The Vushtrri massacre was the mass killing of

Kosovo Albanian The Albanians of Kosovo ( sq, Shqiptarët e Kosovës, ), also commonly called Kosovo Albanians, Kosovar/Kosovan Albanians or Kosovars/Kosovans, constitute the largest ethnic group in Kosovo. Kosovo Albanians belong to the ethnic Albanian sub-gr ...

refugees A refugee, conventionally speaking, is a displaced person who has crossed national borders and who cannot or is unwilling to return home due to well-founded fear of persecution.

near

Vushtrri Vushtrri ( sq-definite, Vushtrria) or Vučitrn ( sr-Cyrl, Вучитрн), is a city and municipality located in the Mitrovica District in northern Kosovo. According to the 2011 census, the town of Vushtrri has 26,964 inhabitants, while the munic ...

, during the

Kosovo War The Kosovo War was an armed conflict in Kosovo that started 28 February 1998 and lasted until 11 June 1999. It was fought by the forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (i.e. Serbia and Montenegro), which controlled Kosovo before the war ...

on 2–3 May 1999.

Background

A column of about 1,000 refugees were travelling in a convoy of about 100

tractor A tractor is an engineering vehicle specifically designed to deliver a high tractive effort (or torque) at slow speeds, for the purposes of hauling a trailer or machinery such as that used in agriculture, mining or construction. Most common ...

s, who were fleeing fighting between the KLA and Serbian forces east of Vushtrri. Serbian Police and

paramilitary A paramilitary is an organization whose structure, tactics, training, subculture, and (often) function are similar to those of a professional military, but is not part of a country's official or legitimate armed forces. Paramilitary units carr ...

forces caught up with the convoy that traveled south. On 2-3 May between Gornja Sudimlja and Donja Sudimlja ( sq, Studime e Eperme and Studime e Poshtme) near Vushtrri, an estimated one hundred men were killed.

ICTY The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was a body of the United Nations that was established to prosecute the war crimes that had been committed during the Yugoslav Wars and to try their perpetrators. The tribunal ...

investigator Romeu Ventura stated that 120 civilians were murdered on 2 May by Serb forces and buried two days later in a mass grave five miles east of Vushtrri. After the war, ICTY forensic teams discovered 98 bodies in Gornja Sudimlja. The Vushtrri case was raised at the trial of Serbian police general

Vlastimir Đorđević Vlastimir Đorđević (Serbian Cyrillic: Властимир Ђорђевић; born 17 November 1948) is a Serbian former police colonel general. For his role in the Kosovo War, he was found guilty of war crimes against Kosovo Albanians before the I ...

. The indictment against Đorđević says that some 105 Kosovo Albanians were killed in the massacre near the village of Sudimlje on 2 May 1999. Đorđević was sentenced to 27 years in prison.

Background

References

See also