Serbia probing alleged arrest of Yugoslav troops by US in 1999
BBC Monitoring European. London - Oct 16, 2006. pg. 1

Text of report in English by Belgrade-based Radio B92 text website on 16 October

Belgrade, 16 October: An investigation is under way into the case of two VJ [Yugoslav Army] soldiers detained at the US army base in Mannheim during the 1999 war.

Defence Minister Zoran Stankovic has said that the alleged detention of the two VJ soldiers in Germany is being investigated. Reports claim the pair were captured in Kosovo in 1999, and then imprisoned at the US Mannheim army base. It is also alleged they were transported in one of the American secret flights over Europe.

German weekly Stern claims that the US practiced secret flights even before 11 September, alleging that the case of the two Serbian soldiers represents one of the first such transports of prisoners.

Quoting its sources with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Stern reports that Boban Milenkovic and Sefko Dairovic were detained in Mannheim as POWs in the second half of April 1999.

According to available information, they were captured by the KLA [now-disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army - UCK in Albanian], which then transferred them to Albania. They were then allegedly flown to Germany.

"After the first reports in the press, I ordered the appropriate service to examine all the circumstances, and after we receive the results of this investigation, we will release an official statement," Zoran Stankovic said.

US ambassador to Belgrade [Michael Polt], however, was not willing to comment on the reports.

The soldiers are said to have been transferred from Mannheim to the Hungarian-Serbian border on 18 May 1999, accompanied by ICRC personnel and the Hungarian police, supervised by US troops.

VJ military police took them over at the border. The media speculate that the two were in effect exchanged for the three American soldiers captured on 31 March 1999 on the Macedonian border.

Credit: Radio B92 text website, Belgrade, in English 1658 16 Oct 06
Radio B92 text website, Belgrade, in English 1658 16 Oct 06/BBCMonitoring/(c) BBC

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