Panda Bar incident

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Panda Bar incident
Location Peć, Kosovo, FR Yugoslavia
Date 14 December 1998 (Central European Time)
Target Serb teenagers
Attack type
Terrorist attack
Deaths 6 Serb teenagers killed[1]
Perpetrators Unknown

The Panda Bar incident,[2] also known as the Panda Bar massacre,[3] was a terrorist attack against Kosovo Serb teenagers in the city of Peć in north-western Kosovo.[a]

Incident

On 14 December 1998, during the Kosovo War, unknown individuals attacked the Panda Bar cafė in Peć. Six teenagers were killed and 15 people wounded.[4][5]

The Serbs killed in the attack were Ivan Obadović (14 years old), Vukota Gvozdenović (16), Svetislav Ristić (17), Zoran Stanojević (17), Dragan Trifović (17) and student Ivan Radević (25).[6]

Aftermath

The Panda Bar incident led to an immediate crackdown on the Albanian-populated southern quarters of Peć (Kapešnica and Zatra).[7] The area was sealed off, and houses were searched systematically.[7] Media reports stated that Serbian police killed two Kosovo Albanians during the operation.[7]

Several Albanians were arrested and found guilty of the crime. They were released one month after sentencing with the intermediation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Several of them have lifelong consequences from being tortured in prsion.[8]

Controversy

On 17 January 2014, the Serbian newspaper Kurir reported that a source close to the Serbian government stated that there exists concrete evidence that the crime was ordered by Radomir Marković (head of State Security Service) and executed by the infamous Milorad Ulemek (Legija), so as to make Kosovo Liberation Army appear as a terrorist organisation.[9] Aleksandar Vučić said in 2013 that there is no evidence that the murder was committed by Albanians, as previously believed.[10]

See also

Notes and references

Notes:

a.   ^ Kosovo is the subject of a territorial dispute between the Republic of Kosovo and the Republic of Serbia. The Republic of Kosovo unilaterally declared independence on 17 February 2008, but Serbia continues to claim it as part of its own sovereign territory. The two governments began to normalise relations in 2013, as part of the Brussels Agreement. Kosovo has been recognised as an independent state by 108 out of 193 United Nations member states.

References: