Kosovo Await New War Crimes Trials

Ethnic Albanian relatives walk past white body bags with remains of ethnic Albanian war victims, who were killed in Kosovo in 1999 after Serb authorities returned the last batch of remains at the Merdare administrative border crossing some 40 kilometres (25 miles) north of the Kosovo capital Pristina on Thursday, June 30, 2006. On Monday, July 10 six former high-level political and military leaders of Serbia and Yugoslavia are to stand trial for alleged war crimes in Kosovo during the 1998-99 crackdown on ethnic Albanians (AP Photo/ Visar Kryeziu) (Visar Kryeziu - AP)

MALA KRUSA, Serbia -- Many of the women here have no husbands, no sons and no graves to cry over.

Serb forces seized their loved ones in a night of mass killings in 1999 in Mala Krusa, a close-knit Kosovo village of about 1,000 ethnic Albanians.

Some of the dead are on the long list of victims named in the indictment of six former Serb and Yugoslav leaders who go on trial in The Hague, Netherlands Monday for alleged war crimes during the 1998-99 crackdown on ethnic Albanians in the province.

For the women of Mala Krusa, the trial is a long-awaited chance at justice.

Prosecutors allege that Mala Krusa and a nearby village were attacked by Serb forces a day after NATO began bombing to bring a halt to the crackdown.

Residents took refuge in a forested area, where they saw police looting and burning their homes.

The next day, Serb police found the villagers in the forest, ordered the women and children to go to neighboring Albania and made men and boys walk to an empty house.

There, they opened fire, prosecutors say. The police then piled hay on the men and boys and set it ablaze to burn the bodies, they said. Prosecutors say 105 were killed.

Hyreshahe Shehu recalls holding her 13-year-old son Xhelal's trembling hand tight as they watched Serb forces take away her older son and her husband. Minutes later, they took Xhelal.

"My soul hurts day and night," she said, beating her chest with a fist. "They killed my husband and my two only sons. They have exterminated my family."

Milan Milutinovic, Nikola Sainovic, Dragoljub Ojdanic, Nebojsa Pavkovic, Vladimir Lazarevic and Sreten Lukic are charged with crimes including the deportation of 800,000 ethnic Albanians, and the forcible transfer, murder and persecutions of thousands of ethnic Albanians.

U.N. prosecutors will seek to prove that the Serb leaders directed a campaign of terror and violence against Kosovo Albanians by participating in a criminal enterprise meant to change the ethnic balance in Kosovo to ensure Serb control over the province.

The defendants are being tried four months after former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic died while standing trial in The Hague on war crimes charges.

Once a lively community, Mala Krusa now is haunted by the day when its men were separated from their mothers, wives, sisters and daughters.

Some came back in white body bags. Others were never found.

The women of Mala Krusa say they want to see local Serbs and those who issued the orders in Mala Krusa also brought to justice.

"I wouldn't want them killed," Shehu said, wiping away tears. "I wish what they did to us they see it in their kids so that their mothers are left suffering, just like we are for as long as we live."