In the letter of a group of Republican congressmen addressed to US Vice President Mike Pence, it is stated, among other things, that Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić blamed Goran Radosavljević Guri for involvement in the murder of the Bitići brothers.
The text of the letter published by Kurir is reproduced in its entirety:
"Dear Vice President Pence, I am writing to you regarding the meeting with Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and the unsolved case of the murders of Americans Ilija, Agron and Mehmet Bitići that took place in Serbia in 1999.
Since 2014, President Vučić has not provided more than promises to resolve the case of torture and murder of three American citizens from New York. After the end of the war in Kosovo, the very top of the Serbian government ordered the execution of Ilija, Agron and Mehmet Bitići, partly because they are American citizens.
During his previous visits to the White House in 2015, President Vučić promised the American people as well as high-ranking US officials, including then Vice President Joe Biden, that he would resolve this case as soon as possible.
Those promises have not been fulfilled. President Vučić continued to maintain close relations with the main suspect in this case, Goran Guri Radosavljević. When the US ambassador to Serbia, Kyle Skat, questioned the relationship between Vučić and Radosavljević, the president said that "critics should be ashamed".
All this happened despite the assurances of President Vučić that Radosavljević was responsible for the above-mentioned crimes. The conclusion is that President Vučić does not keep his promises and does not respect the American government's determination to seek justice in the Bitići case.
We respectfully request that this case be one of the topics at the upcoming meeting with President Vučić, and I deeply appreciate any help in solving it and in the search for justice," reads the letter sent by the group of congressmen to US Vice President Mike Pence.
The Bitić brothers were killed in July 1999 in Petrovo Selo, near Kladovo, in eastern Serbia.
Brothers Ilija, Mehmet and Agron Bitići were American citizens of Albanian origin who allegedly fought in the ranks of the Kosovo Liberation Army. After the end of the war and the NATO bombing of FRY, they helped two Roma families from Prizren to move from Kosovo to Serbia. On June 26, 1999, they were arrested by Serbian authorities at the administrative border with Serbia for illegally entering the country. They were convicted of a misdemeanor in Prokuplje on June 27 and sentenced to 15 days in prison.
On application for parole, they were granted three days' early release. On July 8, 1999, they were taken to the side exit of the prison in Prokuplje, from where representatives of the Serbian authorities took them to Petrovo Selo, detained them illegally, and later executed them. They were taken to the base of the Special Anti-Terrorist Units of the MUP of Serbia, where, after two days, they were killed with bullets in the back of the head, and then buried in a mass grave that already contained the bodies of Kosovo Albanians.
The bodies of three brothers were discovered in July 2001 in a mass grave in Petrovo Selo, near the police station. The bodies were found with their hands tied and with gunshot wounds to the head. The bodies of another 67 men and seven women from Kosovo were found in the graves in Petrovo Selo. The bodies were brought in a refrigerator, via Eastern Serbia, and communal workers were engaged in their burial in the mass graves in Petrovo Selo.
In 2009, the Council for War Crimes in Belgrade acquitted Sreten Popović and Miloš Stojanović, accused of assisting in the murder of the Bitići brothers. The Prosecutor's Office for War Crimes of Serbia filed an appeal against the verdict acquitting these two former members of the Serbian MUP of war crimes in the "Bitić brothers" case.
On Wednesday, May 9, 2012, before the War Crimes Council of the High Court in Belgrade, an acquittal was pronounced against those accused of assisting in the murder of the Bitići brothers, because it was not proven that they had committed the crimes they were charged with. The verdict states that there is no evidence of who and where killed the Bitići brothers, nor that the Serbian MUP is responsible for the murders. Officials and analysts believe that the verdict for the murder of the Bitići brothers reflects the unwillingness of countries in the region to face war crimes.
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