Bodies of New Yorkers Are Identified by Belgrade
By CARLOTTA GALL
ELGRADE, Serbia, July 17 — The Serbian government confirmed today
that three bodies found in a mass grave in eastern Serbia were those of
Albanian-American brothers from New York whose family name is Bytyqi. The men
were in police hands when they disappeared, said senior officials, calling their
killings an "extraordinarily serious crime."
The brothers — Ylli, 24, Agron, 23, and Mehmet, 21 — were born in Chicago and had lived in the Long Island community of Hampton Bays. The three disappeared in Serbia in July 1999, just days after the end of NATO's war with Yugoslavia. The Serbian interior minister, Dusan Mihajlovic, said the bodies had been found blindfolded, with their hands tied and gunshot wounds to their heads.
"We are talking about an extraordinarily serious crime," said Mr. Mihajlovic at a news conference here, "because we do not have sufficient evidence that they were tried at all for a criminal offense or sentenced to the death penalty."
The war had ended by the time the men were killed, he said, meaning that there was no longer a state of war that would have allowed any form of court martial.
The men were identified by an official document found in the pocket of one, signed by a Serbian judge. It showed that the three had been sentenced for a misdemeanor on June 27, 1999, and were sentenced to 15 days' imprisonment for entering Yugoslavia without visas, he said.
The Serbian justice minister, Vladan Batic, also confirmed that the men had been detained in a prison in southern Serbia, near the border from Kosovo. They were released less than two weeks later, on July 8, 1999, when the police took charge of them.
The men's bodies were found several hours' drive away in a mass grave in a Special Police Forces training camp at Petrovo Selo, in eastern Serbia. The men were apparently executed where they were found, officials have said. Their bodies were exhumed recently when officials uncovered two mass graves containing mostly Kosovo Albanian victims of the war.
