Mala Kaludra statement sat on file for 23 years
Ranko Tepavac told UNMIK investigators where the bodies were buried on February 7, 2003. The account went public in 2013, yet the site is only being dug now.
We covered the suspected mass grave at Mala Kaludra, near Istok, yesterday, when two suspects were remanded in custody and Pristina explained that the man arrested in Kraljevo is being treated in that case as a witness. The document that explains why the site is being opened only now is 23 years old, and it has been sitting in a case file the whole time.
It is a statement Ranko Tepavac gave to investigators from the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo, UNMIK, and the Kosovo Police on February 7, 2003. In it he described what, by his account, happened in the village on April 19, 1999, including where the bodies were buried. The Humanitarian Law Center, HLC Kosovo and RECOM say in a joint assessment that no effective check of that location followed.
What the 2003 statement says
According to the statement, a group of Albanian civilians was stopped by a group led by Jovica Utvic from Mala Kaludra. The civilians were stripped of money and valuables, with a promise that they would be allowed to continue toward Ulcinj. When they turned to walk on, they were fired at.
Tepavac also told investigators what came next. The police, in his words, gave the villagers of Mala Kaludra an order: “Bury the ones you have killed.”
The account did not stay secret either. It became publicly available on January 7, 2013, when the daily Zëri published it in Albanian. A detailed reconstruction of the case later went into the second volume of the Kosovo Memory Book, titled “Dignity for the Missing”.
Why was the site never checked for 23 years?
None of the institutions that held the statement has answered that. Natasa Kandic, founder of the Humanitarian Law Center, wrote in a piece published by Pescanik on July 31, 2026:
UNMIK and the Kosovo Police had information about the crime and the burial site from February 2003, but there is no record that they conducted an effective investigation or checked the location.
That assessment covers the years when the United Nations mission held security and judicial authority in Kosovo. The Humanitarian Law Center adds that the Serbian police knew about the crime from the day it happened.
That puts the number of places where the information sat at three, across three separate periods: the Serbian police from April 1999, UNMIK and the Kosovo Police from February 2003, and the wider public from January 2013. The exhumation now under way was ordered by the Kosovo Special Prosecution, in 2026.
Yesterday’s line from Pristina fits that chronology only in part. If the man arrested in Kraljevo really is a witness in this case, then the primary way into the case today is the same as it was in 2003, the account of someone who was close to the events, rather than physical evidence gathered by an investigation.
Who the missing are
Under Humanitarian Law Center documentation, the group was made up of activists of the Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK, who tried to reach Montenegro at night, over the mountains. The 23 missing include:
- Idriz Rrecaj, Adem Ademi, Adem Beqiri and Ali Halitaj
- Hasan Dërvari, Sahit Berani, Demir Ahmeti and Fatmir Fazlia
- members of the Ujkani and Mëziu families
The time span is what sets this case apart from other unresolved missing persons files. Twenty three years separate the statement given to investigators from the exhumation order, and 27 years separate April 1999 from that order. The disappearances were reported in the first postwar years, while the site is being opened now.
The next fixed date in the case is the expiry of the one month custody ordered for the two suspects. By then it should also be known what was found at a location that, going by the February 2003 statement, could have been checked at once.
