, this has never happened.
The Humanitarian Law Center, Kandiq adds, initiated the case of Momir Stojanović, the main suspect for the crimes in Meja, in 2015, and then, according to her, the EULEX prosecutor issued an international arrest warrant for him that same year. She says that the Humanitarian Law Center asked the War Crimes Prosecutor’s Office in Serbia to initiate investigations, but the response was “disappointing” – that Momir Stojanović “does not appear in the evidentiary documentation.”
“The crime is terrible, the crime is the largest [in Kosovo]. Only the highest representatives of the Pristina Corps of the Third Army have been held responsible for that crime, but there is a very long list of those belonging to that rank of officers, with important positions… and no one has been held accountable.” “All of them are in Serbia, some of them are retired, but all are in Serbia, protected from criminal responsibility, because there is no political will to punish them, especially those crimes in Meja, Korenica, and other villages near the border with Albania,” Kandiq says.
Impact of Trials in Absentia
Trials in absentia in Kosovo were made possible by an amendment to the Criminal Procedure Code in 2022, but only on condition that the prosecution and the court have exhausted all means to secure the presence of the accused. However, the Criminal Procedure Code stipulates that persons tried in absentia, because authorities failed to secure their presence, have the right to an unconditional retrial once arrested.
According to the Humanitarian Law Center in Kosovo, since the entry into force of the law on trials in absentia until February 2025, fifteen indictments have been filed in absentia against 73 members of Serbian forces suspected of committing war crimes in Kosovo. The first judgment in absentia was issued in December 2024 in the case of Čedomir Aksić, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison for war crimes against the civilian population, committed between January and May 1999 in the territory of the Shtimje municipality in Kosovo.
Kandiq believes that “when politics replaces law, then from criminal justice we have trials in absentia.” “For those who are unavailable, for those who are in Serbia, their future life will be such that they will not be able to move anywhere outside Serbia, because they will be arrested. As for justice, the question arises whether Kosovo’s judiciary will be able to prove the crimes against all the accused, if the trial will appear as a forum where only victims’ testimonies will be heard, without any communication with Serbia’s judicial authorities,” Kandiq says.
She adds that trials in absentia do not bring justice if there is no institutional cooperation between Kosovo and Serbia. According to her, the European Union should find a solution for this cooperation within the framework of the dialogue for the normalization of relations between Kosovo and Serbia, “in order to raise well-documented and high-quality indictments that can lead to effective results in practice.” Otherwise, Kandiq emphasizes, trials in absentia will not bring major changes, except for the fact that both Kosovo and Serbia will protect their citizens convicted of war crimes.
Bekim Blakaj, from the Humanitarian Law Center in Kosovo, previously told Radio Free Europe that war crime trials in absentia “go against European standards for fair trials” because the accused are unable to defend themselves. In trials in absentia in Kosovo, the accused are represented by officially appointed lawyers. “For us, this is not a fair trial,” Blakaj said, adding that decisions in absentia are “false justice” for victims or their family members, who may initially feel relieved, but over time, will remain disappointed, as the convicted individuals will continue to be free.
During the war in Kosovo, from 1998 to 1999, over 13,000 civilians were killed, while thousands more disappeared. About 1,600 people, mostly Albanians, are still missing.
