Kosovo/Kosova As Seen, As Told Madh (Kosovska Mitrovica) on approximately 28 March 1999, they did not allow her to bury the body for three days; on the fourth day, after dark, she buried her husband in a shallow grave in the garden. 9 Failure to identify or mark gravesites. When Yugoslav authorities did recover and bury bodies themselves (frequently near or at the edge of the town cemeteries), the graves were not always marked. In some places, including Vucitrn, Pristina, Kosovo Polje and Suva Reka, interviewees reported that 10 workers from the local sanitation department collected and buried bodies. Often, these graves were marked with simple wooden markers, sometimes containing only a date and the initials "NN" (indicating the victim was unidentified). In many cases these markers were vandalized or became dislodged, thus rendering more difficult any future identification. In some cases, bodies were disposed of in mass graves, ignoring the responsibility to bury victims individually. In Nakarada/Nakarada (Kosovo Polje/ Fushe Kosove), residents observed employees of the local sanitation department bring bodies wrapped in plastic and bury them, typically four or five to a grave. At other times in Nakarada 20 to 40 bodies were thrown into one hole at the same time. Bulldozers flattened the ground afterwards (see Part V, entry for Kosovo Polje municipality). Even when relatives had not fled or been expelled from Kosovo, the authorities made little if any attempt to notify relatives about the dead or where they had been interred. In some cases, this appears to have been deliberate: one grave site in Vidomiric/Vidomiriq (Kosovska Mitrovica), where 28 bodies had been exhumed by 1 October 1999, was located on a slope covered with vegetation, impossible to be seen from any path running through the hills. 11 Deliberate attempts to conceal or destroy evidence about the dead Rather than identify and bury the dead, perpetrators of killings often attempted to destroy or conceal evidence of killings. Such practices lend credibility to interviewee's claims that the victims were civilians or other people protected under international humanitarian law who were unlawfully killed. It is difficult to comprehend why such violations of international standards would be so deliberately committed were the victims of the killings legitimate targets who had died lawfully in armed conflict. Although house destruction was a widespread and deliberate phenomenon in itself, in some cases circumstances suggest that houses were set on fire deliberately to disguise or destroy the bodies of people who had been killed inside. For example, when the OSCE returned to Barane/Baran (Pec/Peja municipality) at the end of June, the killing site of three residents was documented. The position and condition of the remains suggested that the elderly victims had been surprised in their bedroom by the offenders, and shot in their beds. They were then covered with doors and set on fire, obviously using a highly flammable agent since all items in the room were entirely burnt and only metal parts and small 12 pieces of human bones were visible. In Poklek/Poklek i Vjeter village (Glogovac/Gllogoc municipality), a house containing the bodies of some 46 people was also set on fire by the perpetrators. Bodies of those killed were also disposed of in wells (one example being the case of Kotlina, cited http://www.osce.org/kosovo/documents/reports/hr/part1/ch5.htm (13 of 15)12/5/2003 11:50:53 AM