The “Massacre of Pastasel” took place, a massacre by police and military forces of Serbia on the Albanian civilian population in the village of Pastasel in the municipality of Rahovec. 106 Albanian civilians aged 14-95 were killed in this massacre. The village of Pastasel lies in the southwestern part of the Koznik mountain, about 10 km northwest of Rahovec. In the last days of March 1999, thousands of Albanian residents expelled from the municipalities of Rahovec, Klina, Malisheva, Skënderaj, Peja, etc. had moved to the village of Pastasel. On the day of the massacre, Serbian army and police forces shelled the village with heavy artillery from all sides. To escape the shells, the inhabitants were forced to retreat to the valley immediately below the village. Meanwhile, Serbian forces with tanks penetrated the village, surrounded the civilians, robbed the women of their ornaments and valuables and ordered them to leave in the direction of Albania. 120 men separated from the crowd. After the identity cards were confiscated, at dusk the detainees were sent to the edge of the stream, where they were executed with bursts of machine guns. A day later, to erase the traces of the crime, a number of corpses were burned in tractor trailers and in nearby houses. They left the other corpses at the bottom of the ravine near the stream. Two days after the massacre, the surviving local residents buried the executed near the village school. After the massacre was made public, on April 21, 1999, the Serbian police exhumed the bodies of the murdered and carried them with a civilian truck in the direction of Rahovec, with the aim of erasing the traces. The fate of the ten exhumed persons remains unknown even today. Of the 106 executed, most were from the villages of the municipality of Rahovec: Pastasel, Senoc, Zatriq, Kramovik, Polluzha, Çifllak, Kaznik and Guri te Kuq, while the others were from Gremnik of Klina, Malisheva, Peja, Skënderaj, etc. 14 witnesses survived the massacre, two of whom also testified at the Hague Tribunal. (In the photo: Memorial of the “Massacre of Pastasel”.)
Text: The encyclopedic dictionary of Kosovo – Vol. II , Academy of Sciences and Arts of Kosovo, Prishtina, 2018, page 1057–1058.
Photo: © https://symptomspeak.com/sq/2022/03/30/perkujitimore-e-masakres-se-pastaselit/
Graphic processing: AHCF
