Berliner Zeitung, March 23, 2000
In January 1999, over 40 Albanians died in Racak – secret reports contradict the thesis of a direct execution
Bo Adam, Roland Heine and Claudius Technau
BERLIN, March 23. A small village played a crucial role just as the course was set for the Kosovo war: Racak. In this hamlet, inhabited by Albanians, Serb security forces allegedly executed unarmed civilians in cold blood on January 15, 1999. That was the claim of US president Bill Clinton, among many other Nato politicians. Was the public opinion in Nato countries fed with half-truths and unproven claims throughout the spring of 1999 to secure consent with a military intervention in the Kosovo conflict? The “Berliner Zeitung” was able to get access to secret documents which raise doubt about the widely spread version of events:
What happened in January 1999? Let’s look at the war crimes tribunal for Yugoslavia in The Hague: “On or about 15 January 1999, in the early morning hours, the village of Racak (Stimlje/Shtime municipality) was attacked by forces of the FRY and Serbia. After shelling by the VJ units, the Serb police entered the village later in the morning and began conducting house-to-house searches. Villagers, who attempted to flee from the Serb police, were shot throughout the village. A group of approximately 25 men attempted to hide in a building, but were discovered by the Serb police. They were beaten and then were removed to a nearby hill, where the policemen shot and killed them. Altogether, the forces of the FRY and Serbia killed approximately 45 Kosovo Albanians in and around Racak. The Hague indictment calls it “murder of Kosovo-Albanian civilians.”
This representation agrees with statements made by American William Walker, who led the OSCE in Kosovo at the time. He visits the village the day following the tragedy. His verdict was passed immediately: He claimed to have seen the corpses of more than 20 mostly elderly men, who “obviously were executed were they lay.” According to Walker, the others were found later. A “special report” [English term used by B.Z.] by the OSCE mission prepared under Walker’s auspices a day later summarizes: One has found proof of “arbitrary arrests, killings and mutilations of unarmed civilians.” The report details a list with 23 adult males in a ravine above Racak, “many shot at point blank”, furthermore four adult males who apparently were shot while escaping, as well as 18 corpses in the village proper. The latter include a woman and a young boy.
The pictures of the bodies trigger worldwide shock and dismay. US foreign minister Madeleine Albright calls it a “galvanizing incident”. Three days later she demand the bombardment of Yugoslavia as “punishment”. In a letter sent to Yugoslav president Milosevic on January 20, the German foreign minister Joschka Fischer writes that any excuses from Belgrade “in no way can justify the execution of 45 unarmed people, amongst them women and children, by the security forces.” Later on, Fischer says: “Racak became the turning point for me.”
Denial from Belgrade
The Yugoslav government vehemently dispute the condemnation. Belgrade talks of a police action against UCK terrorists. [According to Belgrade,] The bodies were collected by the UCK on the night of January 15 and presented as civilian victims.
On January 22, a forensic team from Finland begins with the autopsy of the corpses that have been brought to the capital of Kosovo. A week later, it has concluded its inquiry. The public waits for the conclusion. But for the time being, the team led by Dr. Helena Ranta takes its time to evaluate the findings.
Meanwhile, the Kosovo conflict becomes grows more intense by the day. In Rambouillet near Paris, the Western powers, Russia, Serbs and Kosovo-Albanians still negotiate a peaceful solution to the dispute. The Rambouillet talks have entered a decisive phase when the team leader Ranta hosts a confusing press conference in Pristina. Instead of issuing the inquiry results, she shares “comments” that reflect her “personal opinion.” On this 17th of March 1999, nobody knows that political forces have urged Mrs. Ranta to go public. To this day, her reserach is neither finished, nor has it led to any clear conclusions.
In complicated sentences, prone to misunderstandings, Mrs. Ranta tries to extricate herself from the affair. She declines to speak of a “massacre”; instead, she calls the tragedy a “crime against humanity”. She states that no ammunition and no uniforms were found on the bodies, but that some of them were clothed in several thick sweaters. She elaborates on the fact that no gunpowder traces were found, but doesn’t clearly state where one has looked for them. She criticizes that the OSCE has neither secured the corpses or any evidence and points to the long time that has passed between the deaths and the forensic inquiry. Both would make a non-ambigious statement difficult.
Nevertheless, most observers took Helena Rantas’ statements as a confirmation that an execution had taken place. Important politicians allow no more leeway for doubt. US president Clinton says that “innocent men, women and children” have been driven from their homes, forced to “kneel in the dirt and were moved down.” Anonymous Western government representatives tell the “International Herald Tribune” that the most horrendous details from the Finnish report have not yet been made public. A week later, the war begins, and the reports remain secret.
Inquiries with Mrs. Ranta
The Berliner Zeitung has now been able to access copies of the autopsy documents. Of all these reports, none contain any evidence of an execution scenario. The Finnish forensic experts and their Yugoslav and Belorussian colleagues found traces that point to a gunshot fired “relatively close” on only one of the victims. In the other cases, the findings were negative.
Neither is the alleged absence of gunpowder residue [on the victims’] hands documented. As a consequence, there is no evidence that the victims were civilians. We asked Mrs. Ranta about the reason for this. After a brief consideration, she solved the puzzle: The Finnish team never looked for such traces. Rather, the tests mentioned at the press conference on March 17, 1999, were carried out to look for traces of executions or point blank shootings. These were the tests that proved negative. “It was somewhat easy to misunderstand that at the press conference,” Mrs. Ranta admits today.
That is a fact. But this “misunderstanding” is crucial to the Racak case. Were the dead actually unarmed, peaceful villagers? Or were at least some of them Albanian UCK fighters? Was it an execution or a battle? In all official statements by the OSCE, the Hague tribunal, and the EU the second possibility is not mentioned.
Against better knowledge. As early as the morning of January 16 1999, the UCK issues the first communique stating that eight of its fighters had been killed in combat in Racak. The names of these dead do not appear on the Hague tribunal’s list. Another strange thing: Also on January 16, the UCK mentions 22 execution victims in Racak by name. But only eleven of them are recorded on the tribunal’s victim list. Only the figure 22 approximately correlates with the number of dead found on the hill behind Racak. How many dead were there really?
“The truth is,” says French journalist Renaud Girard, “that Racak was a fortified village with a lot of [gunfighter] trenches.” There isn’t a single word to be found about that in OSCE’s “special report.” [English term used by B.Z.] On January 16 1999, Girard had hurried to the scene of the tragedy, and he saw OSCE chief of mission in action. “In terms of massacres, Walker is a professional,” says Girard. “Any professional knows what to do. He blocks off access to the crime scene to secure the evidence. Walker did no such thing. He trampled around there himself and let the journalists fiddle around with the corpses, collect souvenirs and wipe out evidence. Initially, Girard filed a massacre story like all his colleagues with his paper “Le Figaro.” But then he started pondering. “I felt that something was wrong.”
Doubts among Journalists
A colleague with “Le Monde” contributed to his doubts. Christophe Chatelet had been in Racak the day before – the day of the alleged massacre. Together with OSCE representatives, he entered the village in the late afternoon, when the Serbs had left. The foreigners found four wounded and were told about one dead. Chatelet returned to Pristina at dusk. He told a colleague that nothing particular had happened at Racak. The day after, when Walker went to racak with a large press entourage, Chatelet declined and stayed at the hotel. Chatelet cannot explain why the OSCE only recorded one dead on the afternoon of January 15, while the OSCE the morning after suddenly found at least 13, possibly as many as 18, corpses in the streets and farmhouses: “I can’t solve that mystery.”
Certainly, the 45 dead are the Serbs’ victims. But if there was a mass execution: why did the Serb units withdraw without any attempt to cover up the incident and make as many corpses as possible disappear? The UCK is in the best position to bring light to the case. Recently, its commander in chief Hashim Thaci said to the BBC: “We had a key unit in the region. It was a fierce battle. We regrettably had many victims. But so did the Serbs.”
