UNMIK/PR/323
The UNMIK Victim Recovery and Identification Commission, along with the OSCE, has been continuing efforts to identify the remains of 176 bodies exhumed by forensics experts from Dragodan cemetery this summer.
The exhumations, which were completed in late July, were conducted by a team of UK forensics experts working for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, in conjunction with UNMIK Police. ICTY is the only organization in Kosovo conducting official exhumations, as part of its work to establish evidence of war crimes.
Since the exhumations at Dragodan were completed, the OSCE, in an effort to assist families with identification of the remains, held an exhibit of clothing and other artifacts recovered from gravesites in Dragodan and Djakova.
The OSCE and the VRIC are also preparing a catalogue of photographs of the clothing and artifacts, in order to make the information available to families of the missing who were unable to attend the exhibition, particularly for internally displaced persons and Serb and minority communities.
While officials say most of the 176 exhumed bodies are believed to be Kosovo Albanian, there may be remains of Serbs or other minorities among those found in the unmarked graves at the Dragodan cemetery.
So far, 44 bodies have been positively identified, all of them Kosovo Albanian.
However, the VRIC and ICRC are following leads on five bodies with Serbian families.
The remains unearthed by the ICTY team were found mostly in individual graves. Most of the bodies had been buried before and during the war, by the Pristina city mortuary company attached to Pristina hospital. A few bodies were buried there after the conflict ended in June 1999.
The bodies were placed in unmarked graves either because they lacked any identification, or because families were unable to collect them, one of the tragic aspects of the conflict and post-conflict period.
The identification process is still in its early stages, and various lines of evidence will be pursued over the course of the coming months, so that the fate of other missing persons may be clarified.
Anyone seeking to trace a missing person should file a request with the International Committee for the Red Cross, which is working with the VRIC and OSCE on tracing missing persons. This is the main avenue for linking remains discovered with families of the missing.
Contrary to stories published recently in the regional press, there is no new mass gravesite at Dragodan.