Editing Račak massacre (section)

==Reports==
On 15 January, reports were received by the [[Kosovo Verification Mission]] (KVM), an unarmed observer force from the OSCE, of civilians being killed in Račak. KVM monitors attempted to gain access to the area but were refused permission by security forces despite strong protests. Instead, they watched the fighting from a nearby hill. They later gained access to the village, where they found one dead man and a number of injured people and received reports of other deaths and of people being taken away by the Serbian security forces. They were denied permission to interview the villagers or explore the area around the village.<ref name="asseen" />

The monitors finally gained access to the surrounding area on 16 January. Accompanied by a number of foreign journalists and members of the [[European Union]]'s [[Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission]] (KDOM), they found a total of 40 bodies in and around the village. Another five bodies had allegedly been removed by family members. In all, 45 were reported killed, including a 12-year-old boy and three women. All had been shot and the KVM team reported that it found several bodies decapitated.<ref name="asseen" /> KVM head [[William Walker (diplomat)|William Walker]] later described what he had seen:

:"In a gully above the village, I saw the first body. It was covered with a blanket, and when it was pulled back, I saw there was no head on the corpse — just an incredibly bloody mess on the neck. Someone told me that the skull was on the other side of the gully and asked if I wanted to see that. But I said, "No, I've pretty much got this story." [Three more bodies were found.] They looked like older men, with gray hair or white hair ... They had wounds on their heads, and there was blood on their clothes. [Then a larger group of bodies.] I didn't count them. I just looked and saw a lot of holes in the head - in the top of the head and the back of the head. A couple had what appeared to be bullet wounds knocking out their eyes. I was told there were other bodies further up and over the crest of the hill, and I was asked by journalists and inspectors if I was going to go up and see the rest. I said, 'I've seen enough.'"<ref>Quoted by Ivo H. Daalder, Michael E. O'Hanlon, ''Winning Ugly: NATO's War to Save Kosovo'', pp. 63-64. Brookings Institution Press, 2001. {{ISBN|0-8157-1696-6}}</ref>

Walker immediately condemned what he labelled "an unspeakable atrocity" which was "a crime very much against humanity".<ref>"[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/256453.stm Nato crisis talks on massacre]", BBC News, January 17, 1999</ref> He told the party of journalists accompanying him: "I do not hesitate to accuse the (Serb) government security forces. We want to know who gave the orders, and who carried them out. I will insist that justice will be done. They certainly didn't deserve to die in circumstances like this."

The journalists also provided first-hand accounts of the discovery of the bodies. One of them, the [[BBC]]'s reporter [[Jacky Rowland]], reported that the dead "were all ordinary men; farmers, labourers, villagers. They had all been shot in the head."<ref>Jacky Rowland. "Kosovo massacre: 'A twisted mass of bodies'" BBC News, 16 January 1999</ref> The dead were aged from 14 to 99 years old.<ref>"[https://web.archive.org/web/20110604165806/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article3019535.ece Kosovo: a divided land where hatred is passed down the generations]". ''The Times'', 8 December 2007</ref> [[ITN]]'s correspondent [[Bill Neely]] was also present and described how other KVM monitors reacted at the scene: "A Swedish monitor notes that the dead are all in civilian clothes and unarmed and that there are no signs of a battle... After working for two hours one monitor, a London police officer, tells me he believes many of the victims have been shot at close range."<ref>Bill Neely. "Serbs rewrite history of Račak massacre", ''The Independent'', 23 January 1999</ref>

Two days later, on 18 January, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), [[Louise Arbour]], attempted to enter Kosovo to investigate the killings but was refused access by Serbian authorities.<ref>"[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/257728.stm Serbs snub massacre probe]", BBC News, 19 January 1999</ref> On the same day, heavily armed Serbian police entered Račak under fire from the KLA, and removed the bodies, taking them to a morgue in [[Pristina]] to await a forensic examination.<ref>Tom Walker. "Serbs take village massacre bodies", ''The Times'', 19 January 1999</ref>

A joint Yugoslavian-[[Belarus]]ian team of pathologists conducted post-mortems at the end of January. A [[Finland|Finnish]] forensic team working for the [[European Union]] subsequently conducted a second post-mortem, which was more detailed than the first, but conducted after a greater time from the actual killings. The bodies were finally released to the families and buried on 10 February 1999.<ref>"Kosovo bodies returned". ''Irish Times'', 11 February 1999</ref>