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By:
Syle Ukshini
- April 27, 2025 18:00 am
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Eliott Behar in his book “Tell the World” tries to give a voice to the victims – ordinary people who experienced great tragedies, but who were often silenced in the dominant political narratives. Even when the Serbian regime made deals, the reality proved otherwise. “They started arming Serbian civilians, eventually distributing weapons to some 50 people so that they could participate in joint operations,” Behar writes.
The massacre of Izbica
“The video looked like an amateur shoot – raw and unedited, one image being abruptly replaced by another. A date is visible marked in the lower corner of the screen: March 31, 1999... The shoot is expected and now we emerge somewhere else – a pile of dead bodies thrown on the green grass... This shoot was the first time I had seen mass killings in Kosovo. It was shot in the municipality of Skenderaj immediately after what became known as the Izbica Massacre had occurred,” writes Eliott Behar in his book “Tell the World: International Justice and the Campaign to Hide Mass Killings in Kosovo”, KOHA Publishing, Prishtina, 2018, in the section of his book where he discusses the evidence surrounding the Izbica massacre (pp. 117-119). Although he had experience with the consequences of violence as a prosecutor in Canada, Behar admits that the Izbica case had a different dimension and severity.
This film testimony, made by Albanian doctor Liri Loshi, was the main testimony of the Tribunal on the Izbica massacre. The author also provides details in the book from the testimony of resident Milazim Thaçi, who provides chilling evidence about the manner in which civilians were executed in Izbica and the deportation of women and children to Albania, as well as how he quite by chance survived this massacre.
Close-up footage showed that "the victims were almost all elderly, with canes and whips next to them on the grass. They had large wounds, indicating that they had been killed at close range," writes Behar, commenting on the video evidence of the mass killing in Izbica, which was rare, as Belgrade had removed all international media from Kosovo and international human rights organizations before the NATO bombing began. So there was very little filmed documentation to support personal accounts of what was happening in Kosovo.
Evaluating the evidence of this recording, Behar gives us the details of how Liri Loshi managed to get his video recording out of Kosovo and deliver it to CNN and the BBC in Tirana, the images of which caused an immediate international reaction.
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The Izbica massacre is commemorated
Regarding this massacre, the author emphasizes that after the end of the war, on June 11, when the expelled residents had begun to return, when they arrived at the crime scene with two BBC journalists, they discovered that most of the graves had disappeared and the ground had been leveled. There was no sign of the bodies. In an attempt to hide the massacres in Kosovo, the Serbian head of state had decided that the Albanian civilians would be reburied on Serbian territory, since their removal from Kosovo would make it impossible for KFOR and specialized organizations to uncover evidence of Serbian crimes against the Albanian civilian population.
“Some villagers were told that Serbian forces had come there, exhumed the bodies and taken them away. Satellite photographs transmitted by the American State Department would confirm this: the views of the long rows of graves visible from mid-May had changed radically and now the land appeared flattened in June,” writes Behar (p. 132).
Of course, this was an attempt by the Serbian state to hide the traces of the crime. And this attempt showed that the Serbian high command was involved in hiding the traces. But, a French forensic team between June 29 and 30, after inspecting the burial site in Izbica, had identified 139 graves that had been dug up and confirmed. And that there were no bodies left in them. Three clear places where executions had taken place were also found.
Victimization of Serbs and demonization campaign against Albanians
In the seventh chapter, “The Roots of Injustice,” Behar explains the circumstances of Slobodan Milošević’s rise to power, as well as the repressive campaign against Kosovo Albanians, which was accompanied by the victimization of Kosovo Serbs, which is illustrated by the case of Đorđe Martinović’s self-harm in 1985. In the context of the victimization of Serbs, the Serbian media’s demonizing campaign against Kosovo Albanians, who were presented as rapists of Serbian women, is mentioned, even though independent legal experts had concluded that rapes in Kosovo were rarer than in other parts of Yugoslavia, is mentioned. In this context, Behar mentions that the “Memorandum” of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts was an incendiary one, presenting Serbs as victims of the communist regime and calling for the elimination of the autonomous provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina. In the context of preparing the aggression against Albanians, Belgrade presented the victims as guilty of the “genocide” against the Serbs of Kosovo. The memorandum was a celebration of the expansionism of Greater Serbia. This was the background of the events on which Milosevic came to power.
"No one dares to beat you," Milosevic told the Serbs of Kosovo Polje. By portraying Serbs as victims of injustice, Milosevic's words electrified Serbian opinion, stirred pride, and filled them with courage," Behar emphasizes.
The creation of such a victimizing perception, that Serbs were victims of ongoing crimes, meant that Serbian repressive actions, dictated by Belgrade, could serve as a justifiable response to an ongoing injustice. In this context, two years later, Belgrade abolished Kosovo's autonomy and closed cultural, economic and health institutions for Albanians. Thus, the bloodshed was preceded throughout Yugoslavia in the 90s by narratives of injustice in which Serbs were presented as victims. Analyzing the history of Serbia's cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the renowned scholar Nevenka Tromp finds that the Belgrade authorities selected pieces of important evidence and placed them under protection in order to prevent the disclosure of documents that proved the extent of Milošević's criminal responsibility at the ICTY, but also the state responsibility that could have been proven at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). This approach of Serbia was rewarded, as in 2007, the ICJ absolved Serbia of state responsibility for genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Protecting the documents in the case of Kosovo also protects Serbia and its national interests and, moreover, shows that Serbia has strong reasons not to accept the crime of genocide not only in Bosnia, but also in Kosovo.
Massacre of the Berisha family in Suhareka
In the next chapter, the eighth, the author talks about the massacre of three generations of the Berisha family from Suhareka, who were executed in a pizzeria in this city. It was this family that the OSCE monitoring mission was stationed. Only Shyhretja, Gramozi and Vjollca survived this massacre, as they managed to jump from the truck carrying the bodies of the executed Berisha family members.
“Veljkovic explained that the loading of the bodies was supervised by Dr. Boban Vuksanovic, director of the Health House and the man who had ousted Halit Berisha as mayor in 1991.
"'Bobeku' gave orders, while workers from the Suhareka municipal company helped load the bodies onto the truck," Behar quotes the Tribunal witness's account.
In addition to this massacre, the author also talks about Serbian crimes in Gjakova, where immediately after the start of NATO attacks, Serbian forces undertook a coordinated operation, destroying Albanian homes and shops, religious and historical objects in the city of Gjakova itself, including the shops of the Grand Bazaar, the library, a madrasa and the Hadum Mosque.
The policy of violent Serbization for a final solution
In the next chapter, Behar describes international efforts to pacify the conflict, focusing on the issue of the OSCE mission, which was established after the Hoolbrole-Milosevic Agreement in October 1998. But, as events document, the Serbian regime, however, had no intention of respecting the agreement.
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Kosovo trials and Serb efforts to cover up crimes
“Instead of reducing the number of police and soldiers, he increased them. They began to arm Serbian civilians, eventually distributing weapons to some 50 people so that they could participate in joint operations,” writes Behar (p. 192). This assertion proves that the Serbian state was also making the Serbian civilian population part of the ethnic cleansing and mass murder of Kosovo Albanians, which was also designed with the codenamed “Horseback” plan, who at the end of the war abandoned Kosovo out of fear of revenge for what they had done during the war against their Albanian neighbors. This form of mobilization of the Serbian state for the “final solution” in Kosovo is emblematic of the policy of violent Serbization, designed by the top political and military leader of Serbia.
In this context, the author provides an overview of the circumstances surrounding the Recak massacre on 15 January 1999, where there were clear signs of the execution of 45 Albanian civilians, including three women and a twelve-year-old boy, but this massacre clearly does not fall within the scope of international justice. However, he considered the “investigation” of Danica Marković, an investigator of the Milošević regime, as “an institutional attempt to conceal” the state crime. After the murder of Recak, the fragile ceasefire completely collapsed. This moment marks a turning point in the Kosovo war, making it necessary to consider the option of NATO humanitarian intervention, which, according to the author, “many officials – most notably Secretary of State Madeleine Albright – saw through the ‘lessons of Munich’, insisting that Milošević should be confronted, not ignored” (p. 195).
The crime against the Bogujevci family
In chapter ten, Behar describes the circumstances of the massacre of the Albanian Bogujevci family in Podujeva, on March 28, where the two children Saranda and Fatos Bogujevci survived at that time.
“Both Saranda and Fatos were riddled with bullets. Saranda had been shot twice in the right leg, once in the back, and thirteen times in the left arm... Fatos was shot three times in the left leg and twice in the right,” writes Behar, adding that “none of the other women and children survived the execution in the courtyard. Fourteen people were killed, all women and children. Serbian doctors, following the model of Nazi doctors, had tried to convince the children to say that they were victims of NATO bombing.” Belgrade was also trying to attribute the Serbian police’s victims to NATO, playing victimhood to the international public. The massacre was carried out in collaboration with the regular Serbian police and the “Scorpions” paramilitary formations, who were known for their ethnic cleansing operations in Bosnia and Croatia during the 90s.
But the Tribunal's evidence had proven that it was Vlastimir Đorđević who had also included the notorious "Scorpions" within a Police unit under his direct control. In this context, the author also focuses on an event outside the courtroom: the exhibition opened in Belgrade in 2013 by the children of the Bogujevci family, where they recounted their lives before and after the massacre that changed their lives forever. Although the then Prime Minister Ivica Dačić was at the exhibition, the Serbian state has made no effort to critically confront the past, and has even systematically tried to compromise the judicial processes before international courts.
The Serbian political and intellectual elite has worked tirelessly to deny the crimes committed by the armed formations, trying to overturn the narrative of what happened in Kosovo in 1989-1999. Thus, Serbia aims to come out with a cleaner history than it deserves, while not giving up its ideology of unifying all Serbs in one great state.
The judicial system had attempted to minimize the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, raising claims that the killings of Albanians were not political, military and police planning, but were the acts of a handful of individual criminals acting independently. This was the narrative that was often repeated in public and that the defense had often applied to the Hague Tribunal. But, as the author of this book writes, the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo was planned from above. “Serb forces moved through Kosovo in a coordinated operation to expel Albanians. To do this, they killed, abused and persecuted thousands of civilians, destroyed religious and cultural sites, burned houses and many villages to the ground,” writes Behar (p. 254). That these were actions planned from above is proven by the fact that when the Albanians arrived at the border, the police, army and paramilitary forces stationed at the border crossings systematically took away their passports, driving licenses and identity cards so that they could never return.
According to this book, the verdict in the “Kosovo 6 Case”, announced on 26 February 2009, which had lasted two years, and in which 235 witnesses and 4.300 pieces of material evidence were presented, found without any doubt that Serbian forces had planned and implemented a widespread campaign of violence against Albanians, with the aim of changing the ethnic balance in Kosovo. Also, the crimes committed by the Serbian state, including mass expulsions, murders, persecutions and destruction of religious property, were not the result of “isolated incidents committed by random individuals”, as the defense of the Serbian war crimes defendants had claimed. The Tribunal Chamber found that the actions of the Serbian police and army were directed against Albanian civilians. The pattern applied in some localities was established: the army would guarantee, the residents fled; the police would enter on foot, often burning houses and looting them and in many cases executing the older men and boys, and then deport them en masse, driving them across the border on foot in cars or trains” (p. 334). The Chamber also found that Đorđević had led the operation of exhuming and transporting bodies with the aim of hiding them en masse in Batajnica, Petro Selo and Lake Peručac.
"Let's talk about the dead so they don't die in vain."
In addition to in-depth legal analysis, Eliott Behar in the book “Tell the World” attempts to give a voice to the victims – ordinary people who experienced great tragedies, but who often remained silent in the dominant political narratives. With clarity and intellectual honesty, Behar argues that due to geopolitical interests and pressure from great powers, many mass crimes remained unpunished, contributing to the creation of a manipulated narrative about the events of the war.
The author combines undeniable facts with personal experiences and moving testimonies, building a narrative that is both analytical and human. “Tell the World” is more than a book – it is a call for justice, an attempt to bring collective memory back into the spotlight, and a profound reflection on institutional failures in the face of human atrocities.
This is an essential book for anyone interested in international justice, humanitarian law, and the aftermath of the war in Kosovo. Difficult to read because of its authentic and shocking content, but necessary so that – as Life Magazine wrote about the publication of Robert Capa's shocking photographs of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s – “we can speak of the dead so that they may not have died in vain.”
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The Anatomy of Serbian State Crime and the Face of International Justice
© KOHA Daily
