Acting Minister of Internal Affairs Xhelal Sveçla has confirmed that, following the discovery of a suspected mass grave in Zubin Potok, another grave containing human remains has been identified just 10 kilometers away in the village of Jabuka, within the same municipality.
He thanked the Kosovo Police, the war crimes investigation units, the Kosovo Intelligence Agency, the Institute of Forensic Medicine, and the Kosovo Prosecutor’s Office for their work in investigating and identifying these locations.
Sveçla also called on international partners to strongly condemn and sanction Serbia’s conduct, stressing that Serbia has not changed.
Full statement:
Following the discovery of human remains in a mass grave in Kalludra, Zubin Potok, where searches and excavations are still ongoing, today, only 10 kilometers away, in the village of Jabuka in the same municipality, another mass grave containing the remains of victims of the last war in Kosovo was found.
I thank the Kosovo Police, the war crimes investigation units, the Kosovo Intelligence Agency, the Institute of Forensic Medicine, and the Kosovo Prosecutor’s Office for their dedicated work in researching, investigating, and identifying these locations.
Serbia remains the same as it was during the Milošević era—not only through figures such as Aleksandar Vučić and Ivica Dačić. Vučić was Vojislav Šešelj’s second-in-command, Dačić was Slobodan Milošević’s second-in-command, and Aleksandar Vulin was the deputy of Mira Marković. All three remain in power in Serbia today, and the state has changed neither in form nor in substance.
On one hand, Serbia refuses to provide information about people who were forcibly disappeared, while on the other, it threatens and imprisons its own citizens who cooperate in locating these mass graves. At the same time, it glorifies military units such as the 37th Brigade through memorials, despite the brigade’s alleged responsibility for numerous massacres in Kosovo.
I call on our international partners to strongly condemn and sanction Serbia’s behavior. Without such action, not only will meaningful progress toward justice be impossible, but Serbia will continue to undermine peace in the Western Balkans every single day.
Nevertheless, despite these obstacles, we remain committed and unwavering in searching every inch of land to uncover the fate of every person killed and forcibly disappeared by the Serbian state during the last war in Kosovo, and to bring every individual responsible for those crimes to justice.
