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HOW TO PROTECT WITNESSES WHO ARE SEEN AS TRAITORSBY PUBLIC AND POLICE?The new trial of Saša Cvjetan before the Belgrade District Court is the firstfor war crimes in Kosovo in which ethnic Albanians have testified in a Serbiancourt. But, as in the case of a military trial of a Yugoslav Army captainand two privates for the murder of two Kosovo Albanians, the victims remainedmostly unidentified. Prosecutors here obviously do not see themselvesas representing the victims and do not go to the trouble of establishingtheir names. This, sadly, indicates that the names of Albanian victimsdo not matter to us in Serbia.At the trial of Cvjetan, who is charged with the murder of 19 Albanian civiliansin the Kosovo town of Podujevo during the NATO bombing in 1999,four children who survived looked straight at the panel presided by JudgeBiljana Sinanović as they gave the names of their dead mothers, brothers,sisters, and by doing so went a long way toward restoring the human dignityof the victims. Correctly pronouncing all the names, Judge Sinanovićrepeated them for entry into the trial record. It seemed as if she was seeingall those women and children through the eyes of the four before her.Albanian witnessesIt took a long while to persuade Kosovo Albanians to come to testify in Serbia,which for them is the epitome of all their pain and suffering. The fourchildren remember well the uniforms of the Serbian policemen who shottheir mothers and siblings after lining them up against the wall of HalimGashim’s small house. Their fathers escaped with their lives only becausethey fled a couple of hours before the police arrived. Over several months,I talked with the fathers about truth and justice, and gradually they camearound to my view that the courts and public in Serbia should hear thetruth about what happened to their loved ones.Since Serbia has no witness protection legislation or experience in this field,the protective measures were designed by the Humanitarian Law Centre inconjunction with the War Crimes Investigation Unit of the Serbian Ministryof Internal Affairs. It was agreed with the children’s fathers, child psy-199