Second Mass Grave Found Near Zubin Potok

Excavations in the municipality of Zubin Potok have expanded to a second location. In the village of Jabuka, another mass grave was found on Sunday, August 2, and at least four bodies have so far been pulled from the pit, according to Kosovo’s acting interior minister, Dzeljalj Sveclja. He first announced the find on Facebook, then visited the site himself.

Working at the site are:

• Kosovo Police
• experts from the Institute of Forensic Medicine
• the government commission on missing persons
• experts from the EULEX mission, which is securing the excavation

Kosovo’s Special Prosecution had earlier flagged Jabuka as a suspicious location, a site believed to contain human remains. The machinery, in other words, did not arrive there on a random tip.

Speaking from the scene, Sveclja also gave an account of how the bodies ended up in the pit. “Four bodies have been discovered so far, which were thrown into a garbage pit after being executed,” he said.

Two Graves in Seven Days

The first grave in the municipality was opened on July 28 in Mala Kaludra, where the search is still ongoing. Investigators are looking for the remains of 23 Albanian civilians from Mitrovica, a group Kosovo institutions classify as a group of intellectuals, who were abducted on April 19, 1999. Their fate remains unresolved 27 years later.

There are two different figures for the distance between the two pits, both from the same man. On Facebook, Sveclja said Jabuka was “only 10 kilometers” from Kaludra. On the ground, he said the distance between the first and second mass graves was about 900 meters, that both sit in the same stream valley, and that this points to the same group of victims. The discrepancy is not a technical footnote. The claim that both pits belong to the same crime rests on how close they are to each other, and that claim currently has no forensic confirmation.

What Is Being Asked of the Families

The identity of the people found has not yet been established. Sveclja asked for patience while experts finish their work.

“Extending my condolences to the families of the missing, I also ask them for patience until our experts and science precisely determine the identity of the recovered remains, so that they can then be handed over to the families, allowing us as a society and a state to give them a dignified farewell”

Until then, it is not known whether those found belong to the group from Mitrovica, nor how many bodies are in the pit in total, since the excavation has not been completed. The figure of four bodies is therefore a provisional count, not a final tally.

The minister also said the search would not stop at these two locations.

“We will not stop until we find the last missing person, but we also will not stop until every criminal answers for the crimes he committed, especially for these crimes in which innocent people were executed during the war, and then attempts were made to cover up those crimes”

He also said that “Serbia today has not changed from the one that committed the crimes of 1998 and 1999.” That political judgment was delivered before forensic medicine has determined who the people found are and when they were killed, the very finding on which the same minister asked families to wait.

How Many People Are Still Listed as Missing?

According to Kosovo institutions, 1,557 people are still classified as forcibly disappeared. A find like the one in Jabuka changes that list only once identification is complete, not when a body is pulled from a pit. Because of that, the gap between a field announcement and an actual name on the list is measured in months, sometimes years.

We previously reported on the excavations in Zubin Potok when Albin Kurti asked for a secret file on the missing from that same location. With the opening of the second pit, the burden now shifts to the Institute of Forensic Medicine, and no deadline for identification has been announced.