Preparation for Trials on Kosovo War Crimes Enters Final Stage - Lawmaker

BELGRADE (Sputnik) - The prosecutor's office of a special court that deals with crimes committed during and after the Kosovo War is ready to make a decision on whether or not to press criminal charges, the chairman of the Serbian National Assembly's Committee on Kosovo-Metohija said.

"I can tell you that, according to our contacts with the special prosecutor's office, we now are on the deciding stage, when they are deciding on whether to press charges or to drop them. Above all, it depends on the quantity and quality of the evidence collected on the crimes," Milovan Drecun, the chairman of the Serbian National Assembly's Committee on Kosovo-Metohija, told Sputnik.

READ MORE: Decades After Kosovo War, Families of Missing People Still Waiting for Answers

According to the Serbian government commission, 1,658 people are still missing 20 years after the conflict, about 540 of whom are Serbs.

The Hague-based Kosovo Specialist Chambers and Specialist Prosecutor’s Office (SPO) were established in 2016 to investigate crimes alleged in the December 2010 Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Report, compiled by Swiss politician Dick Marty. The report looked at crimes allegedly committed by members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) during the Kosovo War, including trafficking in human organs.

In 1999, the armed confrontation between KLA, the ethnic-Albanian militia, which had supported Kosovo's independence since the 1990s, and the Serbian army and police led to NATO airstrikes against what was then Yugoslavia (now Serbia and Montenegro).

Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in 2008. Its sovereignty has been recognized by over 100 UN members. However, Serbia, China, Russia and a number of other countries have not recognized its independence.