New York Times - October 13, 1999
No Bodies at Rumored Grave Site in Kosovo By REUTERS
RISTINA, Kosovo -- War crimes investigators have found nothing in a Kosovo mine shaft where hundreds of bodies were rumored to be hidden, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has said.
"They found absolutely nothing," a tribunal spokeswoman, Kelly Moore, said on Monday.
Rumors that Serbian forces had hidden the bodies of up to 700 ethnic Albanians in the Trebca lead and zinc mine, near the northern city of Mitrovica, had been circulating for months. Tribunal experts had brought in special excavation equipment to investigate the rumors, which had been widely reported in the Kosovo media.
The Hague-based tribunal has indicted President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia and four other senior Yugoslav and Serbian officials on war crimes charges stemming from the Serbian campaign of violence against Kosovo Albanians earlier this year.
Forensic scientists with the tribunal have investigated more than 150 mass grave sites across the Serbian province in the last few months and have hundreds more suspected sites to examine.