When Serbian forces stormed the village of Kralan in April 1999, the teen Yll Manaj was among those separated from their families, never to return. More than two decades later, his father Ramë is still searching for Ylli and six other close relatives who disappeared in the same massacre.
On April 2, 1999, as the war ravaged Kosovo, Ramë Manaj made a decision he would regret for the rest of his life. While the Serb forces were approaching the village of Kralan, he left with two of his brothers for nearby Gllogjan, leaving behind his 18-year-old son Yll.
That feeling of regret has haunted him ever since, because he never saw Yll again.
“I was with my two brothers and, in just a second, or a fraction of a second, I thought, ‘I didn’t take Yll with me.’ He stayed there, and things happened as they happened. We reached Gllogjan, but on the way back there was heavy shelling. The worst part is that we learned about what happened in Kralan many days later,” he recalls.
Manaj, who later served as the head of the Government Commission on Missing Persons, still has six other close family members aside from his son missing from the last war in Kosovo.
All of them disappeared during the Kralan Massacre on April 4, 1999.
“They were all young, except my son-in-law,” he says.
His sister’s son was an eighth-grader. Yll was a high school senior at “Luigj Gurakuqi” Gymnasium. One of his brothers was around 23–24 years old, and his maternal uncle’s sons were of similar age. The son-in-law was around 35–36 years old.
The Kralan massacre
86 ethnic Albanian civilians were killed by Serbian forces between April 2-4, 1999 in Kralan village. In 2024, Kosovo’s Government Commission for Missing Persons reported that the remains of 11 victims of the Kralan massacre were exhumed in Bishtazhin village in Gjakova, but Ylli was not among them. He, and dozens of other victims of this massacre, remain missing.
Ramë Manaj recalled both what he witnessed and what he was told about the event. “86 people were executed there. The village was sheltering many residents from Klina and nearby villages. On April 2, the Serbian army and police entered [the village], gathered everyone into a large crowd, and separated the men from the women and children, whom they then released. The men were held captive that afternoon, through the night, and the entirety of the next day.”
Manaj recounts how Serbian forces took Yll while he was with his grandfather.
“I wasn’t there that day,” he explains. “That evening, they brought only one truck. My father, now deceased, boarded it with 40–50 others. He took my son Yll, his grandson, by the hand to bring him along, but a Serbian policeman from Gjakova, originally from Klina, named Bora Joksimovic, pulled my son away and didn’t let him board. He told him: ‘This one and seven others—we’ll slit their throats.’”
From that moment, Yll was separated from his grandfather and never seen again.
“Yll and others were kept overnight, from April 3 to 4, along with perhaps 200–300 others. On the morning of April 4, most were released. Eighty-six people were singled out, dispersed in houses, basements… and executed in groups.”
No justice
Silhouettes symbolising missing persons in Prishtina, Kosovo on August, 2021. Photo: EPA/VALDRIN XHEMAJ
In his family’s case, Manaj says it was possible to identify the man who took Yll from his grandfather. Yet, no one has ever been tried or punished for the Kralan crimes.
“I only know directly about Bora Joksimovic, because in my family’s case he was the one who separated them.”
He also recalls Major Grujic publicly presenting himself as the Serbian–Yugoslav army officer in charge of the Gjakova garrison, promising to bring trucks for evacuation, yet bringing only one.
Manaj says that there was only one witness of the Kralan massacre who miraculously got away.
“Hysen Krasniqi. He survived with four gunshot wounds and can clearly recount what happened to his group. He says they gathered them in groups of 7–13 men. For his group, he knows exactly who was there. For others, he only heard the shots. There were seven policemen. They begged them not to execute them. The policemen took what they had and shot them, not in bursts, but one by one, so each could watch the others die,’” the witness recounted.
”When he was hit, Krasniqi fell, and other bodies fell on top of him. His fate was that he managed to walk about two kilometres outside the village, where two KLA soldiers found him,” Manaj added.
At the time of his execution, Yll Manaj was a senior at “Luigj Gurakuqi” High School in Klina.
Ramë Manaj says his son was passionate about information technology.
His dream to continue his studies after high school was cut short when Serbian forces killed and disappeared him.
“Honestly, in the last three years of his life, apart from sleeping and eating, you’d never see him without a book in his hands. He was extraordinarily dedicated to science. He spoke English surprisingly well’” he recalls.
“In 1996, I had bought a computer and he even helped his teacher with technology. He left his graduation thesis in manuscript form, and I’m convinced he would have achieved a lot—not only for himself but for the wider community,” Manaj continued.
The 1998–99 Kosovo war ended by NATO intervention against Serbia and left behind more than just physical destruction. Over 13,000 people were killed, and around 1,600 remain unaccounted for.
In the last two years, Kosovo’s institutions have located the remains of fewer than 30 missing persons. The situation is even worse in Serbia, where in 2024 there were no examinations at any suspected gravesites.
In December 2024, Kosovo and Serbia agreed to fully implement the Joint Declaration on Missing Persons. Adopted in May 2023 within the Dialogue framework, it included commitments such as: Full access to reliable information, including classified material, making all relevant documents available to determine the fate of the missing, joint work through an EU-chaired Commission.
English version prepared by Ardita Zeqiri