Report on the Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law in Kosovo

also separated the men from the women and children and took the latter group back to the village, while the men were ordered to remain and undress to the waist. At that stage the police/soldiers removed two men from the group, accusing them of belonging to the UCK because wounds were visible on their bodies. As the rest of the men were ordered to march towards the village, they heard shots coming from the direction of where these two men were being held and their bodies were subsequently discovered.

On their way back to the village, these male Kosovars could see that many of the houses were on fire and were being looted by the FRY/Serbian forces. Then, some of the younger men were beaten before being put on to trucks and taken to Prizren. There, they were interrogated in the police station, beaten and administered a paraffin test on their hands. They were detained for three days without food or drink and were finally released and driven back to Vranic.

After having been separated from the men, the group of women and children were confined in a local elementary school. From there they could observe the arrival of about 100 men who had been rounded up, being detained for a couple of hours and some being subjected to beatings. These men were reportedly taken later to the elementary school in Bukos. The women and children were detained for 24 hours without food, water or access to bathrooms and at 9:00 a.m. the next day, they were loaded on to trucks and taken to Suva Reka, from where they were released.

The accounts of the Vranic attack and the experiences of the villagers which were recounted to KDOM concur with the witness testimony gathered by the Humanitarian Law Center. IDPs told KDOM that, on 27 September, they were informed by the Serbian/FRY forces that it was safe to return to Vranic and yet, as they made their way back to the village, in a convoy of around 240 vehicles, Serbian police, VJ and paramilitary forces stopped the convoy, attacked it, searched it and looted it, apparently looking for money, gold and jewellery. KDOM subsequently located this vehicle convoy along the road to Vranic and observed that more than 150 vehicles were burned or destroyed. KDOM also went to the elementary school where the women and children were allegedly detained, and observed considerable human waste outside the building.

IDPs also claimed that some of the women had been sedated, beaten and raped during and after the attack. It should be noted that other rumours of the rape of Kosovar women and girls, have emerged, but reports are rare, due to the societal implications which are entailed for a woman who tells of having been raped.

Kosovars in the area told KDOM that some men had been transported to the Printex and Prelanka factories in Prizren and that four others had been killed in the hills near Vranic, as well as two in Maticevo. KDOM observed the bodies of two men in their twenties on a hillside overlooking the burnt out convoy but could not confirm these allegations. Residents of Vranic further asserted that ten persons from the village had been killed in the fighting and forty people from the area in general had lost their lives. Moreover, villagers in Vranic gave KDOM a list of more than fifty people who had been "brutalized" by the Serbian police when they attacked the town.

KDOM was informed that the men who were detained during the attack were being held in