For 20 years, Misin Deliu constructed his own monologue in his mind about what he would tell the court on the day he would be called to testify.
Deliu was one of just two survivors of a massacre of Rezalle, a village in the north-western Kosovo municipality of Skenderaj/Srbica, where Serbian forces killed 98 Albanian civilians on April 5, 1999.
Two of Deliu’s brothers, Ibush and Aziz, and five of his cousins were killed that day. Deliu and another person who later died were seriously wounded but managed to flee the scene before Serbian forces returned to take away the dead bodies.
But Deliu died last year at the age of 85 without ever getting the chance to tell his story to a prosecutor or a court.
“He lived and died with his wish to testify,” Gjyle Deliu, his daughter-in-law, told BIRN at her house in Rezalle.
“He constantly kept repeating: ‘I will tell everything that happened,’” she said.
Deliu is among dozens of survivors of massacres committed by Serbian forces across Kosovo who died without giving evidence, while the perpetrators of these massacres have never been prosecuted.
Gjyle Deliu, now aged 50, recalled how Serbian forces arrived with tanks at dawn on April 5, 1999 and gathered the local residents at the centre of the village.
“They separated men on one side and women with children on the other. We were ordered to leave the village while the men, most of them elderly, remained there,” she said.
The villagers who left did not get far before they heard shooting. “We didn’t see them but we understood they were being executed,” Gjyle Deliu said.
After he fled, Misin Deliu hid in a nearby forest for two days. From where he was hiding out, he saw a truck that collected the bodies of the murdered villagers. “He suspected some of them were still alive,” Gjyle Deliu said.
She added that the most difficult moment he remembered was a cry for help from a 13-year-old boy who was dying alongside him in the pile of dead bodies.
After the war, he suffered with anxiety and trauma. “But he kept living with the hope of justice,” she said.
For many of the massacre victims’ families, Misin Deliu’s death represented the end of an opportunity to shed light on what happened on that tragic day in Rezalle.
“Nobody could tell the story like he did,” his daughter-in-law said.
Uninvestigated mass killings
The Rezalle massacre is one of several mass killings by Serbian forces during the Kosovo war that has not been investigated yet.
David Tolbert, director of the International Center for Transitional Justice, who was deputy chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY from 2004 to 2008, pointed out that it is hard to prove a case if the witnesses are not available.
“However, there may be some witnesses that can provide less direct evidence that helps prove the case. Depending on the relevant rules of evidence, a judge may allow for prior consistent statements regarding the alleged crimes to be admitted,” Tolbert told BIRN.
He also explained that orders that were given and recorded either in writing or captured by intercepts could be strong evidence to support a prosecution.
“It may not be possible to mount a successful prosecution, but it is worth overturning all the stones,” he said.
In the village of Polac near Skenderaj/Srbica, Kumrije Veliu has started to collate some of the documents, interviews and accounts of experiences that were written down by her late husband, Xhafer.
On January 25, she will commemorate the second anniversary of his death. Among the mementoes she has are some pictures of her son, Shyqyri, who was 13 years old when he was killed by Serbian forces in 1999.
Her husband Xhafer was one of two survivors of a massacre in the village of Cikatove e Vjeter/Stara Cikatova near Drenas/Glogovac, where Serbian forces executed 130 people, including their son, on April 30, 1999.
Xhafer Veliu died in 2018, aged 62. He was never was invited to testify.
His widow remembers that it was sunny the day before the massacre, when Serbian forces started to besiege the village of Verbovc, where her family and a thousand other people who had already been displaced from homes in other villages had gathered.
“My son Shyqyri wanted to go to his father’s side I and couldn’t stop him,” Kumrije Veliu told BIRN at her house in Polac.
“The men were in the other part of that village. Then they gathered up the men, including the boys, and sent them towards the village of Qirez,” she said.
Serbian troops assembled over 100 civilians at the mosque in Qirez on the night between April 29 and 30, 1999.
“Xhafer told me that he kept our son close to him until morning. He told us that while the men were being beaten up, one of Serb troops called ‘Bosanac’ [‘The Bosnian’] stroked Shyqyri’s hair and gave him some biscuits,” she said.
In the morning, Xhafer Veliu was among the first of the men who were put into a truck to take them to be executed. In the yard of the mosque, he saw his son Shyqyri for the last time, together with 30 other frightened children who were left behind with the Serbian tanks.
When the first bullets were fired, Xhafer rolled into a hole, alive but wounded by the gunshots. He survived, but his death two years ago means that his testimony about the killings will never be heard in court.
The remains of his son Shyqyri were found in a mass grave in the village of Cikatove in 2005, while the bodies of some of the other victims were discovered in Rudnica in Serbia.
‘Witnesses are dying and perpetrators won’t talk’
Time is running out and there are only a few Kosovo prosecutors working on war crimes who can sort through the huge backlog of cases left by the international missions that used to deal with them – the UN’s mission UNMIK and the EU’s mission EULEX.
“When witnesses or survivors die, it becomes more difficult to prove a crime, especially if they have not been summoned [for interview] before,” Drita Hajdari, the head of the war crimes department at Kosovo’s Special Prosecution, told BIRN.
Bekim Blakaj, the head of Humanitarian Law Centre Kosovo, an organisation dealing with the documentation of war crimes, expressed similar concerns.
“These mass killings, where witnesses have died, are unlikely to be dealt with by the courts, because after 20 years it is very difficult to find further evidence,” Blakaj told BIRN.
“While witnesses are dying, it is also unlikely that any of those who committed the crimes will be willing to talk and testify about these crimes,” Blakaj said.
Maxine Marcus, the director of the US-based Transitional Justice Clinic and also a former ICTY prosecutor, said that if there are no living eyewitnesses to a particular massacre, it will be more difficult to prosecute the perpetrators.
“Evidence of deceased witnesses will most certainly not be relied upon to prove criminal responsibility due to the right of the accused to cross-examination. It could possibly be used as background,” Marcus told BIRN.
She suggested that a deceased witness’s evidence could be used to corroborate the circumstances of a case, however.
“There may be sufficient evidence of the criminal responsibility of the superiors of those direct perpetrators, combined with the other evidence available. Insider witnesses, former co-perpetrators with less direct criminal responsibility could also provide sufficient evidence,” she said.
‘He died heartbroken’
When Nuredin Morina, the only survivor of a massacre in Burim in the central Kosovo municipality of Malisheve/Malisheve, passed away in 2018, aged 85, hopes that he could have testified in court about what happened died with him.
Nuredin Morina and his brother, Hasan, were among 42 people, including women and children, who were sent for execution in Burim on March 31, 1999.
When the victims fell to the ground after the first volley of shots, the firing squad opened fire again to make sure nobody was left alive. But Nuredin Morina hadn’t been hit, and eventually managed to get away to a nearby mountain.
His relatives say he was never interviewed by prosecutors, and that the massacre has not yet even been investigated.
“Until lately, he had hopes in the ICTY. When trials in Serbia started, he had slight hopes that he would be called to testify. He couldn’t accept that his experiences were being ignored,” his son, Salih Morina, told BIRN.
In Kosovo, the authorities are now discussing the possibility of setting up a truth commission to establish the facts about the war.
“This would be a way to expose the crimes and perpetrators. Such findings can help families to know the truth and to put pressure on authorities to take additional steps, eg. reparations, or possible civil actions,” David Tolbert said.
Salih Morina said his father found it hard to come to terms with the fact that he was never called to give evidence.
“He died heartbroken. When it comes to justice, he was also among those who were killed, because nearly 20 years of his life after the massacre didn’t make any difference,” he said.
Kumrije Veliu, whose husband Xhafer survived the massacre in Cikatove e Vjeter/Stara Cikatova in 1999 in which their son was killed, believes that it is now too late to continue hoping for justice.
“Xhafer lived to testify. But he died without fulfilling this desire,” she said, fidgeting with her fingers as she tried to smother her tears.
“He always said: ‘I will not rest in peace if I cannot testify.’”