Parents’ open letter to Vucic: Who shot at our children in the Panda cafe in Peć

The parents of the six young men who were killed on 14 December 1998 in the Panda cafe in Peć have sent an open letter to Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, asking him to recieve them and tell them everything. information about who ordered, organised and killed the children in Peć and to tell them all the information about who ordered, organized and killed the children in Pec.

In their letter to the Beta news agency, the parents state that since 2017, they have “vainly” sought an appointment with the Serbian President dozens of times, but on 11 January, he promised them and the public that he would see them by the end of that month.

“Although we have tried in vain ten times since 2017 to see you, this time we believed that you would finally do so and inform us of all the knowledge and evidence that you have obtained or that has been obtained by institutions that we believe are seriously dealing with this crime. However, to date we have received no reply,” the parents’ letter says.

The letter recalled that it is 25 years since in the “Panda” cafe in Pec “some villains killed in a monstrous way” six innocent Serbian young men, their sons – Svetislav Ristić (18), Vukota Gvozdenović (16), Zoran Stanojević (18), Dragan Trifović (18), Ivan Radević (24) and Ivan Obradović (15).

In their letter to Vučić, they informed him that they were asking and begging him to accept them and finally to tell them as they stated this “the truth, which will be disgraced in public and the authorities will not be proud of the way they conducted the investigation”, as he had stated on 28 December 2013.

“With this statement, you have given us parents, and the public as a whole, hope that we will find out who ordered, organised and carried out this monstrous crime and why. Ten years have passed since then and we have learned nothing new. We are only guessing, and what we are guessing is so terrible that it freezes the blood in our veins. We believe and are convinced that this was a state matter, decided at the top of the state, and constitutes state terrorism par excellence,” the letter from the parents of the murdered boys stresses.

In their letter, the parents stress that for more than 24 years they have been waiting for the truth, “whatever it may be”, to be told by the competent institutions, in which they have “still” not lost confidence, and state that since 1999 they have “countless times” contacted all the institutions of the Serbian state, and that they have always been promised that the crime would be investigated and the perpetrators brought to justice.

“Since 12 May 2016, the Prosecutor’s Office for Organised Crime in Belgrade promisingly launched a new investigation, and we thought we would finally get to the truth. Seven years of “carrying out investigative actions and procedures” have passed without tangible results. “We are still waiting for the prosecutor’s office to complete its investigation and to announce who ordered, organised and carried out this horrible crime,” the parents say.

They asked whether it was possible to cover up such a crime, adding that they could not come to any other conclusion than that they were living in a dream and in the belief that it was not the Albanians who did it, as Vučić almost claimed 10 years ago.

The parents asked Vucic again whether he or anyone in the country knew who killed their sons, stressing that they had lived their pain all these years, displaced to different sides and expelled from Pec, but that they were still united and determined to find out who “shot their children”.

“This is what their innocent blood deserves, and it begs us to persevere in our efforts to get to truth and justice.” In the expectation that you will soon fulfil your promise, please accept us and take this opportunity to tell us what we are only interested in – and that is the truth”, concludes the letter signed by Ljubomir Ristić, Zvonimir Gvozdenović, Mirjana Stanojević, Milena Radević, Vojislav Trifović and Lazar Obradović./Beta/