Kosovo/Kosova As Seen, As Told Veliki Kicic. Police officers, whom a witness describes as speaking Albanian with Serbian accents, took the man into the garden and shot him in the head numerous times with a machine gun. A witness stated that the police said their action was in retaliation for an attack on their police station. Killings by NATO As noted in the introduction to this report, the methodological framework of this report does not include addressing events that were beyond the reach of the OSCE-KVM's investigation and reporting efforts. For the period from 20 March, when it was deployed in Albania and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, the majority of the casualties in Yugoslavia of the NATO air campaign were beyond the reach of the OSCE-KVM. The framework of this report nevertheless incorporates an analysis of incidents where casualties were inflicted by NATO bombing in Kosovo and where those incidents were subsequently recounted to the OSCE-KVM by refugees. Two incidents on the same day in April where NATO bombed IDP convoys at Meja/Meje and Bistrazin/Bistrazhin are covered in Part V, entry for Djakovica/Gjakova municipality, and in Chapter 13, Human shields and other endangerment of noncombatants during military operations. Grave sites and treatment of mortal remains Although a fundamental concern regarding the burial of bodies in armed conflict is honour and respect, principles in humanitarian law on the treatment of the dead are prompted mainly by the right of families 3 to know the fate of their relatives. Responsibilities include searching for and recovering the dead, burying them honourably in individual graves, as well as marking, respecting and maintaining 4 gravesites. The FRY authorities did not always fulfil their responsibilities towards the dead even before the OSCE-KVM evacuated, but after the escalation in summary and arbitrary killings after 20 March their practices became particularly dilatory. The full extent of violations regarding treatment of those killed during the armed conflict in Kosovo will only be made clear in the long term, when graves are exhumed and forensic analysis is completed. However, the procedures observed by the OSCE-KVM and as recounted by refugees who fled to Albania and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia already indicates that the FRY authorities did not comply with their responsibilities. The majority of Kosovo Albanians are Muslims whose religious practices require that the burial of the deceased be carried out within a day of death. In the FRY, flexibility in observing this custom was always necessary when a violent death was suspected. According to FRY law, examination of a corpse and autopsy is mandatory when there is suspicion or it is obvious that death was caused by or related to the commission of a crime, and it was not always reasonable to expect this to occur within 24 hours of a 5 death. However, on some occasions, the Serbian authorities' negligence toward the dead adversely affected any later investigation into the killings. Following the killings of 45 people in Racak described above, bodies were left in the open, leaving them vulnerable to interference by animals. Bodies were moved to several http://www.osce.org/kosovo/documents/reports/hr/part1/ch5.htm (11 of 15)12/5/2003 11:50:53 AM