Editing Račak massacre (section)

===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>