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Podujevo 1999 – Beyond Reasonable DoubtSelatin BogujevciFrom the Gjata yard, it is easy to get to the Bogujevci family compound inIvana Kosančića Street (now Skenderbegova). The Bogujevci brothers, Safetand Selatin, and their surviving children no longer live there; the house isempty and their sister comes to check on it now and then. The compoundalso contains the houses of their late father, Uka, and uncles Maliq andQazim. Two or three days before the start of the bombing, Selatin saw anacquaintance, Enver Duriqi, with his family on a tractor with trailer and ata loss as where to go. Selatin told them they could stay in his uncle Qazim’sempty house.Selatin, Safet, and Enver Duriqi fled before the police arrived in the compound,after hearing gunfire and some kind of uproar in the town. An armouredpersonnel carrier was standing in front of their house. Havingheard that the police and paramilitaries were killing Albanian men, thewomen and children begged them to get away while they still could. Duriqi’sfather, the elderly Hamdi, stayed with the women and children. Runningthrough the yards, the three men reached a field some 100 metresfrom the house, where there were many people who were either fleeing thepolice and military or had been driven by them from their homes.More and more people kept arriving all day, some on foot with a few belongingsin bags, others on tractors. No one had any news about theBogujevci and Duriqi families. When night fell, Selatin joined a group thatmade its way to Ballovac village, while Safet and Enver stayed, hoping tobe joined by the women and children. Safet went to Ballovac the next day,and Enver two days later, without having heard anything about their families.Together with others, they moved from village to village, driven bythe Serbian forces at their heels who shelled every village in which civiliansfound shelter. From Ballovac, they went to Hertice, Sajkovac, and Batllavaand then to Koliq where, on 14 April, they heard that the children were inhospital.A man who had been at the hospital to pick up his son, who had been operatedon before the bombing started, brought a message that Saranda,Jehona, Fatos and Genc were in the Priština hospital, and that Lirrie hadbeen taken to Belgrade. Saranda had given him a scrap of paper with their93

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