Written by: Andy Wilcoxson, March 2005
Judge Danica Marinkovic continued her testimony at the trial of Slobodan
Milosevic on Thursday. She was the Investigating Judge from the Pristina
District Court, and in January 1999 she investigated the alleged massacre in
the village of Racak.
Racak is an important event because it is the only war crime that Serbia is
accused of committing in Kosovo prior to the NATO bombing. The accusation
that the Serbs perpetrated a massacre in Racak helped give political
justification to the NATO aggression that was launched against Yugoslavia
exactly six years ago today.
On Wednesday Judge Marinkovic testified that a team of international
forensic investigators from Serbia, Belarus, and Finland determined that the
40 corpses found in the village were shot from a distance. They were not
executed at close-range as certain Western politicians and media had
claimed.
Today Judge Marinkovic testified that the forensic team identified all 40 of
the bodies. The names of 36 of them can be found on the indictment against
Milosevic. 9 of the names listed on the indictment were not among the 40,
and 4 people that were found by Marinkovic are not on the indictment.
The forensic analysis revealed that 37 of the 40 bodies had gunpowder
residue on their hands, which indicates that they had been firing weapons
shortly before they died. Judge Marinkovic said that many of the bodies were
wearing combat boots, multiple layers of clothing, some even wore heavy
woolen military pants. She also noted that most of the corpses were wearing
identical leather belts.
Obviously, these were not simple unarmed village folks who had been
massacred in cold blood. These people were dressed to be outside, and they
had gunpowder traces on their hands. They were clearly armed combatants, not
innocent civilians.
To take the point even further, these people were very likely members of the
KLA. Judge Marinkovic brought a series of police reports and official
witness statements to court with her. These documents revealed that 7 of the
40 had been conclusively identified as members of the KLA before the 15th of
January 1999, the day of the infamous Racak incident.
The police reports and the sworn witness statements were consistent with one
another and clearly demonstrated that Racak was a KLA stronghold prior to
January 15th.
The documents complemented Judge Marinkovic’s testimony perfectly. As was
noted yesterday, she found trenches and bunkers littered with shell casings.
She also found machine gun nests, and a large quantity of weapons in the
village. All of that was videotaped and the tape was played yesterday. The
tape even showed the KLA headquarters in Racak complete with uniforms,
weapons, and a duty roster.
It was clear from the videotapes played yesterday that there was an exchange
of fire in the village. The police, who were being videotaped by the media
and watched by the OSCE, were under fire from the moment they entered the
village. They could not have rounded-up people and massacred them – it
simply was not possible. The police could only return fire when they were
shot at.
Furthermore, according to Judge Marinkovic’s testimony, all of the civilians
had left Racak ahead of the operation. The only ones in the village when the
police arrived were the KLA.
The people who were killed were obviously members of the KLA. They were
dressed to spend prolonged periods of time outside, they were wearing army
boots, and they had gunpowder traces on their hands. Things could not be
anymore clear.
William Walker, Bill Clinton, and scores of other Western politicians
clearly lied when they accused the Serbian police of massacring civilians at
Racak. The only thing the police could do was shoot back at the people who
were shooting at them.
Judge Marinkovic went to the spot where Walker said the massacre had taken
place and found no evidence to corroborate his claims. There were no blood
splatters or fragments to indicate a massacre had happened at that spot.
In addition to Racak, Judge Marinkovic testified about a real massacre that
the KLA perpetrated in 1998 at Klečka where scores of Serb and Albanian
civilians, some of whom were children as young as 9 and 12 years old, were
raped, killed, and dismembered. There was videotape of this massacre, but
the tribunal would not allow it to be played.
The indictment against Milosevic also accuses Serbian police of executing
Albanian prisoners at the Dubrava prison in Istok.
It just so happens that Mrs. Marinkovic investigated the death of these
prisoners as part of her duties as an investigating judge. She came to the
tribunal with all of the proper forensic reports and witness statements,
and it emerged that the NATO bombing killed the prisoners, not
the police. Eyewitnesses saw the prison being bombed by NATO warplanes, and
the forensic analysis of the victims’ corpses proved that they had been
killed by blast injuries, not executed with firearms as the indictment
claims.
With that her examination-in-chief came to an end. She will be
cross-examined by Mr. Nice when the trial resumes on Wednesday, April 6th.