Yugoslav Army

Belgrade Higher Court. Photo: BIRN.

Belgrade Higher Court on Tuesday sentenced former Yugoslav Army officer Rajko Kozlina to 15 years in prison for the murders of Kosovo Albanian civilians in the village of Trnje/Terrne on March 25, 1999, while acquitting his superior, Pavle Gavrilovic.

Gashi said there were 30 people in her house when the attack started, including some who had already been displaced from other villages in Kosovo by the fighting.

Serbian Defense Minister Aleksandar Vulin said this in reaction to courts in Kosovo announcing they would open new cases against Serbian officers and soldiers.

On April 6, the Yugoslav Army surrounded Mojstir, which before the war was an ethnically-mixed Albanian/Serb village. The troops threw grenades at houses where the remaining ethnic Albanians had gathered.

"When the first grenade exploded, my father-in-law died immediately. Then other grenades hit me and others. I saw Rinas's stomach explode," Musaj told BIRN at her house in Mojstir.

The Serbian Defence Ministry has published a book by the former Yugoslav Army chief of staff Nebojsa Pavkovic, who is currently serving a prison sentence for war crimes in Kosovo.

The head of the Serbian Government's Office for Kosovo and Metohija added that Thaci was no longer hiding the main goal of his past and current political activity - and that is "the creation of a so-called Greater Albania."

"His destructive activity represents a direct threat to the whole region, but also to Europe," Djuric said.

Montenegrin police said on Thursday that the man who threw a grenade into the US embassy compound in Podgorica and then killed himself had no criminal record and that the attack was not an act of terrorism.

The US State Department also said on Thursday that it doesn't believe that an attack on the American embassy in Montenegro "is part of an ongoing threat".

Instead, he activated another device accidentally, they said.

On Thursday, Podgrica-based newspaper Vijesti said on its site that Jaukovic, a resident of Podgorica, was born in Kraljevo, a town in Serbia, "and was, judging by his Facebook posts, opposed to Montenegro's membership in NATO."

A Yugoslav army veteran who manned anti-aircraft defenses during the NATO bombing in 1999 tossed a hand grenade into the U.S. embassy compound in Podgorica, capital of Montenegro, around midnight and then blew himself up, police said on Thursday, Reuters reports.

The police on Thursday confirmed this report by the Montenegrin daily Vijesti.

The newspaper also said that Jaukovic, a resident of Podgorica, was born in Kraljevo, a town in Serbia, "and was, judging by his Facebook posts, opposed to Montenegro's membership in NATO."