Kosovo commemorates more than 1,600 people missing in during Kosovo War

PRISTINA, Kosova (AA) - More than 1,600 people who went missing during the Kosovo War were commemorated with an event organized in Pristina for the “April 27 National Day of Missing Persons.”

President Vjosa Osmani, representatives of institutions and organizations, and families of those who disappeared, laid a wreath at the monument to missing persons in the garden of the Kosovo Assembly.

Osmani said with Kosovo's accession to the Council of Europe, families of missing persons will have the opportunity to file a case against Serbia in the European Court of Human Rights.

He said April 27 is the most painful day in Kosovo's history and will remain an open wound until the fate of the missing is revealed.

“Serbia continues to sleep on mass graves and commit a double crime. Because it committed the crime once and even after 25 years it has done its best to hide it, hiding the traces of the crime,” he said.

Osmani accused Serbia of violating an agreement on missing persons and ignoring requests to open the archives of the Serbian police and army on those who disappeared during the war in the late 1990s.

*Writing by Zeynep Cetin in Istanbul