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WORLD
NET DAILY
TROUBLE IN THE HOLY LAND
Jenin inquiry a witch
hunt?
'Expert' forensic adviser to U.N. commission held back info to
'prove'
Kosovo 'massacre'
Posted: April 29, 2002
1:00 a.m.
Eastern
By Aleksandar Pavic
© 2002 WorldNetDaily.com
The
forensic expert picked to advise the United Nations Jenin inquiry
commission,
charged with determining whether Israelis conducted a "massacre"
there, was
previously appointed by the European Union and NATO to
investigate claims
that a "massacre" took place in the Kosovo village of
Racak in January 1999 -
at which time she allegedly withheld vital
information and thus helped usher
in the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and
subsequent troop deployment in its
southern Kosovo province.
Finnish pathologist Dr. Helena Ranta was named
as an adviser to the
three-man panel appointed by Secretary General Kofi
Annan last week.
The commission was named in response to Palestinian
claims of civilian
slaughter and mass graves in the wake of Israel's
successful
search-and-destroy mission targeting terrorists and their
infrastructure in
several West Bank towns.
Israel decided yesterday
not to grant the U.N. team access, sparking a
meeting by the Security Council
which decided to give Israel an additional
day to reconsider.
'Crime
against humanity'
Ranta, when she was head of the EU Forensic Expert
Team, was engaged to
investigate reports that Yugoslav armed forces
slaughtered Albanian
civilians in the Kosovo village of Racak on Jan. 15,
1999.
Following the forensic investigation by her team, at a March 17,
1999, news
conference, Ranta referred to the Racak deaths as a "crime
against
humanity," charging that the "victims" were "unarmed civilians,"
according
to BBC reports.
Despite contradictory results gathered by
two other forensic teams - as well
as doubts concerning the events in Racak
raised by European media, including
the Paris Le Monde and the London Times -
one week later, NATO began its
78-day bombing campaign against
Yugoslavia.
In the midst of the campaign, on May 22, 1999, the
"International Criminal
Tribunal for Yugoslavia," or ICTY, issued indictments
for "Crimes against
Humanity and Violations of the Laws or Customs of War"
against Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic and four of his associates for
their part in
the alleged Racak massacre.
Although Ranta made the
charges that directly led to the NATO intervention,
her team's full report
was suppressed by the U.N. and the EU for a full two
years, until February
2001. When it was finally published in Forensic
Science International, the
report revealed that there was no evidence of a
massacre, even though the
OSCE observer mission in Kosovo, led by U.S.
diplomat William Walker, was
quick to come to such a conclusion.
However, by that time, Yugoslavia had
been bombed, leaving its
infrastructure heavily damaged and part of its
territory occupied, while its
former president currently stands trial at The
Hague for charges that
include the Racak "massacre."
As an April 18,
1999, Washington Post article stated: "Racak transformed the
West's Balkan
policy as singular events seldom do."
This echoes the words of Daniel
Bethlehem, a Cambridge University
international legal expert and Israel's
external adviser on the U.N. Jenin
inquiry. As reported by Ha'aretz, in a
memorandum sent to the Israeli
government, Bethlehem writes: "If the
committee's findings uphold the
allegations against Israel - even on poor
reasoning - this will
fundamentally alter the dynamics of the
Israeli-Palestinian leadership and
may make it impossible for Israel to
resist calls for an international
force, the immediate establishment of a
Palestinian state and the
prosecution of individuals said to have committed
the alleged acts."
Thus, the lessons of Racak and the role of Dr. Helena
Ranta concerning it
may be highly indicative of the direction in which the
U.N. Jenin inquiry is
headed.
Withheld information
As the Hague
indictment against Milosevic and his associates claims: "On or
about 15
January 1999, in the early morning hours the village of Racak ...
was
attacked by forces of the FRY (Yugoslavia) and Serbia. After shelling by
...
[Yugoslavian forces] 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 [Racak]. 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."
In her March 17, 1999, press conference
and statement, Ranta herself claimed
that "... there were no indications that
the people ... [autopsied were] ...
other than unarmed civilians.
..."
Yet she failed to mention the fact that she had not performed
forensic
testing on the hands of the dead, nor the fact that it was
established that
the bodies were shot from various distances and directions -
and none at
close range, which would contradict the version that the deceased
were
"unarmed civilians" who were summarily executed.
Furthermore, as
pointed out by Chris Soda of Yugoslaviainfo, Ranta used the
Scanning Electron
Microscope with an Energy Dispersive X-Ray analyzer
(SEM/EDX) method, for
which samples must be obtained from the skin surfaces
of a victim at the
scene. Any delay in obtaining residues, movement of
bodies or washing can
diminish or destroy gunshot residues.
Having used this method, Ranta
concluded that the findings for any traces of
firearms use were "negative."
Yet, contrary to the standards required by the
procedure, she did not start
analyzing the bodies until six days after the
time of death. Furthermore,
according to her own admission, the bodies had
been both moved and turned
over during that time.
During her press conference, Ranta also made the
claim that "... medicolegal
investigations cannot give a conclusive answer to
the question whether there
was a battle [that took place]," but nevertheless
concluded that the victims
were non-combatants because, among other things,
"... no ammunition was
found in [their] pockets." She declined, however, to
reveal a fact
extensively recorded by various media - that the entire
operation had been
filmed by the AP news service and observed by the OSCE and
print media
reporters, whom the Yugoslav forces had actually invited to come.
For on
that day, Yugoslav forces were closing in on Albanian Muslim KLA
terrorists
who had waged numerous murder attacks against police and civilians
in the
previous months, and whose stronghold Racak actually was.
The
AP film shows extensive footage of battle between Yugoslav and KLA
forces,
and there is also a great deal of published media testimony to the
fact that
an armed battle took place in which Yugoslav forces reported
having killed
"15 KLA members." Ranta never refers to this in her statement,
nor does the
ICTY indictment.
The OSCE observers that entered the village after the
battle found no
evidence of any "massacre," nor of any civilians killed, just
as they
received no such testimony from any of the villagers. It was not
until the
next day that journalists were directed by a KLA member to a gully
just
outside the village in which the bodies lay.
Still, many of the
journalists present, such as Renaud Girard of the French
Le Figaro daily,
noted the absence of shell casings and blood at the
"massacre site." Another
French paper, Le Monde, wondered how it was
possible for the Serb police to
dig a trench and then kill villagers at
close range while under fire by KLA
forces.
The questions piled on. Yet Ranta never addressed them, and in
fact ignored
the evidence that would have set the context for the deaths that
occurred at
Racak.
Just two days later, on March 19, 1999, U.S.
President Bill Clinton
addressed his nation in order to prepare it for the
air strikes against
Yugoslavia: "As we prepare to act, we need to remember
the lessons we have
learned in the Balkans. ... We should remember what
happened in the village
of Racak back in January - innocent men, women and
children taken from their
homes to a gully, forced to kneel in the dirt,
sprayed with gunfire - not
because of anything they had done, but because of
who they were."
Yet, Le Figaro reported that Yugoslav police had found "1
12.7mm heavy
artillery gun, 2 hand-held artillery pieces, 2 sniper rifles,
and about 30
Chinese-made Kalashnikov rifles" in Racak after the
battle.
In addition, another forensic team composed of Yugoslav and
Belarus
pathologists, whose findings were ignored by most major media, the
U.N.,
NATO and the E.U., found that 37 of the 40 bodies discovered (not 45
as
stated in the Hague indictment) had recently fired weapons, and that
they
had shown signs of exposure to cold, outdoor conditions - which
contradicted
the ICTY claim that more than half the dead had been civilians
hiding in a
building, whom the Yugoslav forces discovered, dragged to the
ravine and
then "executed."
Finally, the OSCE chairman-in-office,
Norwegian Foreign Minister Knut
Vollebaek, in his own March 17, 1999,
statement, wrote: "Dr. Ranta has also
concluded that there is no indication
of post-mortem tampering with bodies
or fabrication of evidence. Furthermore,
testing for gunshot residues on the
victims has been negative. Minister
Vollebaek notes Dr. Ranta's conclusion
that there was no indication of the
victims being other than unarmed
civilians. On this basis the
Chairman-in-Office of the OSCE reiterates his
statement of 16 January [which
is 5 days before Dr. Ranta's team arrived to
the scene], in which he
condemned the Racak atrocity against innocent
civilians."
In light of
Ranta's controversial record, the fact that the U.N. has named
her "to
develop accurate information regarding recent events in the Jenin
refugee
camp" will no doubt be regarded as a bad omen by many Israelis.
As
Israeli adviser Daniel Bethlehem said in Ha'aretz, Israel is "for
all
practical purposes ... faced with a war crimes investigation."
In
fact, based on the precedents set by the Tribunal for former Yugoslavia
in
setting up the Racak indictment, it may develop that Jenin becomes the
"test
case" inaugurating the work of the recently instituted
permanent
International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague. The presence of Dr.
Helena
Ranta makes this a likely scenario.
Aleksandar Pavic
[EMAIL PROTECTED] in Belgrade covers Yugoslavia
for
WorldNetDaily.com.
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