Kosovo/Kosova As Seen, As Told 6 locations before forensic analysis. Serbian authorities also failed to undertake appropriate procedures following other killings. In Donje Korotica/Koretice e Poshteme (Glogovac/Gllogoc), the relatives of a Kosovo Albanian man shot dead by police on 12 February in disputed circumstances were immediately allowed to bring the body back to their house, where OSCE-KVM viewed it (see Part V, entry for Glogovac municipality). Although an autopsy was later conducted, the authorities had to be encouraged to take action to investigate the shooting. After the KVM evacuated, morgues appear to have been operational in some cities until at least the end of March. Several interviewees were able to identify relatives who had been killed and then taken to the relevant morgue; however it is not known whether autopsies had been performed or investigations into 7 the killings initiated. For example, the bodies of at least seven men who were killed in Srbica/Skenderaj on 20 March 1999 were later photographed and taken to the Kosovska Mitrovica/Mitrovice morgue by men wearing white police uniforms (see Part V, entry for Srbica municipality). Relatives later retrieved 8 the bodies there and buried them in Supkovac/Shupkofc, a suburb of Kosovska Mitrovica. None of the many interviewees who reported that people were killed after 1 April 1999 reported that autopsies were performed or that the bodies had been taken to the relevant morgue. Instead, bodies were left in the open or buried by relatives or, in other unofficial initiatives, collected and taken to an undisclosed location, or the remains were destroyed or concealed. State of war legislation passed by the Yugoslav authorities which broadened the circumstances under which law enforcement officers could employ firearms cannot excuse law enforcement agencies from undertaking appropriate investigations when lethal force was employed. Disregard for the dead An overwhelming number of interviewees who reported killings after the OSCE-KVM evacuated described bodies lying in the open for days. Many Kosovo Albanians returning to Kosovo, as well as international organizations, found decomposing human remains lying where the victims had been killed, not only in remote villages but also in cities and towns; some of the victims had been dead for several months. However, where possible, many Kosovo Albanian villagers or the UCK recovered bodies and buried them themselves in local cemeteries or in other impromptu locations. Assisted by the fact that their location was known, some of these gravesites or makeshift cemeteries were among those which were exhumed by international investigators after international organizations returned to Kosovo in June 1999. For example by 1 October ICTY investigators exhumed gravesites in Gornja and Donja Sudimlja, where a total of 110 bodies of people from the IDP convoy described above had been buried by local villagers (See Part V, entry for Vucitrn municipality). Others buried their relatives in their gardens or other locations in the vicinity. In some cases they did so clandestinely, afraid either of ongoing military operations in the area or of being deliberately prevented from doing so by the perpetrators or police. For example, after heavily armed police forces shot dead the husband of one woman in Veliki Kicic/Kqiq i http://www.osce.org/kosovo/documents/reports/hr/part1/ch5.htm (12 of 15)12/5/2003 11:50:53 AM