Mala Kaludra Dig: Court Orders Month in Custody for Two
A Pristina court sent Momir Jaksic and Miljko Bisevac to custody for a month, while the Special Prosecution says the Mala Kaludra excavation belongs to two criminal investigations.
The excavation at Mala Kaludra, a village in the Zubin Potok municipality in northern Kosovo, has moved into a courtroom. The Basic Court in Pristina ordered a month in custody for two men arrested at the site, and Kosovo’s Special Prosecution confirmed that the digging is being carried out under a court order and forms part of two criminal investigations.
The two men held are Momir Jaksic and Miljko Bisevac. They are charged with killing several Albanians and concealing their bodies. Nothing has been proven in court, and at this stage the case rests on the prosecution’s suspicion rather than any verdict.
What the prosecution confirmed
The order covering exhumation, autopsy and identification of the remains came from the Basic Court in Pristina at the prosecution’s request. The Special Prosecution says the work at the site sits inside two separate case files.
Three institutions are working at the location:
- the Kosovo Police
- the Institute of Forensic Medicine
- EULEX, providing support
Analysis of the recovered remains has not begun. There is no confirmation of identity, and no figure yet for how many people the remains belong to.
Who are the 23 missing men from Mitrovica?
Kosovo’s acting prime minister, Albin Kurti, said on July 29 that the find at Mala Kaludra may be linked to a group of 23 intellectuals from Mitrovica. He spoke at the presentation of a report by the Institute for War Crimes.
“Our first suspicion, the moment we learned that human remains had been found, was that this concerns the group of 23 intellectuals from Mitrovica, who were abducted and forcibly disappeared on April 19, 1999.”
According to Pristina, the group was seized on April 19, 1999 in the Zubin Potok area while travelling from Mitrovica towards Montenegro. Among them was the physician Dr Adem Ademi. Searches for those men have run for years along the stretch between Mitrovica, Zubin Potok and Istok without a result that would close the file.
Kurti also wrote on X that Serbia will not stop Kosovo from establishing the fate of the missing and locating hidden graves, and called on international actors to push for the opening of the military archives of the Yugoslav Army’s 37th Motorised Brigade. Interior Minister Xhelal Svecla said the same day, speaking from Mala Kaludra, that Serbia must answer for it.
From a find in a field to a custody ruling
We reported on Mala Kaludra when the first remains were uncovered at the site. At that point there was no confirmation that they were human, nor any word on who was digging and under whose authority. Within days the story travelled from a find in a field to two arrests, a prosecution statement and a custody ruling.
The political response arrived ahead of the forensic one. Kurti and Svecla spoke before analysis of the remains had even started, and that gap will shape how the case is read over the coming weeks.
The next move belongs to the Institute of Forensic Medicine. Until identification is complete, the link to the 1999 group rests on the acting prime minister’s suspicion rather than on an expert finding. The month in custody is also the window in which the prosecution has to show how much substance those two case files actually carry.
