Serbian War Crimes Prosecutor Charges Kosovo Albanians in Connection with Wedding Party Slaying of Roma during Kosovo War
22 July 2005
In a report issued by the Belgrade based media outlet B92 on January 19, 2005, Serbia's war crimes prosecutors have charged a suspected former ethnic Albanian rebel with abduction and slaying of a group of Romani wedding guests in 1999. In the first instance of arrest for war crimes perpetrated against Roma, Anton Lekaj, allegedly a member of the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army, was charged with war crimes perpetrated against civilians. According to the report by B92 Lekaj, together with four other named and an unspecified number of unnamed ethnic Albanian rebels, are accused of intercepting a convoy travelling from a wedding in Kosovo on June 12, 1999. According to the charges, they abducted 11 of the guests, took them to a hotel in Kosovo's south-western town of Djakovica and "tortured and sexually molested them with extreme cruelty". Four of the abducted were later executed. None of the other rebels from the group has yet been charged.
