Kurti: 11 missing during the war have been found and identified in the mass grave in Bishtazh

The Prime Minister of Kosovo, Albin Kurti, together with the Government Commission for Missing Persons, have announced that 11 people who went missing during the last war in Kosovo have been found and identified.

Through a post on Facebook, Kurti said that they were identified after "26 springs of waiting and anxiety."

"After the massacre in Kralan, Serbian state forces abducted and buried them in mass graves, in an attempt to eliminate them, along with evidence of the crimes. On April 2, 1999, they, along with hundreds of Albanian men and boys, were forcibly gathered by Serbian military and police forces in a field in Kralan, surrounded by tanks. There they were held under constant torture, without water and food for two days. On April 4, 86 men and boys were detained, including 11 minors. Since that day, none of them have been seen alive," Kurti said in a Facebook post, saying that after the exhumation from Bishtazhini, Serbia abducted the bodies.

Kurti said that the bodies of Adem Gashi, Sahit Gashi, Bekim Hasani, Sheremet Ismajli, Mentor Myrtaj, Osman Fejza, Shkelzen Hajdaraj, Bekim Gashi, Sabedin Kryeziu, Mentor Kryeziu and Vehbi Halilaj have been found and identified.

Authorities have not said when the bodies were found or how long the identification period took.

According to the latest data from the Red Cross, as of January of this year, there were 1,612 people missing in Kosovo from the 1998/99 war.

The Chairman of the Kosovo Government Commission for Missing Persons, Andin Hoti, sent a letter to the European Union's chief diplomat, Kaja Kallas, in February, requesting concrete steps from her and the European bloc to force Serbia to cooperate and open its state archives, including military, police and intelligence, to understand the whereabouts of the missing from the last war.

A meeting of the Joint Kosovo-Serbia Commission on Missing Persons was scheduled for January 15 of this year, but it failed due to Serbia's refusal to participate, as a sign of protest after an action by the Kosovo Government to close Serbian institutions.

The Joint Kosovo-Serbia Commission on Missing Persons was established based on an agreement reached last year within the framework of the dialogue for the normalization of relations between the two countries, mediated by the European Union, for the implementation of the Declaration on Missing Persons.

The formation of the Commission was preceded by the agreement reached by the leaders of Kosovo and Serbia in 2023 on the Joint Declaration on Missing Persons.

Some of the commitments made in the declaration include:

In practice, not a single point of the declaration has been implemented, despite calls from the European bloc.

Kosovo and Serbia have been in dialogue since 2011 and have reached a host of other agreements, but not all of them have been implemented.

The European Union frequently reminds both parties that advancement in the dialogue process is linked to their path to Euro-Atlantic integration./rel