I think the street named after Clinton is in Pristina, and that nearby there is a large picture of Clinton on the side of a building. There's also a 25-foot statue of Tony Blair somewhere in Kosovo. Here's a sign pointing out William Walker Street.
Posted on 11/08/2002 10:34:38 AM PST by Destro
What floored me was what Ranta was basing her conclusions --some spent shell casings in the bushes! Before a ballistics team had had a chance to complete its investigation!
I can only assume that at the time Ranta gave this interview, she was not aware of the findings of the ballitics analyses: "On the basis of ballistic analyses, the victims were shot at a range of less than 30 metres from the trench and then dumped in it".
The provenance of the weapons used in the killings has been checked thoroughly, right down to the batch numbers of the assault rifles. The only missing link is that the rifles themselves have never been found.
Just how could the batch numbers of the assault rifles be determined?
Also, how would we know if the shell casings actually landed there after being fired or if they were planted there.
(1) According to HRW, inhabitants of Racak reported that sometime around dawn (about 0700), “Some families managed to escape Racak, fleeing towards Petrovo.”
Well, instead of “families” maybe it was these 23 men trying desperately to make it up to the KLA high ground or on over to Petrovo in the pre-dawn. The sun caught up with them, and they were smack in the crossfire. We don’t know when they were killed, as there was no proper forensic investigation of the “crime scene” on 16 Jan. No medical examiner, no forensic investigators were summoned by KVM. There was a KVM Med Corps officer present on Jan. 16, but I guess he didn’t even have so much as a thermometer to get the temps of the corpses, which would have been invaluable in determining time of death.
Anyway, the new info that they were not actually in the ditch when killed argues against this. If they were traversing that open ground at that time, they would at least have been in that “sunken path” don’t you think?
(2) I don’t see how it could have happened the way the mother of an “eyewitness” described it to HRW, though:
In the morning I got information that the men from the stable were found dead. But soon I saw my husband and son coming toward me -- like they were standing up from the grave. My son told me that the group of policeman had pushed them with their hands behind their heads to go towards the hill. My son was in front with Sadik, and the others were behind. When he came to the top of the hill, he saw another group of policeman waiting for them with rifles. He turned his head and shouted to the others to run away. He ran toward the village of Rance, and didn't turn his head. One bullet crossed through his pocket, and another one is still in his belt.
Would this “another group of policemen” have been hanging around there in open ground like sitting ducks under the fire of the KLA positions above them, waiting to mow down prisoners? Hardly. Is it possible the Serb police were using these prisoners as human shields, pushing them ahead of them, and they were in fact mowed down by KLA, also caught in crossfire between police and KLA? (I’m thinking of the bullet trajectories here.) I can see a couple of weak pros on this theory, lots of strong cons.
(3) Maybe it happened as Mr. Hyzer Emin said (see my post 175 for link):
Another group of men said 25 of them had been arrested by police on Friday morning and taken to a nearby area where there was fighting between the security forces and separatist ethnic Albanian guerrillas. Hyzer Emin, 65, standing with three other men from the village who offered the same account, said, "There we were told to run. We couldn't run because we were caught in the crossfire, so we lay down and stayed there for seven hours until the police withdrew and after that we returned to Racak."
Now, if it happened this way, there still remain questions. Based solely on these words, it sounds like the police were satisfied these 25 men were unarmed and posed no threat, that they were more concerned for their safety than in keeping them prisoner, told them to run for their lives. On the other hand, did the police expose unarmed prisoners to unnecessary dangers? Based on the little information we have, we can’t know that for sure.
Yet another problem: Mr. Hyzer Emin may or may not have been with the group including the 23 whose bodies were found in the ditch. Maybe he was in another group. (But given the descriptions of a nearly-deserted village, just how many “regular farmers” were in Racak that day? That’s an interesting question! Were there over 60 male civilians, most of whom were taken prisoner by police in two separate groups?)
(4) When I first saw the autopsy report and diagrams of the bullet trajectories in the bodies, I got chills. What they indicated to me was that these men had been lying prone, sustained some lethal and non-lethal wounds from distant positions in front of and slightly below them. Then, most were killed by a rain of bullets from above and behind them. One was later “finished off” at close range. This would have been consistent with the 23 men taking positions on the hillside which offered some cover from the police, but easily targeted by the KLA positions on the high ground near the power station above and behind them. While these 23 or so were busy defending the village from Serb forces, KLA made themselves a nice “massacre” of expendable villagers.
Now, I really don’t think it could have happened that way. There’s no way those 23 men would have chosen that ditch as a makeshift trench position for defending the village, unless forced to do so by KLA. And, given the momentum of events, how would KLA have accomplished that? Nope, that one I’ve discarded now.
Besides, no one has reported gunfire coming from this ditch area. There are many reports of gunfire from the KLA positions on the high ground. And there’s the APTV tape (wouldn’t you just LOVE to see that?).
In addition, Ranta’s “most likely shot where found” has been shot down. Ballistic analyses show they were shot at a range of 30 meters from the ditch and then dumped into it. So much for that theory.
(5)It was in fact an empty village that the police entered in the morning, sticking close to the walls. The shooting was intense, as they were fired on from UCK trenches dug into the hillside.
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. (Le Figaro - link)
Well, “a score” is pretty close to 23, isn’t it? Is it possible that this score (these 23) were gang-pressed villagers? That they were later executed for fleeing from their “duty” by KLA, with the double motive of “setting an example” to other such villagers, while at the same time providing Mad Maddie the “massacre” she so craved? After reading some of the ICTY testimony on KLA methods, I wouldn’t put it past them!
Here’s an interesting tidbit from an HRW “eyewitness” upon discovering the bodies at 0400 on 16 Jan:
I saw Mufail Hajrizi. He was slashed on the chest. Then we found Haqif, the guest from Petrovo. His body was lying on his side with the hands as if he wanted to defend himself. His throat and half his face had been cut by a knife. On the top of his head was a wooden stick with some paper. Something was written on that paper but I can't remember what it was. There were more than twenty bodies, almost all of them were my relatives. We wanted to cover the bodies with blankets, or something else, but one man said not to touch anything before KVM comes tomorrow.
Um, the Serb police, under heavy fire from KLA positions above, took the time to put this stick and paper on this guy’s head? Besides, that’s not a Srbi thing, it’s a KLA thing (along with carving lines in victims’ chests). I wonder what happened to that stick and paper, if it ever, indeed, existed?
Here’s another goodie from Ian Robert Hendrie’s ICTY testimony you don’t hear much about:
On the northern side of the gully, he found ammunition boxes 10 labelled in Cyrillic, indicating 7.6 calibre ammunition. (Page 6476, Hedrie’s statement as read by Mr. Ryneveld)
There are significant numbers of 7.62 cardboard boxes sprinkled 23 around the area, suggesting that those that undertook this calmly executed 24 their victims and reloaded in the same place. (Page 6481, Hendrie’s live testimony)
Okay, so the Serb police were executing these poor guys in a leisurely fashion, in open ground, under direct fire of the KLA positions above, and they even left their ammo boxes labeled in Cyrillic behind as a calling card for KVM! In addition to the stick and paper on the dead guy’s head. Uh huh.
I’m inclined to go with Option 3 (crossfire) or with Option 5 (KLA execution of “deserters”) at this point. I’m leaning toward Option 5 in light of the ballistic analyses which prove they were not shot in the ditch, but were dumped there. I can’t imagine these men not at least taking advantage of what little protection from police gunfire the ditch afforded.
The “eyewitness” accounts are ludicrous and therefore can’t shed any light on what happened. For example:
Two or three policeman beat them with wooden sticks. One was kicking them in the face with his boots. The others were just watching. It was terrible. The men were screaming, and their heads were covered with blood. A policeman locked me in the cellar with the women, but I could hear screaming for the next half an hour. [HRW]
The autopsies found absolutely no evidence of such beatings. Had their heads been covered with blood from being kicked with boots and beaten with “sticks” or “planks” or “poles” or “firewood” (depending on the version/translation), this would most certainly have shown up at autopsy.
Again, sorry to keep bugging you with questions, but can you tell me anything about the Osmani property? Especially in relation to the KLA and Serb positions and how far from the village centre (mosque)? Also in which direction from the village? Thanks again for your most valuable information!
I assume, from the manufacturer. Now, if the manufacturer had directly shipped these rifles to the FRY government, I imagine we would have heard about it. UCK/KLA got their weapons from a variety of sources, including gun-running throughout Europe, as well as theft of Albanian weapons stores, plus weapons stolen from Serb forces.
I'm not sure that locating the recipient of the weapons shipment would conclusively prove responsibility for these deaths, however. The Serbs might have been using weapons confiscated from UCK/KLA, and UCK/KLA might have using weapons stolen/taken from Serb forces.
Also, how would we know if the shell casings actually landed there after being fired or if they were planted there.
Good question, and one I was pondering myself. Apparently, after careful analysis, the ballistics folks determined that whatever bullets fired into the ditch and later dug up were not the bullets fired at the 23 which killed them. They were therefore able to conclude with a reasonable degree of certainty that these people were not killed in the ditch, but were dumped there. I can accept that, the science is there, particularly with computer modelling. In addition, it's even possible that soil analysis from the ditch indicated they were not actually killed there.
They may have been able to determine a few other things ref distance. The bullet casings themselves, used for the assertion of their being shot "at a range of thirty meters from the trench" are questionable (as you said, when and how did they get to be there?). In fact, this sentence is most vague. Were they shot 30 meters from the "trench"? (And which "trench"? -- there were lots of them around! The word "trench" rather than "gully" in this context could be telling -- or could just be a translation thing.) Or were they shot "at a range of 30 meters" somewhere and then dumped in the ditch?
The only useful piece of info I can get out of this (as the science and methodology are sound) is that these people were not in the ditch when they were shot to death. If the "less than 30 meters" business could be made clear, and the methodology explained, then that might be useful information, also.
William Walker and the KVM/KDOM observers noted that there were no drag marks indicating the bodies had been dragged into the ditch after death. If there indeed would have been drag marks visible to the layman, and if indeed they were telling the truth (considering they described the dead as "elderly" when in fact the vast majority were not, etc.), then I suppose the bodies may have been carried and tossed, or brought in on stetchers. William Walker and his KVM/KDOM and journalists stomping around among the bodies pretty well destoyed any useful evidence re boot prints not belonging to the dead, etc. Besides, nobody even went there to examine the site for ten months, anyway.
What with lack of clarity on these spent shells plus what I wrote in my last post, we may be right back to the old KIA gathered up and dumped in the ditch by UCK/KLA to look like a massacre after all.
I assume, from the manufacturer.
I understand that the manufacturer(s) could provide numbers for rifles sent to Yugoslavia, Albanian or some other country, but how would that identfy the rifles used. You can't by looking at a spent cartride or bullet, know which batch of rifles it came form?
Well, that was my first reaction. I don't think you could in the US. Perhaps it's different in Europe.
Remember this during the "DC Sniper" case? From CNN:
A proposed House bill would require that the "fingerprinting" of guns be kept in a national law enforcement database to aid in the hunt of killers or people who fire a weapon in a violent crime. The database would keep track of distinct markings that each gun leaves on a test-fired bullet casing.
The goal of the program would be to help investigators who find a shell casing at a crime scene track the bullet back to the gun owner.
I was trying to give the Finns who gave out this info the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps in Europe a record is kept of these "ballistic fingerprints." There are lots of people who are knowledgeable about guns and such on FR. Maybe we could try pinging some them for help?
"Girard [Le Figaro correspondent] was equally puzzled to find almost no bullet casings on the ground. "It was weird," he told the CBC. "Maybe somebody had picked them up." Back in Pristina that day, he told his colleague Christophe Chatelot of Le Monde about the apparent absence of bullet casings. Chatelot asked one of Walker's observers, an American army captain, why there were none on the ground. The captain replied, "That's because I took them, I collected them." The captain "confided to Chatelot that he'd picked up all the bullet casings once he'd arrived at the scene."
Intrigued, Chatelot went to Racak the next day to investigate. When he tried to find the American army captain again, he was "suddenly nowhere to be found." "We don't know him. He's never been here," Chatelot says he was told by the OSCE mission. When he asked to talk to the four monitors who had been in and around Racak the day of the killings, he was told that their names had suddenly been made "a classified secret." "It's very strange," Chatelot told the CBC." link
Another version from CBC:
"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." link
Casings (supposedly picked up by this American Army captain), no casings (for the jounalists to see because this guy claimed to have picked them up), casings again (found by the Finnish team ten months later). Whew!
I think the street named after Clinton is in Pristina, and that nearby there is a large picture of Clinton on the side of a building. There's also a 25-foot statue of Tony Blair somewhere in Kosovo. Here's a sign pointing out William Walker Street.
In the "red light" district, I hope? :)
wonders....have you considered that the "police" the HRW eyetwitnesses are mentioning are KLA special forces who called themselves Police ?
Yes, I considered that, too, and it's possible. Especially with all that talk of masks, etc., by the "eyewitnesses." If they did dress up like police, I doubt they really fooled the villagers. And if those 23 men were indeed killed near that ditch/gully/sunken path, it doesn't make sense they did their deed in that open area within range of Serb guns.
I still don't see how it happened the way the "eyewitnesses" described it: Marched up the hill, with police behind, straight into "dozens" of more "police" who are concentrated there in a "free-fire zone". Well, imagine the scene, these "dozens" firing downhill ... and not worried about hitting the the other "police" just behind them.
It may be as likely as anything else, though. Thanks to Walker not securing the scene, we may never know what happened.
I found my old "Racak Timeline" and will post it next.
Racak Timeline
15 Jan 1999
Around 6:30 a.m.: Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that they heard automatic weapons fire beginning, when the police reportedly exchanged fire with the KLA from a hill called Cesta. [HRW]
About 7:00 a.m. (dawn): Serbian police arrived, encircled and then attacked the village of Racak. [LF,LM] Army tanks and armored cars came as backup and shelled the forest near the neighboring village of Petrovo, where some KLA units were positioned. They also fired at some family compounds in Racak. Some families managed to escape Racak, fleeing towards Petrovo which was also affected along with the villages of Malopoljce and Belinca. [HRW]
8:30 a.m.: Serbian police invited a television team (two journalists of APTV) to film the operation. A warning was also given to the OSCE, which sent two cars with American diplomatic licenses to the scene. [LF]
8:45 a.m: KVM /KDOM observers arrived, spent the whole day posted on a hill watching the village. [L as to 8:45, LF, LM and numerous other sources as to spending the day observing.]
Between 8:30 a.m. and 10:00 a.m.: APTV crew arrived, began taping from a hill. "Smoke came from only two chimneys", noted one of the two AP TV reporters. [L, LF, LM]
10:00 a.m.: APTV 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.
It was in fact an empty village that the police entered in the morning, sticking close to the walls. The shooting was intense, as they were fired on from UCK trenches dug into the hillside.
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. [LF] 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. [LM]
10:30 a.m.: Serb police gave out first press release. It announced that the police had "encircled the village of Racak with the aim of arresting the members of a terrorist group who killed a policeman" the previous Sunday. [LM]
About 11:00 a.m.: According to eyewitnesses, police entered Osmani's yard, where approximately thirty men and four boys were hiding in Osmani's stable. A group of approximately twenty women and children were hiding in the cellar of Osmani's three-storey house.
All of the men were taken outside into the yard, where they were forced to lie on the ground and searched for weapons. The four boys were taken out of this group, including the twelve-year-old who spoke with Human Rights Watch, and were locked up together with the women and other children in Osmani's cellar. The police also took four men from the cellar -- Sadik Osmani, Burim Osmani, Rama Shabani, and Mufail Hajrizi -- and put them with the other men in the yard. Burim Osmani, who is a teenager around fifteen years old, was later put back into the cellar, apparently because he was too young.
Before the twelve-year-old boy was sent to the cellar, however, he saw how the police beat the men in the yard, including his father and some other relatives. The boy told Human Rights Watch:
Two or three policeman beat them with wooden sticks. One was kicking them in the face with his boots. The others were just watching. It was terrible. The men were screaming, and their heads were covered with blood. A policeman locked me in the cellar with the women, but I could hear screaming for the next half an hour. [HRW]
11:30 a.m.: The political branch of the KLA announced that the fighting resulted in deaths on both sides. [L]
Around 1:00 p.m.: According to the eyewitnesses, the police led the twenty-three men out of Osmani's yard. One witness, S. A., was hidden at that time behind a compound wall fifty meters from the Osmani house. He told Human Rights Watch that he heard the police leading the detained men through the Racak streets. He said:
I heard the police ask them [the men] where is the headquarters of our army [the KLA], and they answered where it was. Then they went together toward the power station in the direction of our army. I think it was maybe 3:00 p.m. when I heard shooting, but I did not know that they were killed. [HRW]
Around 3:00 p.m.: The 23 men were shot by Serb police, according to eyewitnesses. [HRW]
3:00 p.m.: a police communique reaches the international press center in Pristina announcing that 15 UCK "terrorists" had been killed in combat in Racak and that a large stock of weapons had been seized. [LF]
3:20 p.m.: The number two in OSCE, whose verifiers have watched since 8:45, contacted a Serb general and demanded the cessation of combat. [L]
3:30 p.m.: Police, followed by the AP TV team, left the village, carrying with them a heavy 12.7 mm machine gun, two automatic rifles, two rifles with telescopic sights and some thirty Chinese-made kalashnikovs. KVM/KDOM observers enter village. [L, LF, LM]
4:40 p.m.: French journalist drove through the village and met three orange OSCE vehicles. The international observers were chatting calmly with three middle-aged Albanians in civilian clothes. They were looking for eventual civilian casualties. [LF, LM]
5:00/5:30 p.m.: All Serb forces withdraw from the area under the sporadic fire of a handful of UCK fighters who continued to hold out thanks to the steep and rough terrain. [L, LF, LM]
6:00 p.m.: The journalist returned to the village and saw the observers taking away two very slightly injured old men and two women toward the dispensary of the neighboring town of Stimje. The observers, who did not seem particularly worried, did not mention anything in particular to the journalist. They simply said that they were "unable to evaluate the battle toll". [LF, LM]
After 6:00 p.m.: The Albanian information center, which in an earlier report had stated a death, mentioned seven killed. [L]
[?]A journalist with AFP [Agence France Press] met a foreign observer Saturday morning in Racak who confidentially told him that he had actually entered the village the night before. The observer, who wishes to remain anonymous, said that he saw nothing out of the ordinary.
The French members of the mission, interviewed Monday by Liberation, said they didn't know that observers [verifiers] had entered the village the same night. They said only that they knew that verifiers were in the neighborhood, but explain that rumeurs about civilian victims started to circulate in the hallways of the foreign observers's mission on Friday night. Another witness, cited by LeMonde and Figaro, confirms the existence of these fantom observers. [L]
During the night, the remaining men of the village searched for the wounded, still thinking that the twenty-three men were in the Stimlje police station. [HRW]
16 Jan 1999
About 4:00 a.m.: One person who participated in the search told Human Rights Watch that they found the bodies on the hill called Kodri e Bebushit, in Albanian, around 4:00 a.m.. He said:
I saw Mufail Hajrizi. He was slashed on the chest. Then we found Haqif, the guest from Petrovo. His body was lying on his side with the hands as if he wanted to defend himself. His throat and half his face had been cut by a knife. On the top of his head was a wooden stick with some paper. Something was written on that paper but I can't remember what it was. There were more than twenty bodies, almost all of them were my relatives. We wanted to cover the bodies with blankets, or something else, but one man said not to touch anything before KVM comes tomorrow. [HRW]
About 9 a.m.: Journalists, soon followed by OSCE observers, are led to the bodies by KLA soldiers. [LF]
About 12:00 p.m.: William Walker arrived and expressed his indignation. [LF, numerous]
Sources:
HRW = Human Rights Watch, “Yugoslav Government War Crimes in Racak” link
L = Libération, Paris, 21 January 1999, “Nine questions concerning the Racak dead” link
LF = Le Figaro, January 20, 1999 “KOSOVO: OBSCURE AREAS OF A MASSACRE” link
LM = Le Monde, 21 January 1999, “WERE THE RACAK DEAD REALLY COLDLY MASSACRED?” link
From HRW:
One woman, L.S., told Human Rights Watch that her son and husband had survived the execution. She told Human Rights Watch:
In the morning I got information that the men from the stable were found dead. But soon I saw my husband and son coming toward me -- like they were standing up from the grave. My son told me that the group of policeman had pushed them with their hands behind their heads to go towards the hill. My son was in front with Sadik, and the others were behind. When he came to the top of the hill, he saw another group of policeman waiting for them with rifles. He turned his head and shouted to the others to run away. He ran toward the village of Rance, and didn't turn his head. One bullet crossed through his pocket, and another one is still in his belt.
I wondered how someone at the front would have escaped being killed, but sometimes miracles happen, I suppose. I take it this Sadik was Sadik Osmani, age 35, who is counted among the dead? I wonder what affiliation the Osmani family had (KLA or LDK)?
Then there’s this from CBC:
Nusret Shabani was among the men marched up the hill. He says when they reached the top of the hill, dozens of Serb police officers were waiting.
"My son and I were at the very end of the line of men," Sahabani told CBC News. "There were five of us who managed to survive. The first men continued to walk up the hill but we were the last ones and we managed to escape over the side of the hill by running away at the end of the line."
This man seems to believe that only the five men at the rear were able to escape. Surely he knows the son of L.S. who was said to be at the very front with Sadik? It’s not a big deal, just curious.
What I’m having trouble with is the “dozens of Serb police officers at the top of the hill” where KLA would have turned them into mincemeat. Or dozens of "policemen" at the top of the hill where Serb guns would have taken out at least some of them. That, and the shooting downhill part.
May 1999
Jefferey Record
U.S. Air War College
In other words, clinton had no proof when he unleashed the horror!!!
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