Vučitrn massacre

Vučitrn massacre
Location of Vučitrn in Kosovo
Location	Vučitrn, Kosovo, FR Yugoslavia
Date	2-3 May 1999 (Central European Time)
Target	Kosovo Albanian refugees
Attack type	Mass Killing
Deaths	100–120
Perpetrators	Serbian Police

The Vučitrn massacre was the mass killing of Kosovo Albanian refugees near Vučitrn, during the Kosovo War on 2-3 May 1999.

Background

A column of about 1,000 refugees were travelling in a convoy of about 100 tractors, who were fleeing fighting between the KLA and Serbian forces east of Vučitrn. Serbian Police and Serb paramilitary forces caught up with the convoy that traveled south. On 2-3 May between Gornja Sudimlja and Donja Sudimlja (Albanian: Studime e Eperme and Studime e Poshtme) near Vučitrn, police and paramilitaries killed an estimated one hundred men.

Romeu Ventura, an investigator for the UN war crimes tribunal, stated that 120 civilians were murdered on 2 May by Serb forces and buried two days later in a mass grave five miles east of Vučitrn. After the war, forensic teams from the War Crimes Tribunal discovered ninety-eight bodies in Gornja Sudimlja.

The Vučitrn case was raised at the trial of Serbian police general Vlastimir Đorđević. The indictment against Đorđević alleges that some 105 Kosovo Albanians were killed in the massacre near the village of Sudimlje on 2 May 1999. Đorđević was sentenced to 27 years in prison.

See also

• Operation Horseshoe
• War crimes in the Kosovo War