Posted on 11/08/2002 10:34:38 AM PST by Destro
And your point about Dobricanin working for a regime you don't approve of barely warrants a response. First of all, it's completely circular reasoning. Secondly, it's already been pointed out to you several times (I know how you like to pretend to forget these things) that his team was working under the constant supervision of the OSCE, and no complaints were lodged against them by anyone working with them.
Very interesting indeed. The KLA are responsible for the dead villagers at Racak!
Some months earlyer the KLA had attempted to force the villagers of Petrova to remain pending a Serb attack and were lucky to get out when the KLA failed to show. (The KLA realized they needed to have more control in order to get the desired outcome next time) I have heard of other accounts of Albanian villagers being forced towards the Serb lines by the KLA and get caught between the subsequent crossfire from both sides.
Who dumped the bodies into the ditch then? It was not the Serb forces because they would have removed them if they had been responsible for a massacre. It was not in their interests to leave them there. The Serbs left them were the fell because they had nothing to hide. These villagers, most probably armed by the KLA were as Vooch stated, gang pressed by the KLA to fight the Serbs. The dead were simply and conveniently gathered by the KLA and dumped into the ditch during the evening of January 15, 1999. It was the KLA that were responsible for ambushing the Serb Policeman in the Racak area and as Thaci himself publicly stated to the media it was a favorite tactic in order to get the Serb forces to respond. The KLA initiated the Racak conflict.
The majority of the brush was on an incline going up to the high ground where the KLA were situated and the Serbs were very leery of i.e. snipers. The ditch as stated is located in open ground between the village and the KLA controlled high ground. This is were the Ak-47 casings were found and the locations from where the shots were fired that killed the villagers. A cross fire situation?
What would explain the high number of dead villagers and minimal KLA deaths if the KLA in reality were their to defend the villagers? Simple the villagers were simply in the situation of being between the KLA and the advancing Serbs. This is why they were near the village in the first place with no where to go and no choice but to fight. Under a rock and a hard place just the way the KLA wanted them and the end result William Walker needed. Walker probably does not know the details just that this was the situation needed.
The KLA conveniently removed their 11 dead soldiers from Racak (a fact) so as to maintain the perception that a massacre had taken place. They had time to do this they certainly had time to place those bodies into the ditch from where they were killed. Now A fact that they were not killed in the ditch. The big question in understanding who is responsible, is to simply ask the question who benefited from this and who was disadvantaged by it in regards to the big picture? Who had the most to gain and nothing to loose?
Of course the big losers were the dead Racak villagers. The KLA need to be held accountable for this. General Bujar and in particular one of his thugs know what I am talking about. The Serbs are not stupid people and they do share responsibility for their fair share of spilled blood during the Balkan conflicts but never the less they also been victims and are not immune to manipulation which is what happened at Racak.
"The account by two journalists of Associated Press TV television (AP TV) who filmed the police operation in Racak contradicts this tale. When at 10 a.m. they entered the village in the wake of a police armored vehicle, the village was nearly deserted. They advanced through the streets under the fire of the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK) fighters lying in ambush in the woods above the village. The exchange of fire continued throughout the operation, with more or less intensity. The main fighting took place in the woods. The Albanians who had fled the village when the first Serb shells were fired at dawn tried to escape. There they ran into Serbian police who had surrounded the village. The UCK was trapped in between." [bold mine]
Hmm, did he really mean "the villagers were trapped between the UCK and the police"?
And there's this from Le Figaro:
"The fighting intensified sharply on the hilltops above the village. Watching from below, next to the mosque, the AP journalists understood that the UCK guerrillas, encircled, were trying desperately to break out. A score of them in fact succeeded, as the police themselves admitted."
Hmm. "A score" is pretty close to 23, isn't it?
More to come! Stay tuned!
Link to above-quoted news articles.
Your description of the terrain, etc., has been invaluable to me, Wraith. Thank you!
Okay, I'd figured out the ditch aka "sunken path" was a sort of wash or gully running more-or-less uphill/downhill, that it was between the village and the UCK/KLA trenches on the high ground (near the power station?). I didn't know it was in open ground. I assume brushy, but no trees? Is that right?
Would this ditch been used as a sort of make-shift trench by people who didn't make it to the higher ground? A place to duck down into while running away? A place where you'd have some cover from Serb police/VJ positions, but not from the UCK/KLA positions, or both or neighther or the other way round? Did UCK/KLA positions have a clear shot into this ditch? Was it a place one would avoid during a firefight? A place where one could be caught in crossfire? Could it be seen from the village? From the hilltops where KVM/KDOM obervers were watching? Sorry to ask so many questions!
The big picture is something that is not seen by most in regards to Racak. (except Freepers of course)
:)
Now, according to the autopsy info (link), only one gunshot wound was determined to be "close-range or contact". We don't know whether that wound was on one of the 23 bodies found in the infamous ditch or whether it was one of the bodies discovered in/around the village. Nor do we know where on the body this close-range or contact wound was, whether head, chest, abdomen, etc.
Now in another link Hoplite gave us on a previous thread, concerning Ranta going back to the ditch in November 1999 (ten months after the alleged massacre):
Moreover bullet shells were found in the bushes next to the ditch. So it can be calculated from what distance the shooting took place. Ranta is not willing to name the exact distance. "What difference does it make if it was one or two meters? It was not in battle."
This floored me the first time I read it, and my Ranta Crediblity Meter went zoooop! way down. Hello? She's calculating the distance from some shells found in bushes ten months later? Not from the nature of the wounds, not from the presence or absence of propellant residue around the wounds... but from these casings? The casings could have been from the guns the people she autopsied were shooting! Or they could have been there for any number of reasons. For instance, after the news articles mentioning the lack of casings in and around the ditch, the Company boys may well have told their KLA boys to get up there and shoot into that ditch from a distance of say, two to three metres before any Ranta types came snooping around the ditch. Or they could be from another firefight, before or after the "Racak Massacre". Lots of fighting in that area. This absolutely cannot prove they were shot at close range. No one even knows whether those casings have anything to do with the shootings.
Thanks to William Walker and KVM not securing the "crime scene", we may never know the truth. I was appalled from the very first that they made no effort to do so.
I doubt you can turn a man to ashes this way.
Now, according to protocol, here's how it should have gone in such a situation:
(1) First priority is providing aid to any wounded. There were four "lightly wounded" villagers. Two vehicles could and did handle them, took them to dispensary in Stimlje. First priority properly fulfilled.
(2) Second priority: Check condition and verify location of any prisoners. Any reported prisoners must be reported to the nearest ICRC Officer. (ICRC is the "lead agency" on prisoners, as UNHCR is the "lead agency" on refugees.) So, get on the radio/cell phone and call your ICRC pal. If he/she cannot get to the jail/prison in question immediately, go there yourself and check on any prisoners. This is particularly urgent if if indivuals said to be taken prisoner were reportedly physically harmed before being taken prisoner (as the Racak villagers were indeed reported to be). The third team should have done this!
(3)Document dead, secure "crime scene area" of any "found dead bodies" until proper forensic teams arrive, if possible.
Most of the events related to the coming massacre would unfold on the property of the Osmani family.
[My question is who perpetrated it?]
U.S. diplomat William Walker had personally rushed to the scene. As the head of the observer mission for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, known as the OSCE, it was Walker's job to monitor a ceasefire that had been negotiated with Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic the previous October. Walker had come to Racak to see for himself the results of yet another break in the ceasefire.
Walker left the ravine and rushed back to Pristina where he held a news conference for the international media. His swift and damning condemnation of the Serbs would quickly reverberate around the world.
"I've seen all the ingredients of a massacre," Walker told reporters gathered in Pristina. "I've seen a lot of bodies up there. A lot of men who'd been shot in various ways, mostly very close up. It's horrendous. It's a horrible sight."
A month later, NATO began its bombing campaign.
Questions about the Racak massacre began to be raised almost immediately. Recently, French journalist Renaud Girard of the newspaper Le Figaro recalled the more pragmatic questions that occurred to him that day in the ravine. If this was such a barbaric crime against humanity, why had William Walker's monitors not immediately sealed off the area to protect evidence for the International War Crimes Tribunal? It also occurred to Girard that if this was an execution site why were there very few bullet casings on the ground?
Four monitors from William Walker's OSCE observer mission were in and around Racak the day of the massacre. They were also there the next morning when the bodies were discovered in the ravine. One of them, an American army captain had confided to one of Girard's colleagues that he'd picked up all the bullet casings once he'd arrived at the scene.
That wasn't the only thing journalists found strange. If the Serbs had been planning a bloody massacre that day, why had they issued a press release in Pristina that morning, inviting journalists to come to Racak to cover the police operation?
Journalist Christophe Chatelot of Le Monde says he was in another part of Kosovo when the attack began. He told CBC News that when he returned to his hotel during the morning, he read the press release from Serbian officials.
"I read the police report announcing that they are preparing the attack," Chatelot said. "At noon there was a second report. The first, they will attack. The second, they began. And the third it was a successful operation and they killed dozens of KLA fighters. I arrived in Racak around four o'clock in the afternoon. The Serbs congratulated themselves for this operation, calling it a very tough, very efficient but a clean operation."
Those many initial questions very quickly spawned conspiracy theories and stories challenging Walker's version of events. Had the KLA manipulated the massacre scene to provoke condemnation against the Serbs? Were the dead men in the ditch really innocent civilians, or possibly dead KLA soldiers who'd been taken out of uniform?
What spurred the conspiracy theories was the simple fact that so many might be motivated to provoke NATO's intervention. The KLA and most Kosovar Albanians wanted NATO to step in. Some have questioned William Walker's ambitions. NATO itself was floundering in search of a post-cold war purpose. And in Washington U.S. Bill Clinton was struggling to get stories about the Monica Lewinsky affair off the front pages of newspapers.
The conspiracy theories have played more prominently in Europe than in North America. William Walker rejects them as an attempt to rewrite history. He insists that he did not go to Kosovo with instructions to find something that would give NATO the excuse to go in and start dropping bombs.
The quest to determine what was going on in the days before the massacre has unearthed disturbing new information about the conduct of both the Kosovo Liberation Army and William Walker's observer mission.
Much of that new information comes from the people of Racak themselves. People like Sadije Ramadani say the first hints of what was to come appeared on the weekend prior to the Friday massacre.
The Yugoslav Army had always maintained a small presence on the large hill overlooking Racak. But suddenly a significant number of reinforcements arrived. They showed up a day after the KLA ambushed and killed three Serb police officers.
Canadian General Michel Maisonneuve admits the KLA had to know how the Serbs were likely to react to that ambush.
"If they were hit by something they would retaliate with disproportionate force," Maisonneuve told CBC News. "That's something I always used to say to the KLA - why do you do these things, you're provoking them and they're going to retaliate on defenceless people. That's just what they did. That was their normal modus operandi."
Dugi Gorani, a prominent Kosovar Albanian, suggests the KLA was very aware of the consequences of their actions.
"The more civilians were killed," he said, "the chances of international intervention became bigger, and the KLA of course realized that."
Some KLA supporters have conceded that a key unit was based in the hills above and around Racak. But, when the Serbs finally attacked on January 15, eyewitnesses say the KLA fought back from high in the hills and made no real attempt to defend or protect the village.
By the next morning, however, KLA soldiers were all over Racak to lead journalists into the ravine where the bodies were piled. Le Figaro's Renaud Girard remembers asking the KLA where they'd been the day before.
But the actions of KLA commanders aren't the only actions that are now coming under scrutiny. For every question being asked about their whereabouts on the day of the massacre, an equal number of questions are being aimed at William Walker's observer mission.
Walker himself concedes the OSCE's modus operandi was to be seen and to be present anywhere trouble might flare because the OSCE's presence was a powerful limiting force.
Canadian General Michel Maisonneuve says the OSCE's monitoring force was structured so that monitors were intimately aware of everything going on within their areas of responsibility.
"We operated on a beat cop principle," Maisonneuve told CBC News. "People would go back to the same place, patrol the same areas, the same villages, and so on. Our guys got to the point they knew an area so well they could sense a change in atmosphere and if the Albanians or the authorities would actually have a problem they didn't hesitate to stop us and say there's a problem here."
OSCE monitors knew about the KLA's ambush on police and the arrival of Serb reinforcements near Racak the very next day.
Burim Osmani says his father Sadik had always been in frequent touch with the OSCE monitors responsible for Racak. He says that two or three weeks before the massacre, his father pleaded with the monitors to establish a permanent presence in the village. The OSCE refused.
Even more strangely, Burim says OSCE monitors paid a visit to Racak just a few days prior to the massacre.
"They [OSCE] just told us the Serbs who had positioned themselves up on the hill would be staying there for a while and then they would leave," Osmani said. "They said because the OSCE were here, the Serbs wouldn't dare to attack. So we stayed, relying on what they said."
In the immediate aftermath of the Racak massacre, the OSCE would insist its monitors were prevented from entering the village once the army assault began from the hills and Serbian police began their sweep through the village. The OSCE claimed its people were helpless to do anything but monitor the assault from a nearby hilltop. Osmani says that's not what he was told.
"The Serbs said to the OSCE if you want to go in, go in," Osmani told CBC News. "But we have orders to do this and we have to do it."
The world may no longer care to remember the massacre that sparked NATO's bombing campaign and the subsequent occupation of Kosovo by tens of thousands of NATO soldiers. But the people of Racak have found a way to thank and remember the man they believe made it all possible.
They've renamed the Road to Racak, William Walker Road
.
one of wraith's lines worth repeating
since Ranta is a forensic dentist and she was eventually kicked off the Finnish Team by her own collegues......one can only make a reasonable conclusion......everyone is looking forward to seeing Ranta squirm in the tribunal witness stand as her incompetance gets further exposed
No bush or trees where the gully is located. very exposed ground. From a military point of view a true killing zone from either the high ground or from the village. Their would be some protection in the gully because of the banks that’s if anyone caught in a crossfire could make it there. The sloped open ground would make it impossible during an intense gun battle.
The elevation of the high ground is quite high about 700 feet where you would be able to see for miles down the valley S/E and towards the other surrounding hills to the south and east. The hills elevate very quickly providing a commanding view of Racak.
Could it be seen from the village? From the hilltops where KVM/KDOM observers were watching?
I don't actually know where the KVM patrols were situated but their were hill not far off from Racak which is in a kind of a valley with the high ground situated north, west and south. The direction east is lowland. They would not be off the cleared roads because the whole area is heavily mined.
From where I was standing during the 1 year anniversary memorial at Racak up on the high ground I could see across the other side of Racak from the north to the S- S/E where their are a number of hills. IF you follow the low ground to the S-S/E on the road you will pass a village called HADOOCI then due south to PETROVO. Hope this will help you get a better visual.
If you have been following my posts I have previously indicated that the OSCE KVM observers where prevented from going into Racak by the KLA. this order would have come through the chain of command from General Shukri Buya This incident caused a huge split between the KLA and Racak villagers who believe the KVM could have prevented the massacre of which the villagers were told was caused by the Serbs. The KLA had total control of the situation after the Serbs left.
Dugi Gorani, a prominent Kosovar Albanian, suggests the KLA was very aware of the consequences of their actions.
"The more civilians were killed," he said, "the chances of international intervention became bigger, and the KLA of course realized that."
Mr. Gorani a Kosovar Albanian with an understanding of the situation in Kosovo says it all.
Burim Osmani says his father Sadik had always been in frequent touch with the OSCE monitors responsible for Racak. He says that two or three weeks before the massacre, his father pleaded with the monitors to establish a permanent presence in the village. The OSCE refused.
I believe Sadik Osmani was afraid that the Serb Military and Police would come because of the ambushed Serb Policeman but more afraid of how the KLA would involve the Racak villagers in their conflict with the Serb authorities i.e. force them to fight and defend the village. The obvious solution from Osmani's point of view was to try and convince the OSCE to set up a station in Racak in order to prevent the storm that was gathering. Racak villagers were strong supporters of the LDK and Rugova. Thaci considered Rugova a traitor therefore his followers expendable. Nothing like this was taking place in the Drinica Valley, birthplace of the KLA leadership.
Get it?
Thanks, Hoplite! You've just shown that you understand this basic principle of logic.
It's sad that you persist in turning a maybe into an absolute when you insist that the Serbs Police committed a "massacre" at Racak. The source that you provided earlier states...
"The Racak events have been described as a "massacre". However, such a conclusion does not fall within the competence of the EU Forensic Team or any other person having participated solely in the investigation of the bodies. The term "massacre" cannot be based on medicolegal facts only but is a legal description of the circumstances surrounding the death of persons as judged from a comprehensive analysis of all available information. Thus, the use of this term is better suited to be used by organs conducting criminal investigations for the purpose of initiating legal proceedings. Moreover, medicolegal investigations cannot give a conclusive answer to the question whether there was a battle or whether the victims died under some other circumstances. A full criminal investigation combined with the interrogation of witnesses by appropriate investigative entities could shed more light on the circumstances prior to and at the time of the death."
You have shown nothing the supports your claim.
This report by CBC says that the press was aware of the Racak action. What is the source of your claim?
Journalist Christophe Chatelot of Le Monde says he was in another part of Kosovo when the attack began. He told CBC News that when he returned to his hotel during the morning, he read the press release from Serbian officials.
"I read the police report announcing that they are preparing the attack," Chatelot said. "At noon there was a second report. The first, they will attack. The second, they began. And the third it was a successful operation and they killed dozens of KLA fighters. I arrived in Racak around four o'clock in the afternoon. The Serbs congratulated themselves for this operation, calling it a very tough, very efficient but a clean operation."
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