Witness Says He Knew Nothing About Bitici Brothers

“During my two short stays at the instructional center, I did not enter the warehouse where the Bitici brothers were allegedly detained,” Vladan Krstovic told the Belgrade Special Court.

“While I was there I never heard about the brothers and no one spoke about them,” he added.

Krstovic, a member of the Belgrade unit of special police forces, visited the centre twice during the Kosovo conflict in 1999 but he said no crimes were committed when he was there.

Krstovic was a witness in the “Bitici Brothers” case, in which Serbian prosecutors have charged Sreten Popovic and Milos Stojanovic, members of the Serbian police, with war crimes against three prisoners of war, Argon, Ilija and Mehmet Bitici.

The brothers, U.S. citizens of Albanian origin, were members of the “Atlantic Brigade”, a voluntary unit of the Kosovo Liberation Army formed in the United States.

The brothers were arrested by Serbian authorities and held in prison for illegally crossing the border between Albania and Yugoslavia.

According to the indictment, the accused transferred the brothers unlawfully to the Petrovo Selo police training centre in eastern Serbia, where they kept them in a warehouse.

After a day, according to the indictment, members of the Serbian police force killed the three brothers by shooting them in the back of the head and threw their bodies in a garbage pit.

The bodies were found in 2001 in a mass grave in Petrovo Selo.

This is the second time the case has come before the Special Court.  The accused were acquitted in the first trial but prosecutors filed a complaint to the Court and the case was then sent back for a retrial.

The main hearing will continue on March 21.