Tell It to the World by Eliott Behar

Author:Eliott Behar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn Press
Published: 2014-12-04T00:00:00+00:00

Executing ethnic Albanian women and children mere minutes after their arrival in Kosovo didn’t end the Scorpions’ tour of duty. Although they were disbanded after being sent back to Prolom Banja, almost all of them were re-gathered about a month later and redeployed to Kosovo, once again operating as part of the SAJ.[15] The men were rearmed and provided with special equipment: night-vision goggles, bulletproof vests, and silencers.

They were sent to Kosovo Polje and the municipality of Suva Reka, moving northeast from there. Stoparić accompanied the reconnaissance unit, about twenty to thirty men who did most of the actual fighting. Their operations involved driving the KLA out of the territory and seizing villages. They met with little resistance and the villagers would often withdraw as they approached. The other Scorpions, along with PJP police units, would follow in a rearguard position and then take the villages, setting fire to the Albanian houses as they moved. The men quickly perfected their technique: using gasoline as an accelerant, they would start by igniting the curtains and couches.

Stoparić’s Kosovo tour ended when a KLA fighter shot him in the arm, shattering his elbow. He was loaded onto a horse that carried him to the nearby town of Strpce, then put in a Jeep that raced to the hospital. He was taken to the Pristina Hospital — the same hospital where Saranda, Fatos, and the other children were still recovering.

I do not know whether they crossed paths at the hospital — that question seemed of little legal relevance, and court time is scarce, though I would come to wonder about it later. Perhaps they did cross paths, or perhaps Stoparić merely learned about their treatment in that same hospital. Perhaps it was not lost on him that Saranda suffered the same injury as he did, albeit in a much more severe form, her arm shattered by thirteen bullets while his was hit by one.[16]

What Stoparić did say was that he was transferred to a special unit for MUP patients and that they received preferential care. A Serbian nurse reassured him that the Albanian staff had either left or had been expelled, so that he had “nothing to worry about.”[17]

Stoparić was transferred to Belgrade to undergo surgery. He received skin grafts, just as Saranda eventually did. Deemed medically unfit to continue fighting, Stoparić never returned to Kosovo. He would later receive a formal commendation from the commanders of the SAJ, Simović and Trajković, for his role in the operations.

Over the next twelve months, Stoparić would drive from Belgrade to nearby Batajnica, where the SAJ maintained their headquarters. There he was paid his Scorpions salary in cash.

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