The witness Ivan Pajić from Bor said that he was an eyewitness to the murder of American citizens, the three Bitići brothers, and stated that at the time of the murder, the former colonel of the Special Forces of the Serbian Police, Goran Radosavljević Guri, was present at the scene.
"I saw three people whose hands were tied with wire and they had white blindfolds. I saw among them Goran Radosavljevic Guri, who was not armed. The murder was committed before his eyes. I saw a shot in the back of the head, after which I ran away , because I knew that I would also have problems if they saw me. It happened around 18.00:9 p.m., on July 1999, XNUMX, near Petrovo Selo," Ivan Pajić told the television production Life in Kosovo (Jeta ne Kosove), which is broadcast on Radio-television of Kosovo, a public media service from Pristina.
Goran Radosavljević Guri was the commander of the Serbian Gendarmerie from 2001 to 2004, and in 2010 he joined the Serbian Progressive Party. He was interrogated by the prosecution in Serbia in connection with the murder of the Bitići brothers and testified at the trial.
Ivan Pajić said that he made the same statement in the Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Negotin in August 2017, and before that in 2014 and 2013.
He said that he happened to be not far from the place where the Bitići brothers were liquidated, because at that time he was "smuggling cigarettes with a Romanian".
He added that after what he saw, he confided only to his father, because he was not allowed to tell anyone else.
"We never had problems, until they found out that I saw the murder," said Pajić in an interview conducted with him by Kosovo journalist Faik Ispahiu.
Ivan Pajić said that after that, his father was arrested and accused a police inspector from Bor, a former member of the army, of being behind everything and of "cheating and dressing" in Bor.
"I decided to speak out because my father was imprisoned in 2013. This case cost me my father's life, they took my father's head. They tried him even though he was not guilty of anything. They gave false testimony," said Pajić.
"We were threatened by high-ranking officials of the Serbian police and a large party in Serbia. They told me to forget what I know and there will be no problems. That man works as a security guard in the electricity distribution company in Serbia, he had great power then and now. I have confidence in the Prosecutor's Office for war crimes. I will give the names to the competent authorities of the American authorities, but not in front of the cameras," said Pajić.
The authors of the show stated that they tried to contact Goran Radosavljević Guri, but they did not succeed. They invited Radosavljevic to publicly tell his version of events.
The President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, during his time as Vice President and Prime Minister of Serbia, promised several times that the case of the murder of American citizens Bitići would be solved.
Ivan Pajić accused Ivica Dačić of trying to cover up the murder, because he was in power at the time and was close to the then president of Serbia and the SPS, Slobodan Milosevic. "Dacic is doing this to protect himself and his people," said Pajic.
He also said that his late father was mobilized during the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999 and stated that he drove a truck, "and he drove a refrigerator, he drove anything and everything."
"My father told me that on one occasion he saw what was in the refrigerator and that he was shocked by what he saw. According to the story, there were corpses of unknown origin. There is a statement from the father that he gave while he was in custody. They detained to take his life. And that happened after two, two and a half years. He passed away in 2016," said Pajić.
The brothers Ili, Agron and Mehmet Bitići were killed in July 1999 in Petrovo Selo, near Kladovo, in eastern Serbia.
They were American citizens of Albanian origin, who fought in the ranks of the Kosovo Liberation Army during the Kosovo War.
After the end of that war, on June 26, 1999, they tried in civilian clothes to help two Roma families from Prizren to cross from Kosovo to Serbia.
They were arrested by the Serbian authorities at the administrative border with Serbia for "illegal entry into the country".
The following day, they were sentenced to 15 days in prison for misdemeanors at the court in Prokuplje. They were allowed to leave custody three days earlier, but instead of being released, they were taken to the base of the Special Anti-Terrorist Units of the MUP of Serbia in Petrovo Selo, where they were shot in the back of the head and buried in a mass grave. were already the bodies of Kosovo Albanians.
Their bodies were discovered in July 2001 in a mass grave in Petrovo Selo. The bodies were found with their hands tied and with bullet wounds on the back of their heads.
The bodies of another 67 men and seven women from Kosovo were found in the graves in Petrovo Selo.
In 2012, the War Crimes Council of the High Court in Belgrade acquitted Sreten Popović and Miloš Stojanović, accused of assisting in the murder of the Bitić brothers, because it was not proven that they had committed the crimes they were charged with.
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