In both the this month’s Declaration on Missing Persons and the annex to the Ohrid Agreement, Kosovo and Serbia recognised the need to urgently find the more than 1,600 persons from both sides who are still missing in relation to the conflict.

Many of the missing are ethnic Albanians who were killed during the war and had their bodies moved to Serbia in an organised cover-up campaign, where they were dumped in mass graves. The May 2023 declaration, in particular, implicitly acknowledges what we all know; There are more mass graves to be found.

A key witness and architect of Serbia’s cover-up operations now sits in a German jail. Vlastimir Djordjevic, former Serbian police chief, was convicted of war crimes in 2011 by the UN’s International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY in The Hague and was sent to Germany to serve an 18-year sentence. Djordjevic is likely the last and best opportunity to obtain information from a central figure in that mass cover-up and clear violation of the laws of war.

Djordjevic’s knowledge about where mass graves were placed in Serbia is well-established. According to a the ICTY and to a Serbian Interior Ministry working group created in 2001, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic called a meeting of his army and police leaders in March 1999 as he was faced with the threat of a NATO air campaign. At the time, Serbia’s brutal operations and war crimes committed in Kosovo were leading news broadcasts around the world.

Pictures of ethnic Albanians missing from the 1999 war in front of the Kosovo government building, March 2006. Photo: EPA/VALDRIN XHEMAJ.

‘Eliminate all traces’

The ICTY’s earlier indictments related to the war in Bosnia had put Serbian leaders on notice that they could be on the court’s radar. There was talk that Milosevic himself might become the first sitting head of state to be indicted by an international court.

Djordjevic suggested a solution. At the meeting’s end, Djordjevic raised the issue of ‘clearing up’ the terrain in Kosovo. The ICTY later found that this was a clear reference to concealing war crimes committed in Kosovo. According to the ICTY, Milosevic then ordered the Interior Minister Vlajko Stojiljkovic to “take measures to eliminate all traces which could point to the existence of evidence of crimes committed”. In turn, Stojiljkovic assigned his assistant minister – Djordjevic – to the task.

Djordjevic took to it. ICTY records show that he was the primary orchestrator of the cover-up operations. He insisted that bodies be exhumed from Kosovo and transported in refrigerated trucks to be reburied at particular sites in Serbia and authorised the personnel expenses. When the existing trucks were full, he ordered extras. Djordjevic directed at least one of these refrigerator trucks to be destroyed to cover-up the cover-up.

Though particular operations were conducted by the Serbian army, police and more irregular forces, they were all done in a very coordinated way that Djordjevic oversaw. In the end, Djordjevic was convicted of concealing nearly 1,000 murders in every mass grave in Serbia that had been found by the time of his indictment.

Nearly all the Serbian leaders convicted by the ICTY who were involved in the cover-up operations, like the commander of the Yugoslav Army’s Pristina Corps, Vlastimir Lazarevic, and Deputy Prime Minister Nikola Sainovic, have already been released and welcomed homes as heroes in Serbia. Others, like Djordjevic’s former officemate Goran Radosavljevic, a commander of the Petrovo Selo training ground that was the site of one of the mass graves, have never faced justice.

Djordjevic’s superiors, President Milosevic and minister Stojiljkovic, are both dead. This makes Djordjevic one of the last people accused of involvement in the cover-up operations and the only person convicted of orchestrating them that is still in custody.

However, about 1,000 Kosovo Albanians are still missing. There are still undiscovered mass graves in Serbia. Djordjevic knows more.

Names of missing people from the war, both Albanians and Serbs, on a wall in Pristina,  April 2011. Photo: EPA/VALDRIN XHEMAJ.

Time is running out

The German authorities should not pass on this opportunity. They have already spent considerable effort to help resolve the fates of missing persons within the ‘Berlin Process’ and the EU-facilitated dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia.

Chancellor Angela Merkel signed a regional Declaration on Missing Persons in 2018 and Chancellor Olaf Scholz continued Germany’s important role during his engagement with regional leaders last summer. Notably, Kosovo and Serbia each pledged to fully implement this same 2018 declaration in the first point of their 2023 declaration. It is still binding on all parties, including Germany.

As part of the Berlin Process, Germany helped launch a regional database of active missing persons cases from the conflict just six months ago. Being a lead signatory to the 2018 declaration, especially, its commitments are still very much active.

Germany’s access and ability to influence Djordjevic into coming clean is unique. He is due to be released in 2025 and there is virtually no chance that he will help the victims he created once he is free. Recent history shows that he is much more likely to be showered with praise than with scrutiny in Serbia.

Germany has a small window to encourage Djordjevic and help locate new mass graves. The 350,000 Kosovo Albanian diaspora in Germany would certainly look favorably on such an effort.

In that 1999 meeting with Milosevic and also during his 2011 sentencing hearing in The Hague, Djordjevic faced the real threat of criminal accountability. Each time, Djordjevic acted in his best interests – choosing to cover-up his crimes in 1999 and admitting guilt to receive leniency during his 2011 sentencing hearing.

Germany now has a final chance to force Djordjevic’s hand. Time is not an ally. Parents in Kosovo are dying of old age without knowing what happened to their sons and daughters. A generation has grown up in the shadow of loss and grief. German authorities should make clear to Djordjevic that his best interests are tied to providing closure for these families.

Praveen Madhiraju is executive director of Pretrial Rights International, a US-based NGO representing the Bytyqi Brothers case. He can be found on Twitter @BytyqiBrothers

The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of BIRN.