More Scorpions arrested for role in Kosovo killings

Four Serbians have been charged over the infamous Pudojevo massacre in 1999, in which 18 women and children were killed in northeastern Kosovo. Zeljko Djukich, Dragan Medich, Dragan Borojevich and Miodrag Solaja have been charged with war crimes for killing the ethnic Albanians during the Serbian invasion of the region.

The four are said to be members of the Scorpions, a paramilitary group founded in 1991, and functioned as a unit within the Serbian interior ministry, known as the Special Anti Terrorist Unit. Trained to slaughter non-Serb populations during the series of Balkan Wars that raged in Croatia and Bosnia in the 1990s, the Scorpions have been pinpointed in other massacres as well, most notably Srebenica in 1995. Milosevic, while on trial for war crimes at The Hague, asserted that the Scorpions were a vigilante group with no connections to the Serbian state – assertions that were disproved by war crimes prosecutors who produced damning evidence showing Milosevic’s complicity in the group’s activities.

Four Scorpions were found guilty of murdering civilians during the 1995 Srebenica massacre earlier this month. Convicted by a Serbian war crimes court, the four were sentenced for their part in the crime. The driver received five years of prison only, while those who ordered the executions, Slobodan and Branislav Medic (the Medic Cousins), received 20 years each. One received 13 years, after pleading guilty. The case caused an uproar in Serbia in 2005, after video of the massacre was broadcast on television after first being shown at the international tribunal at the Hague during Milosevic’s trial.

Serbs are still unsure of how to address the issue of the Scorpions. While some see their actions as despicable even in war, others justify the brutal raids and pillaging committed by the paramilitary group as a necessary evil during wartime.

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