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Montenegrin police car. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Dickelbers.

Police in Montenegro on Sunday confirmed to BIRN that a man they had arrested on Friday was a former Yugoslav Army member called Predrag Vukovic “Madzo” – who was wanted in Serbia for war crimes in Kosovo.

According to the police, he was arrested in the town of Bar.

Vukovic was initially arrested for illegal fishing. He gave a false name, but on Sunday, after security checks, police determined his true identity and that he was wanted in Serbia for numerous criminal acts, including war crimes in the Kosovo village of Ljubenic on April 1, 1999, when 46 Albanian civilians were killed.

Serbia’s war crimes prosecutors have been looking for Vukovic since 2014 when the war crimes office indicted three former Yugoslav Army members – Vladan Krstovic, Lazar Pavlovic and Milan Ivanovic – and issued arrest warrants against Vukovic and Nenad Lekic, who was believed to be in Sweden at the time.

The prosecution said it believed the group formed part of an attack led by the Yugoslav Army on the village of Ljubenic that killed 46 people and wounded 11 more.

The attack took place during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, aimed at ending President Slobodan Milosevic’s offensive against ethnic Albanian fighters in the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA.

The bodies of 34 of the victims from Ljubenic were later found in a mass grave in Batajnica, near the Serbian capital, Belgrade. Four victims are still listed as missing.

The Ljubenic case is ongoing before the Belgrade Higher Court and is one of the largest and longest war crimes cases related to Kosovo being prosecuted by the Serbian authorities.

The Serbian prosecution suspects 11 former members of Yugoslav Army’s 177th unit of committing war crimes in the Kosovo villages of Cuska, Pavljan, Zahac and Ljubenic in spring 1999.

The group was initially convicted in 2014 and sentenced to a total of 106 years in jail for killing at least 118 Kosovo Albanian civilians.

The appeals court reversed the verdict in 2015 and sent the case for retrial.

A BIRN documentary film, The Unidentified, revealed the scale of the crimes committed in the four Kosovo villages in 1999, while also uncovering the command structure of the police and army units involved in the crimes.

Human Rights Watch initially documented the crimes in 1999 and identified some of the direct perpetrators who were charged in Serbia in 2011.

Vukovic awaits likely extradition to Serbia in the coming months, on the request of the Belgrade authorities.

He is also wanted for other criminal acts, including robberies and drug possession, due to his suspected links with organized crime groups.