The prosecution witness testifying under pseudonym 21 recounts in court how he found the bodies of Ilira and Tus Frokaj in the Radonjic lake canal. The victims were Kosovo Albanian Catholics who, according to the prosecution, were interrogated by the accused Idriz Balaj before they were killed


The judges allowed the Kosovo Albanian who took the stand today to testify with full protective measures because of the threats to his family and problems he had on his job. He is testifying at the trial of Ramush Haradinaj, Lahi Brahimaj and Idriz Balaj under pseudonym, as Witness 21, and with image and voice distortion.

Before the witness entered the courtroom, the prosecutor read out a summary of his statement. In it, the witness describes how he found the bodies of a married couple, Ilira and Tus Frokaj in a canal of the Radonjic Lake. The last time he saw them before that was in Pljancor, the village they were from in the municipality of Djakovica, when they set out to visit Ilira Frokaj’s sister in Nepolje. When they failed to arrive there the next day, their family reported them missing to the Djakovica police and started asking around about their fate.

The summary of the witness’s statement implies he himself started searching for them. At the first KLA checkpoint he was told that the couple had passed that way. They were however advised not to go any further. Escorted by a KLA member, the witness continued to the next checkpoint in Glodjani. There he learned that Ilira and Tus had been interrogated by the accused Balaj and that they had later been found in the Radonjic Lake. He went to the canal and saw their bodies in the water. He saw gunshot wounds in the back of one body.

The witness talked about other details of the incident described in counts 17 and 18 of the indictment against the three former KLA commanders in closed session.

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