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Witnesses at the trial of former Serb fighter Darko Tasic told Prizren Basic Court on Wednesday that they saw the defendant driving an orange truck carrying dead bodies towards the Drini River after a massacre in the Kosovo village of Krusha e Vogel/Mala Krusha in March 1999.

The truck was then set on fire and pushed into the river with the bodies inside, according to the witnesses.

Witness Tome Prekpalaj, from the village of Bregu i Drinit near Prizren, testified that he saw the defendant and his father with the truck carrying the corpses of Albanian civilians.

He said that on March 25, 1999, Serbian forces forced the residents of Krusha e Vogel/Mala Krusha to leave the village, telling them “go to Albania”.

He testified that when around 500 to 600 women and children approached the Drini River while trying to flee, he and his sister Marta Prepalak and other relatives went to help them cross over.

“On Saturday, an orange truck came from Krusha e Madhe, through Krusha e Vogel, next to the Drini, and was pushed into the water,” Prekpalaj said.

He added that he saw this from a distance of 400 to 500 metres. “I did see it really well, even with binoculars,” he said.

He pointed at the defendant in the courtroom and said: “I did know Keka Tasic, his father. But I never thought that they would do such a thing behind our back.”

The defendant’s lawyer asked the witness to clarify his previous statement given to the EU rule-of-law mission EULEX in 2012, when he did not mention the defendant’s name.

But the witness said that “there must have been a mistake by EULEX”, claiming he mentioned both the defendant and his father in the statement.

Kosovo’s Special Prosecution claims that Darko Tasic, as a member of the Yugoslav police reserve forces or of paramilitary forces, burned dead bodies and threw them in the river after the massacre.

He is also accused of participating in the confiscation of property, robberies, and the illegal and deliberate destruction of property, in co-perpetration with others whose identity is not known.

The crimes, which included the burning of houses in Krusha e Vogel/Mala Krusha, were committed between March 15 and 26, 1999, the prosecution claims.

Another witness, Milazim Duraku, told the court on Wednesday that the day after all the residents of Krusha e Vogel/Mala Krusha were forced to leave the village, he saw corpses in an orange truck.

“It was open behind and at the side, and I saw corpses that were in this truck,” Duraku said.

Two days later, he testified, he saw the truck again, and “there was smoke coming out of it and also a very bad, intense smell”.

The next hearing is scheduled for April 4.