Over the course of five days in May 1999, Dubrava Prison in northwestern Kosovo became the site of one of the deadliest single episodes of the Kosovo War—a combination of NATO airstrikes and subsequent mass killings by Serbian security forces that left at least 99 ethnic Albanian prisoners dead and roughly 200 wounded. More than two decades later, no one has ever been successfully prosecuted for what happened there.
A Prison Already Marked by Abuse
Dubrava Prison was Kosovo’s largest detention facility, located a few miles east of Istog in the Dukagjini region near the border with Montenegro, with three pavilions holding a capacity of more than 1,000 inmates. Its population included suspected KLA guerrillas alongside common criminals, and credible reports of torture and abuse had been coming out of the prison throughout 1998 and early 1999, well before NATO’s bombing campaign began. Defense lawyers reported restricted access to their clients, and the Kosovo Verification Mission was never allowed inside the facility at all.
The First Strike
On May 19, 1999, at noon, three rockets fell inside the prison, killing three people and injuring five, according to Kosovo MP Nait Hasani, who was himself imprisoned there at the time. NATO had targeted the site believing it functioned as a military barracks, since Yugoslav Army units and Serbian police forces were based right next to the jail. In the chaos following the strike, prisoners in the affected cells broke down the doors and tried to escape their quarters.
A Second Airstrike
Two days later, on May 21, NATO struck the prison again. Between the two strikes, the bombing killed somewhere between 19 and 23 people according to varying accounts, further destabilizing the facility and setting the stage for what followed.
Prisoners Lined Up and Shot
On May 22, the situation turned into a deliberate mass killing. Serbian security forces ordered the approximately 1,000 remaining prisoners to line up in the courtyard, reportedly telling them to gather their personal belongings in preparation for evacuation to a prison in Niš. Instead, guards opened fire from the prison walls and guard towers using snipers, machine guns, and grenades, killing at least 70 people in that single assault.
The Killing Continued for Days
The violence didn’t end with the courtyard shooting. Over the following 24 hours, at least twelve more prisoners were killed as prison guards, special police, and possibly paramilitary forces hunted down inmates who had survived by hiding in the prison’s destroyed buildings, basements, and sewers. Witnesses before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia later testified that prisoners who survived the initial shooting and tried to hide in manholes and cellars throughout the complex were subsequently killed with bombs and guns the next day. The wounded were eventually loaded into trucks, while surviving prisoners were transported to Lipjan prison, where they were beaten further.
What Journalists and Investigators Found Afterward
Journalist Goran Tomašević was among the first reporters to document the scene after the killings, later describing the deep emotional toll covering the aftermath took on him. When New York Times reporters visited the site in November 1999, they found piles of abandoned clothes still giving off the stench of decomposition months later, along with sticky blood still on basement floors, bullet holes scarring the walls, and craters left by grenade explosions.
Survivors’ Accounts
Survivors have described the experience in visceral terms. Bedri Kukalaj, who still carries scars on his face and stomach from wounds sustained that day, described the massacre as something one would expect only in a horror movie. Reshat Nurboja, another survivor, later wrote a book recounting his experience and his subsequent time in other prisons across Kosovo and Serbia, eventually returning to the site of the massacre to confront his memories of the atrocity firsthand.
A Long Road Without Justice
Despite substantial documentation—witness testimony before the Hague Tribunal, forensic evidence, and years of investigative work—accountability has proven elusive. In 2010, the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre filed a complaint with Serbian prosecutors accusing 34 people of responsibility for the killings, but for years the case was treated as prosecutors’ “next big case” without charges actually being filed. More recently, a Serb was charged in Pristina in connection with the massacre, though a Pristina court acquitted a former prison officer, Gavrilo Milosavljević, of war crimes charges tied to the events. Witnesses suggested that Serbian special police units, reportedly commanded in the area by figures connected to notorious paramilitary leader Milorad “Legija” Ulemek, had effectively taken control of the prison alongside select Serbian prisoners during this period.
The Site Today
Dubrava prison remains operational and is still the largest detention facility in Kosovo. Where prisoners were once lined up before the 1999 shooting began, survivors have since planted trees, creating what’s been described as a “living wall” in memory of those who did not survive.
Join The Discussion
Were you familiar with the Dubrava Prison massacre before reading this, and what stands out to you most about how the events unfolded—the NATO strikes that preceded it, or the deliberate killing that followed? What do you make of the decades-long struggle to hold anyone accountable for what happened there? Share your thoughts, questions, or anything else you’ve learned about this chapter of the Kosovo War below.
