Editing Račak massacre (section)

==Investigations==
The killings at Račak became the focus of an investigation by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. In its indictment of [[Slobodan Milošević]] and four other senior Yugoslav and Serbian officials, the ICTY's Chief Prosecutor stated that:

{{blockquote|On or about 15 January 1999, in the early morning hours, the village of Račak was attacked by forces of the FRY [Yugoslavia] and Serbia. After shelling by VJ [Yugoslav Army] units, the Serbian police entered the village later in the morning and began conducting house-to-house searches. Villagers, who attempted to flee from the Serbian police, were shot throughout the village. A group of approximately 25 men attempted to hide in a building, but were discovered by the Serbian 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.<ref>"[https://www.un.org/icty/indictment/english/mil-ii990524e.htm The Prosecutor of the Tribunal against Slobodan Milosevic, Milan Milutinovic, Nikola Sainovic, Dragoljub Ojdanic, Vlajko Stojiljkovic]" para 98a. International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, 22 May 1999</ref>}}

Eyewitness reports from the surviving villagers unanimously supported the account of a massacre. The British journalist [[Julius Strauss]], writing for ''[[The Daily Telegraph]]'', described how he had "spent more than a week collecting evidence on the Račak massacre from Albanian witnesses, Western monitors and diplomats and a few Serbian sources who spoke privately and at some risk."<ref>Julius Strauss. "[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/06/30/wslob530.xml Massacre that started long haul to justice]{{dead link|date=July 2021|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}". ''The Daily Telegraph'', 26 June 2001</ref> According to the survivors that he interviewed, "a small group of men dressed all in black and wearing gloves and [[Balaclava (clothing)|balaclava]]s ... co-ordinated the attack on the village and the subsequent executions." Men had been separated from women and children before being led away to be executed. One survivor told him that "some of the Serbs were in blue, some in black. The men in black appeared to be in control and wore balaclavas over their heads. Some had uniforms with insignia which included a Serbian flag; some had none. They carried automatic guns and, as we were led up the hill, both units started shooting us." Strauss speculated that the men had been from the [[Special Anti-Terrorist Unit (Serbia)|Specijalna Antiteroristička Jedinica]], the Serbian Interior Ministry's elite anti-terrorist unit.<ref>Julius Strauss. "Military 'death squads' behind Kosovo massacre". ''The Daily Telegraph'', 27 January 1999</ref> Some eyewitnesses told reporters that "Serb troops shot and mutilated their victims, and the six-hour orgy of violence ended with a nationalist song."<ref name="video">Garentina Kraja. "Massacre village outraged by defence video". ''The Guardian'', 15 February 2002</ref>

The Serbian government rejected this version of events. On the day after the killings, the Serbian Interior Ministry issued a statement asserting that its police units had come under fire from "ethnic Albanian terrorist groups ... on routes leading to Račak village in the Stimlje municipality." In the subsequent counter-attack "several dozen terrorists were killed in the clashes with the police. Most of them were in uniforms bearing the insignia of the ethnic Albanian terrorist organization calling itself the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA)."<ref>"[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/monitoring/256392.stm Serbs say terrorists killed at Račak]". Report by state news agency Tanjug, translated by BBC Monitoring. 16 January 1999</ref>

They received some support from the French newspapers ''[[Le Figaro]]'' and ''[[Le Monde]]'', which suggested that the KLA could have fabricated evidence. A film crew working for the [[Associated Press]] accompanied the Serbian forces in Račak for part of 15 January. Two French journalists from the [[Agence France Press]] and ''Le Figaro'' interviewed the cameramen and saw at least some of the footage, from which they concluded that it was possible that the KLA could have staged the massacre, and that "only a credible international inquiry would make it possible to resolve those doubts." According to the paper,

:"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 KLA 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 KLA guerrillas, encircled, were trying desperately to break out. A score of them in fact succeeded, as the police themselves admitted."<ref>Rene Girard: "The images filmed during the attack on the village of Račak contradict the Albanians' and the OSCE's version", ''Le Figaro'', 20 January 1999</ref>

Another French journalist writing for ''Le Monde'', Christophe Chatelot, gave an account from the perspective of the two AP journalists:

:"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. The object of the violent police attack on Friday was a stronghold of UCK Albanian independence fighters. Virtually all the inhabitants had fled Račak during the frightful Serb offensive of the summer of 1998. With few exceptions, they had not come back. 'Smoke came from only two chimneys,' noted one of the two AP TV reporters."<ref>Christophe Chatelot: "Were the Račak dead really coldly massacred?", ''Le Monde'', 21 January 1999</ref>

The Serbian President, [[Milan Milutinović]], accused the KVM head William Walker of fabricating the killings "by securing the co-operation of his protegés in the Kosovo Liberation Army".<ref>"Serbs launch war of words against US". ''Financial Times'', 18 January 1999</ref> The Serbian media took a similar line, arguing that the Albanians had removed the KLA uniforms from the bodies and replaced them with civilian clothes. Unnamed French diplomats also criticised Walker for publicly blaming the Serbs for the killings, arguing that he should have waited for a more thorough investigation.<ref>"Kosovo on the brink, again". ''The Economist'', 23 January 1999.</ref> The Yugoslav government declared  Walker to be ''persona non grata'' and demanded that he leave the territory of Yugoslavia within 48 hours.{{citation needed|date=November 2018}}

At the end of January 1999, the United States was reported to have leaked telephone intercepts that were said to prove the role of the Serb government in the killings. According to ''[[The Washington Post]]'', the intercepts showed that the Serb government had ordered security forces to "go in hard" to the Račak area. Deputy Prime Minister [[Nikola Šainović]] and Interior Ministry General [[Sreten Lukić]] reportedly expressed concern about reaction to the Račak assault and discussed how to make the killings at Račak appear to be the result of combat between government troops and KLA rebels. On the day of the attack on Račak, Sainović was aware that the assault was underway and asked how many people had been killed. Lukić replied that as of that moment the tally stood at 22. Following the international uproar about the killings, Sainović told Lukić to re-enter Račak and retrieve the bodies. He also told Lukić that the ICTY prosecutor Louise Arbour was not to be allowed into the country.<ref>R. Jeffrey Smith. "Serbs Tried To Cover Up Massacre; Kosovo Reprisal Plot Bared by Phone Taps". ''The Washington Post'', 28 January 1999</ref>

===Forensic reports===
Three forensic examinations were carried out on the bodies, by separate teams from FR Yugoslavia, Belarus (at the time an ally of Serbia) and Finland (under the auspices of the [[European Union]]).<ref name=EUFETR>https://web.archive.org/web/19991116063236/http://www.usia.gov/regional/eur/balkans/kosovo/texts/racak.htm EU Forensic Expert Team report</ref> All three examinations took place in controversial circumstances; the Yugoslav and Belarusian forensic teams carried out their autopsies against the opposition of the KVM and ICTY, which had demanded that the outside experts from Finland should be the first to carry out post-mortems on the dead. The Yugoslav and Belarusian autopsies were conducted on 19 January under the auspices of the Pristina Forensic Medical Institute. Its director, Professor Saša Dobričanin, stated that "Not a single body bears any sign of execution. The bodies were not massacred." He told the media that he suspected that the bodies had been mutilated posthumously to fabricate the appearance of an execution.<ref>"[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/258529.stm Pathologist: 'No Kosovo massacre']". BBC News, 19 January 1999</ref>

The Finnish (EU) team, headed by pathologist [[Helena Ranta]], began its own autopsy on 21 January<ref>"[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/259835.stm Račak killings: Who says what?" BBC News, 22 January 1999]</ref> and released its initial findings on 17 March. The introduction to the report stressed that it was Ranta's personal view, and not the position of the team. The report concluded that "there was no evidence that the victims had been anything other than unarmed civilians and that they had probably been killed where they were later found by the international monitors."<ref>"[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/298131.stm Račak killings 'crime against humanity']". BBC News, 17 March 1999</ref> Addressing the claims that the dead had been killed wearing KLA uniforms which had then been replaced with civilian clothes, the report states that "...the clothing [of the dead] bore no badges or insignia of any military unit. No indication of removal of badges of rank or insignia was evident. Based on autopsy findings (e.g. bullet holes, coagulated blood) and photographs of the scenes, it is highly unlikely that clothes could have been changed or removed."<ref>"Report of the EU Forensic Team on the Račak Incident", 17 March 1999. Quoted in Marc Weller, ''The Crisis in Kosovo 1989-1999'', pp. 333-335. {{ISBN|1-903033-00-4}}</ref> Ranta testified at the subsequent ICTY [[trial of Slobodan Milošević]], stating that retrieved bullets, bullet casings and entry and exit wounds indicated that the victims were killed where their bodies were found and at approximately the same time. A later Finnish report indicated that only one victim had provably been shot at close range.<ref>{{Cite journal |url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0379073800003923 |at=See Table 3 on p. 179: 'Close-range or contact discharge: 1' |doi=10.1016/S0379-0738(00)00392-3 |pmid=11182269 |date=2001 |last1=Rainio |first1=J. |last2=Lalu |first2=K. |last3=Penttilä |first3=A. |title=Independent forensic autopsies in an armed conflict: Investigation of the victims from Racak, Kosovo |journal=Forensic Science International |volume=116 |issue=2–3 }}</ref>

The report from the Finnish team, however, was kept confidential by the EU until long after the war,<ref name=EUFETR/>{{failed verification|date=January 2017}} and the team leader, Helena Ranta, issued a press release at the time containing her "personal opinion" and indicating different findings. Ranta stated that "...medicolegal investigations [such as scientific analysis of bodies] cannot give a conclusive answer to the question whether there was [in fact] a battle [between the police and insurgents]...", but she leaned towards the victims being non-combatants in part because "...no ammunition was found in the pockets" of the bodies she investigated. The report was widely understood as saying that the Finnish team had disproved the finding released by the Yugoslav and Belarusian pathologists, whose tests had shown a positive for gunshot residue on the hands of 37 out of the 40 bodies.

Criticism was levelled{{citation needed|date=April 2024}} against the paraffin method used by the Yugoslavs and Belarusians to test for powder residue on the victims' hands, since it regularly gives false positives for many other substances, including fertilizers, tobacco, urine and cosmetics, and sometimes provides false negatives.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.jfk-assassination.net/|title=McAdams's Kennedy Assassination Home Page Index|website=www.jfk-assassination.net}}</ref>  The test is still used by the police of many countries who cannot afford more modern methods, but has been described since as early as 1967 as 'of no use scientifically.' <ref>Cowan, M. E., Purdon, P. L. A study of the "paraffin test." J. Forensic Sci. 12(1): 19-35, 1967.</ref>

The international reaction to the Yugoslav and Belarusian report on one hand, (which supported the view that those killed were KLA fighters, not civilians as claimed by the Kosovo-Albanians and [[NATO]]) and that of the EU expert team on the other (which did not find any evidence to suggest that the dead were combatants)<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www2.hs.fi/english/archive/news.asp?id=20030313IE2 |title=HS Foreign 13.3.2003 - Helena Ranta testifies at Milosevic trial in The Hague |access-date=2013-02-05 |archive-date=2013-02-15 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130215011818/http://www2.hs.fi/english/archive/news.asp?id=20030313IE2 |url-status=dead }}</ref> differed considerably, not least in the NATO-countries who were preparing to intervene to stop widespread human rights violations in Kosovo. The former was ignored or dismissed as propaganda, and the latter was accepted as evidence of a massacre against civilians. Several pro-war activists and writers wrote about, and quoted, the Finnish team's press-release. Both reports were used as evidence by the prosecution and also by the defence of Slobodan Milošević at his trial, until the Račak case was dropped from the indictment because of lack of evidence.{{citation needed|reason=citations needed for claims in second half of para|date=October 2014}}

The full report of the EU team was handed over to the ICTY at the end of June 2000. An executive summary was published in 2001, but the full report has never been released.<ref>''[[Official Journal of the European Union]]'', C 261 E, 18 September 2001 P. 0069 - 0070</ref>

In October 2008 Helena Ranta stated that she had been asked to modify the contents of her report, both by the [[Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs]], and by [[William Walker (diplomat)|William Walker]], the head of the [[Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe]] (OSCE) [[Kosovo Verification Mission]], in order to make it more explicit, she had refused to do so, saying this was "a task for the war crimes tribunal”.  According to Ranta, in the winter of 1999 William Walker, the head of the OSCE Kosovo monitoring mission, broke a pencil in two and threw the pieces at her when she was not willing to use sufficiently strong language about the Serbs.<ref name="HS20081016">{{cite web |url= http://www.hs.fi/english/article/1135240292632 |title= Helena Ranta: Foreign Ministry tried to influence Kosovo reports |access-date= 7 May 2016 |date= 16 October 2008 |work= Helsingin Sanomat – International Edition |publisher= Helsingin Sanomat Oy |url-status= bot: unknown |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20090629224554/http://www.hs.fi/english/article/1135240292632 |archive-date= 29 June 2009 }}</ref>