Serbs are cleared in Albanian children's drownings in Kosovo
PRISTINA, SERBIA-MONTENEGRO -- An international prosecutor found no evidence linking Serbs to the drowning of three ethnic Albanian children, a U.N. spokesman said Wednesday. The deaths touched off the worst ethnic violence in Kosovo since the end of a 1998-99 war.
Also Wednesday, NATO troops detained Sami Lushtaku, who led ethnic Albanian rebels in central Kosovo during the war, on suspicion that he was involved in the rioting that followed the deaths, spokesman Lt. Col. Jim Moran said.
After an investigation into the drownings, prosecutor Peter Tinsley concluded that "no suspects have been identified" in the deaths in Cabra, a village about 25 miles north of the province's capital, Pristina, U.N. spokesman Neeraj Singh said.
A surviving youngster, Fitim Veseli, 13, alleged that on March 16 two Serb youths chased a group of ethnic Albanian children and unleashed a dog on them. To escape, four of children jumped into the swollen and cold waters of the Ibar River, he said.
Two of the children were later found dead; the body of the third victim, Fitim's brother, Florent, is still missing. Fitim managed to swim across the river.
The allegations that members of Kosovo's Serb minority forced the boys into the river sparked several days of rioting throughout the province. Ethnic Albanian extremists attacked Serbs and their property, and 19 people were killed and more than 900 injured in the worst unrest since the war ended.
The violence dealt a harsh setback to international hopes of reconciling Kosovo's bitterly divided ethnic Albanian and Serb communities.
In his report, Tinsley concluded that "no suspects fitting the broad description given by the surviving child have been found" and that there were "significant inconsistencies in the accounts" given by the surviving witness.
"The evidence does not support a grounded suspicion of the commission of a criminal act against any individual or individuals," the report concludes.
The prosecutor, however, failed to determine why or how -- if they were not chased by Serbs -- the children ended up in the chilly river.
"It can only be concluded that something other than free will caused the children to enter the river, whether it was accident or a threat of a nature greater than the river itself," Tinsley said. He did not elaborate.
