Posted on 05/31/2002 10:33:02 AM PDT by ABrit
Milosevic accuses witness of fabricating shocking testimony
19:09
THE HAGUE, Friday Slobodan Milosevic at his trial today accused a witness of inventing an account of Serb forces mutilating a corpse during the alleged Racak massacre in January 1999.
Bilal Avdiu told the court that several of the 45 victims in the village were mutilated.
"Why are you inventing this?" asked Milosevic, who claims deaths were a result of a legitimate battle the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army.
The witness insisted he saw a Serb soldier cut the heart from one of the corpses. "I saw it the heart was cut out," Avdiu replied.
According to his testimony, Avdiu had feigned death for five hours after being rounded up with other villagers and taken to be executed. (Reuters)
Oops!!! What a moron!!!
According to the EU autopsy report no mutilations or decapitations took place: All 40 victims had a variable number of gunshot injuries, which were established to be the cause of death. Six of the victims had sustained postmortem damage, most likely inflicted by animals. In addition, the postmortem decapitation of two of the victims was likely caused by animals after a severe trauma to the head. No signs of postmortem mutilation were present.
In the article Amnesty International and UN staff accuse Kosovo war crimes tribunal of ethnic bias A senior UN legal official said the [Racak] trial reflected weaknesses throughout the Kosovo judicial process. "The quality of evidence is very very poor and relies on testimony for which there is very little supporting evidence. No one hesitates to make things up.
Im laughing so hard my sides hurt!!!!
Racak Witness Prepares Testimony (But gets all the facts wrong-A Lie Caught)
FREE SLOBO!!!
The journalist is distorting the facts here. The witness did not say he saw it happen. He simply said, "the heart was cut out with a knife."
Oddly, just after the end of his cross examination, one of the prosecutors asked the witness if he had seen the knife and the witness replied, "no." The prosecutor then asked, "do you have any medical experience?", at which point Judge May ended the testimony. Bizarre.
When I first saw this story on the wire, I thought it was bit odd. After all, there wasn't the slightest prior hint of any 'eyewitness' to Racak. (except of course those locals whose 'eyewitness' reports didn't jive with the ABC film of the firefight).
Thanks to Canuck.....we find out the that so-called eyewitness was only repeating yet more hearsay
Also, thanks to Spar for posting the info which all of us already knew but had to be repeated.......the forensic experts saw evidence that animals had tried to eat some of the bodies, but the forensic teams saw no evidence that the mutilation was anything other than dogs or such.
What reasonable people can only start beginning to suspect, given the pattern of prosecution witness'es who are providing fabricated testimony is that the KLA is forcing villagers to make stuff up....... A while back there was a article published on the issue.....I'll try to get it.
One should also note that the prosecution has a limited number of witness's to call........therefore, one would expect they are only calling their primo witness's. If this is the best the prosecution has to offer, then one must question the validity of their case.
Thanks to A'Brit' as well for helping to highlight the discrepancy. Good to see that you're finally waking up to reality and ending this blind hatred of the Serbs and worshipful stance to Carla's Gang.
Whatever, it's all speculatory until the autopsy results are made public, and then there are the 5 additional fatalities who weren't autopsied by either the Serb/Byelorussian or EU teams. This particular enigmatic facet of the case has some time to run before enough information is available to resolve it.
The witness attempted to dodge the question a few times until the amici nailed him. End of questioning. It was at this point that one of the prosecutors jumped up and began asking the questions about the knife and medical training (my post #7 above). Judge May would have none of it.
The Reuters journalist, it seems, was too stupid to catch any of this and simply repeated the more lurid details of the witnesses descredited testimony.
Vooch if you look at the photos of the dead at Racak you will see picture of a dead male who had been beheaded. Funny that’s what happened to the Wall Street Journal reporter in Pakistan. A very Muslim way of killing. Only those Villagers from Racak that the KLA enlisted to defend an undefendable situation were there. The rest were long gone from the coming predictable storm. It was only after the KLA took control were the villagers allowed to return and see what the KLA wanted them to see, hence the hearsay testimony.
There is a picture of a decapitated man – perhaps the one you are referring to here. This man, however doesn’t look to be in the same area as the bodies in the ditch http://americandefenseleague.com/noblood1.htm
He is surrounded by a crowd and there’s some sort of structure around – high walls and large barn doors it looks like. Another thing is a Muslim cap is placed upright where his head should be – looks like a set-up scene. Why would the Serbs, who invited film crews to the village, leave such a spectacle behind – complete with a hat neatly positioned like that? I thought Serbs were supposed to be experts at hiding all evidence – even under heavy bombardment.
Here’s some from the autopsy. None of those 40 bodies were found by the forensic experts have any mutilations. I have to conclude that the decapitated man was not able to be gathered as one of the bodies which were later autopsied. All the bodies found had been moved around several times before the autopsy – the one you refer could have been skirted away sometime after that photo shoot with Walker.
http://users.westnet.gr/~cgian/racakfor.htm
2. 40 bodies from Racak village district were autopsied, labelled from RA 1 to 40. 16 autopsies were performed in the presence of and with the active participation of 2 forensic experts from Belarus, and a further 24 were performed with forensic experts from Finland.Other interesting aspects -…
4. On the basis of the autopsies carried out it was established that in all cases death had been caused by the effects of projectiles fired from hand-held firearms.
5. All wounds were inflicted pre-death, apart from some on 6 of the bodies which were inflicted by small animals after death.
…
8. There were no signs of the use of either sharp or blunt weapons on any of the bodies, either pre or post mortem.
1) Gunfire “heard several hours after the battle took place” – this would be occurring after the Serbian police left, I would say, because were not they said to have left almost immediately after the battle ended.
"THOSE ALBANIANS WHO DO BETRAY THEIR OWN DESERVE A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH"
But in the end, KVM officials said little. Spokesmen asked why the bodies were removed from the scene, why gunfire was heard several hours after the battle took place and why access was initially denied to KVM people on the scene -- but they admit the answers will probably never be given.
2) About their true identities – were some/many/most not even Racak villagers?:
http://www.suc.org/politics/kosovo/papers/racak.html
Interestingly enough, the 40 autopsied bodies found at Racak eventually were returned to the Pristina Institute of Forensic Medicine because despite Ms. Marinkovic's efforts to turn over the dead to the relatives, no one would claim the bodies. According to an interview reprinted Feb 5/99 in Serbia-Info, the judge had notified OSCE, Muslim priests in Racak, and representatives from the Democratic League of Kosovo as to a time and place for the Yugoslav government to return the bodies. When Marinkovic arrived, it was dark and a large crowd had gathered outside of the arranged meeting place; OSCE, the Muslim priests, and reps from the Democratic League all agreed that the transfer of bodies to the families should take place at the Stimlje Health Center instead. When it became obvious that no one was coming to the health center to claim the bodies, once more Marinkovic returned with the entire entourage, and the bodies, to the original agreed meeting place, a Stimlje mosque, to again try and return the dead for burial. However, none of the crowd was to be seen; Marinkovic felt she had no choice but to return the bodies to Pristina.The next day, according to Marinkovic, in front of the Institute for Medicine at Pristina, a large crowd again appeared. This time, "relatives" of the "victims" staged fainting scenes and rolled around in the snow in front of reporters and foreign TV film crews, bemoaning their inability to claim the bodies to anyone who would listen- or watch.
Hoplite did bring up a good point. The autopsy's full report is still being kept secret, and I doubt it is being kept secret for the benefit of the Serbs. I mean the whole point of all this investigation is to uncover Serb war crimes and shout the findings from the mountain top and whish was not done with the results of the EU autopsy.
Hoplite, why is the autopsy's full report kept secret? To protect the Serbs good reputation?
Both sides have a copy. As I stated, I believe that the prosecution will introduce the material in conjunction with Ranta's testimony.
As to why Milosevic hasn't made the material publicly available, well I'll let you try and figure that one out.
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