Srdjan Lazovic, a Kosovo Serb arrested in June, is accused of taking part in the mass detention and torture of hundreds of civilians at a village in the Malisheve/Malisevo area in 1999.

Kosovo’s Special Prosecution on Tuesday said it has indicted a former reservist member of the Yugoslav Army for war crimes against civilians in Panorc, a village in Kosovo’s central municipality of Malisheve/Malisevo during the 1998-99 war.

The Special Prosecution provided only the initials of the suspect, but BIRN has seen the indictment, which names Srdjan Lazovic, a 48-year-old from Kosovo’s northern municipality of Leposavic.

He is suspected, in collaboration with other members of Serbia’s police and military, of violating the rules of international law by illegally arresting, physically and psychologically torturing around 500 people who were not involved in the war, of mass deportation of Albanians, destruction of property and looting.

The indictment says that residents of villages in Malisheve/Malisevo and Kline/Klina who were ordered to leave their homes were heading toward Panorc when they reached a police checkpoint and were stopped.

“Initially they separated the men and women with the latter ordered to leave, while around 500 men were arrested and headed toward the village school, where they were subjected to beating and torture,” it says.

The suspect has been under arrest since June and has denied the charges.

The indictment includes a statement from the suspect given on November 7 in which he said that “he was not part of any police or military force until April 1999, when he joined the Yugoslav Army reserve forces”.

“Lazovic admitted that during this period he was armed with a semi-automatic weapon and was wearing a uniform with a Yugoslav Army emblem but he said he stayed in Zerovnice [in the north of Kosovo] and was not part of any fighting operation,” the indictment says.

“When asked about events in Panorc village, about the crimes committed in September 1998, Lazovic denied any involvement or knowledge about the abovementioned events,” it adds.

It says the suspect denied knowing where Panorc is and was “informed about this event only after the arrest by Kosovo Police”.

The indictment says that a compact disc with a video recording from the scene shows “the suspect Srdjan Lazovic together with two uniformed members of Serbian police forces… directing AK-47s at Albanian civilian men who were kneeling with their hands behind their heads”.

The indictment says when the photographs were presented to Lazovic during the interview, he denied he knew the two men in uniform and did not recognise himself in the images.