Today in history, 6 November: The discovery of the Batajnica mass graves

The recorded event closest to today's date in the archive calendar.

Date of the event: 25 May 2001 – 16 December 2002
Place: Batajnica
Evidence status: Evidence status: Judicially established. Established in a final court judgment. It covers only what the court found, not every later interpretation.

On 25 May 2001 a Serbian Interior Ministry working group disclosed that bodies of Kosovo Albanians had been secretly transported to Serbia in 1999 and buried. Exhumations at the SAJ centre in Batajnica began on 2 June 2001 and continued until December 2002.

Full event record, with sources and map

Historical context

The postwar period and legacy

The end of the war did not end the violence, the grief or the search for truth. This period is treated separately from the armed conflict of 1998–1999.

Read the chapter “After the war: justice, the missing and memory”

Sources

[1]Tribunali Penal Ndërkombëtar për ish-Jugosllavinë (ICTY). Vlastimir Đorđević Convicted for Crimes in Kosovo. 2011-02-23. https://www.icty.org/en/press/vlastimir-%C4%91or%C4%91evi%C4%87-convicted-crimes-kosovo. Accessed 2026-09-16.
[2]International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP). Batajnica Summary Report – Forensic Monitoring Activities (ICMP.FSD.16.04.2). 2004-04. https://www.icmp.int/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/icmp-fsd-16-04-2-doc.pdf. Accessed 2026-09-16.
[3]Humanitarian Law Center. Dossier: The Concealment of Bodies Operation. 2017-01. https://www.hlc-rdc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Dosije_OPERACIJA_SKRIVANJA_TELA._eng.pdf. Accessed 2026-09-16.