The Kosovo Verification Mission of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe is now "ready to say mass killings have occurred in Kosovo, especially in the west of the province," it announced yesterday. This follows weeks of investigation by 60 of the organisation's personnel at refugee camps in Macedonia and Albania.
At the OSCE headquarters in Skopje, Mr Jorgen Grunnet said it had been "very careful about talking facts, not hearsay," but felt confident enough at this stage to conclude that mass killings had occurred. "They are now taking place in other parts of the province," he said.
Mr Grunnet said there was also a pattern of old men being killed in villages which the young men had left. And, whereas he could not say all villages had suffered killings, these had been "fairly widespread."
There was also "firmer and firmer evidence of mass graves" but "really the final proof will be when we go there and start digging in the ground," he said.
There was also "firmer evidence of rape on a wide scale," though the organisation could not yet be certain of the existence of rape camps. Also, while there had been reports of mutilations, the most common accounts were of shootings at close range, sometimes in front of others.
Rapes and sexual molestation had also taken place in front of others, and there had been many reports of both men and women being stripped. "Being forced to stand naked is a serious thing if you are a Muslim," Mr Grunnet commented.
The most frequently named perpetrators of crimes were soldiers in the Yugoslav army, police, and paramilitaries often named as "Arkan's men" or "Seseljs's men," both Serb militia units.
The OSCE personnel concerned, many of them lawyers or police officers, have been involved in talking to refugees at camps in Macedonia and Albania, as well as collating other material on killings, mutilations, rapes, and evictions by Serb forces in Kosovo.
It is the intention, Mr Grunnet said, to have the findings available to help with the OSCE's work when it returns to Kosovo, which it left on March 20th, and to put them at the disposal of the War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague. These will include the names of perpetrators identified by victims.
About a dozen members of the tribunal are already conducting their own "very separate" investigations into war crimes allegations among the refugees in Macedonia and Albania, he said.
To date OSCE personnel have spoken to 600 victims, and witnesses to such crimes, among refugees. The conversations are in-depth, confidential and voluntary, often taking many hours per person.
Almost two weeks ago the OSCE said statements collected from refugees by then "painted a picture of total lawlessness and an almost complete absence of any form of protection for ethnic Albanians."
A pattern of initial attacks on civilians and their property by police, paramilitary groups, and armed civilians was clear. A similar pattern of "intimidation and harassment, combined with assaults, pillage, shelling and killings, after which people flee or are simply told to leave," had also emerged.
There were reports of houses being burned down and of further harassment and intimidation at the border, where some refugees experienced sexual assaults, general assaults and robbery, often of remaining possessions.
Refugee statements indicated "killings, executions, physical abuse, rape, forced displacement, destruction of civilian property and looting . . . sexual assaults including rape of groups of women . . . torture, ill-treatment, harassment, intimidation and use of groups of people as human shields."
There had been accounts of "maiming of the victims and of mutilations of the dead . . . (to) include throat cutting, cutting out of eyes, cutting off of breasts, nose, fingers, hands, and/or feet, slicing of body parts, and carving of Serb nationalistic marks on the chest, forehead or other parts of the body.
"Often executions are reported as being done in front of family members or villagers. Sometimes the victims are separated from the group and are later found dead or not accounted for.
"In several cases interviewees were able to give precise descriptions of the uniforms and insignia" worn by assailants and "a substantial number of the perpetrators could be identified."
Since then there has been evidence that the mass evictions of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo had been systematic, as was the looting and violence that accompanied the evictions, Mr Grunnet said.
In recent days the town of Prizern in western Kosovo had been ethnically cleansed, he continued, as had Albanian towns in northern Kosovo. There were also indications that ethnic cleansing had spread beyond the province into Serbia proper, though refugees from such places were still very much a minority.
They also tended to come from Serbian villages which had an ethnic Albanian majority, he said.
Of the OSCE's 1,500 local personnel who remained in Kosovo following the organisation's evacuation, one was known to have been killed. Others had been reported dead, some were unaccounted for, but most got out, he added.