KLA Murders Orthodox Priest and Burns Two Monasteries
Zenit News Service (Italy) Daily Dispatch
6/18/99

BELGRADE, JUN 18 (ZENIT) – According to the news agency AFP, Orthodox Bishop Artemije of Kosovo revealed that this week the Kosovo Liberation Army set two medieval monasteries on fire and killed a priest. The Bishop said that on Wednesday night he fled from Prizren, a city in the south of the province with some 250 Serbs, several of them religious, to the monastery of Gracanica, in the south of Pristina.

Bishop Artemije explained that the Holy Trinity Monastery in Musutiste, and Saint Mark's monastery in Korisa, were set on fire this past week, and that the Albanian terrorists had killed Father Hariton, another Orthodox priest, on Tuesday in the same region. The Orthodox churches have become "the Kosovo Liberation Army's target of revenge," but KFOR has succeeded "in finding and punishing the culprits" of all these actions, the Bishop said.

The withdrawal of Serbian troops from Kosovo, as established in the peace plan, does not guarantee the security of the monasteries or the religious. "We will have to find a way of insuring our safety with the KFOR," the Bishop said. Fortunately, the Decani Monastery and the patriarchy of Pec, in the west of Kosovo, jewels of the Serbian cultural heritage, are intact.

*NOTE FROM EDITORS AT ANTIWAR.COM:
This report does not include information unavailable at that time, about the Devic Monastery being ransacked, its clergy terrorized, and a nun raped by KLA forces.