British military prosecutors are investigating the killing by paratroopers of two ethnic Albanians during independence celebrations in Kosovo's capital, Pristina. The bodies of the two men were released by a pathologist this weekend.
The men were shot dead as they stood on the roof of a car firing machine-guns into the sky at the end of a night of festivity to mark the July 2nd "independence day" of the ethnic Albanians.
Britain's Ministry of Defence says the investigations are routine - similar inquiries are going on into shootings in which two Serbs were killed as they threatened to shoot at paratroopers. Both the ministry and the UN denied a report in yesterday's Independent on Sunday which said UN prosecutors would decide whether to press charges. NATO soldiers serving in Kosovo can only be tried under the judicial system of their own country.
Nevertheless, the number of victims of the paratroops - four out of a total of eight killed by NATO - is likely to provoke an examination of the use of these elite soldiers as policemen.
Cousins Fahri Bici and Auni Dudi, both Kosovo Liberation Army members, were among many KLA soldiers, in civilian dress, firing long bursts of machine-gun fire into the air as the independence day celebrations hotted up.
This frightened a group of about 50 Serbs living in the former government headquarters. Earlier in the evening the paratrooper commander, Lieut. Col Paul Gibson, ordered his men to guard this building.
Witnesses say a group of paratroopers standing by the building ran out into the road as a car containing some of these KLA soldiers firing into the air passed, shouting at the armed men while also firing into the air. Seconds later, they shot at the car. One man died instantly, one was mortally wounded and two men inside the car were also wounded. Military police will want to know why the paratroopers, who say they feared they were being targeted, appear to have shot at the car after it had passed them, and had passed the building they were told to protect.
Television footage shot seconds afterwards shows one of the dead men lying on his back with his head over the edge of the Astra's rear door, while his mortally wounded cousin lies in front of him, still moving. A British Ministry of Defence spokesman said: "There is a possibility obviously that if they were found to be in any shape or form to have been reckless or negligent then they could find themselves charged with murder." "Three soldiers believing their lives to be in danger fired aimed shots at the vehicle," said Pristina British army spokesman Maj John Beer. "Their guns have been taken for forensic evidence . . ." But he insisted there would be no change to the methods of the paratroopers, described politely as "robust". One paratrooper living in a base in a Pristina suburb said: "We go in hard, but sometimes that's what's needed. The people love us, the kids are always coming up playing football."
Pristina has seen a series of killings, some apparently revenge attacks on Serbs, together with many break-ins by ethnic Albanian gangs preying on Serbians. In one recent case, three Albanians were arrested after a terrified Serb woman ran screaming from her apartment when they burst in and ordered her out. The three were overpowered by a passing paratrooper patrol before being handed over to the military police.
Yet you are hard put to find critics of these methods on the streets of Pristina, where the ethnic Albanians have recent memories of being intimidated by Serb police and troops.
An "open day" organised by the paratroopers at a Pristina school was overwhelmed by visitors yesterday, with more than 2,000 parents and their children crowding in to clamber on tanks and Land-Rovers. "We all like the paratroopers, why not?" said Lina, a 26-year-old Pristina beautician. "It is nice that children can see a soldier and go and play with him."
"I must have shaken 300 hands today," said Capt Andrew Reed. "I had one man coming up to me who was a refugee who has just returned to his house which is in ruins. He said he wanted to shake the hand of every paratrooper he could find."
"There's no point in diplomacy, you've got to be hard with some people," said a senior British air official in Kosovo.
Both the locals and the paratroopers say a policy of "robust" response by the paras to street lawlessness is working. For the moment.
Reuters adds:
Serb community leaders have decided to stop co-operating with international organisations in Kosovo, accusing them of allowing "ethnic cleansing" of Serbs, Beta news agency said yesterday. Orthodox Bishop Artemije and Mr Momcilo Trajkovic, leader of the Serbian Resistance Movement, had refused an offer by the UN civilian mission in Kosovo to join a future political council in the province.
Meanwhile, NATO forces broke into two buildings suspected of being prisons run by Kosovo rebels but found no evidence that they were being used as jails.