The massacre in Racak

According to Serbian sources, on January 8-10, 1999, in the vicinity of Rachak, several attacks by KLA militants against Yugoslav policemen occurred, as a result of which 4 officers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia died ^[5] . In the evening of January 14, police surrounded the village, as they suspected that they were hiding the murderers of police officer Svetislav Przhich, who died on January 10 in an ambush near the village of Slilovo. On Friday at seven in the morning the police started shelling the village from the side of two nearby hills, while the neighboring villages of Petra, Malopolze and Renaya were also fired at.

According to the Ministry of the Interior, when police units attempted to enter the village, fire was opened from small arms and mortars, while KLA separatists took refuge in trenches and makeshift bunkers. After breaking through the defense, the separatists retreated to the mountains south of the village. According to Yugoslav police, several dozen separatists were killed in the battle, most of whom were wearing KLA uniforms. At the same time, several machine guns, two sniper rifles, dozens of assault rifles, hand grenades, a radio station, etc. became Yugoslav trophies. One police officer was injured from the Yugoslav side, several cars were damaged by shelling ^[5] .

Residents of the village told reporters from Western news agencies that the police ransacked the village and arrested 26 men, one of whom was found dead the next day. One of Rachak’s residents, Musa Yakupi, told The Guardian reporter how the police beat the detained men and then forced a group of residents to run up the hill, resulting in cross-fire from the police and separatists of the KLA ^[5] .

On the morning of January 16, journalists from various media outlets on Mount Bebush examined several bodies of the dead, several more bodies were discovered by them in the village itself, which at that time was again controlled by Albanian separatists ^[5] . In total, journalists found 23 bodies on the mountain and 16 bodies in the village. According to the descriptions of journalists, many were shot in the head from a close distance, one of the bodies was beheaded.

The AOK admitted that 8 of the dead were its militants. In the afternoon of January 16, William Walker arrived at the scene, who negotiated with the local commander of the KLA. At the same time, the British general Drevenkievich urged the Yugoslav police not to enter the village in order to avoid new clashes. On the night of January 16-17, the Albanians moved all the bodies to the local mosque ^[5] .

Since Yugoslav experts refused to enter the village without police escort, as Drevenkievich insisted, a new assault on the village was held on January 18 . About 60 police officers, with the support of armored vehicles, entered the village, which allowed Judge Danitsa Marinkovich, accompanied by three international observers, to inspect the corpses and pick them up in Pristina for further examination ^[6] .

Findings of Serbian, Belarusian and Finnish experts

A joint study of Belarusian and Serbian experts in the presence of two representatives of the OSCE mission in the province began on January 19 ^[5] . The autopsy was performed by Professor Vuyadin Otashevich. According to the conclusions voiced by experts, 40 bodies of the dead were found in the village were not executed ^[7] and traces of gunpowder were found on their hands, which testified to the fact that the dead were holding weapons and their belonging to the Albanian separatists ^[8] .

According to Elena Guskova , after Belarusian experts, experts from Finland conducted the examination. According to them, the majority of those killed were Albanian military, then dressed in civilian clothes. Traces of gunpowder were found on the fingers, and bullet holes were found on the bodies, but not on the clothes. However, their report was not published ^{[9] [10]} .

EU Commission Conclusions

The European Union Commission, led by Helena Ranta, staffed mainly by Finnish experts, has refuted the findings of Serbian-Belarusian experts. The EU Commission reached the following conclusions ^{[11] [12]} :

• The victims were unarmed civilians shot point blank.
• The bodies moved before the inspection, but there is no reason to suspect the AOK was staged in the massacre.
• The conclusions of Serbian experts on the falsification of evidence were made before the autopsy.
• The presence of bodies from January 17 to 21 under the control of Serbian forces increased the likelihood that the bodies were moved by the Serbian side and the facts were falsified by it.
• Belarusian and Serbian experts used outdated technologies that led them to wrong conclusions.
• The Serbian side actively prevented the ICTY from conducting an investigation.

One of the victims was a young woman, another victim was a teenager, the rest were adult men. According to investigators of the European Union , they did not find any evidence that the victims were combatants ^[13] .

Further Events

On January 29, 1999, Human Rights Watch , an organization that documented human rights violations, published a report on the events in Racak, entitled “Yugoslav Forces Guilty of War Crimes in Racak, Kosovo” ^[14] and based on fourteen different interviews with eyewitnesses to the attack.

Acting as an expert in the International Court of Justice, the chief expert of the Finnish commission argued that the commission’s opinion was not falsified ^[13] , although it was later mentioned in the autobiography that representatives of the Finnish Foreign Ministry expressed their wishes by e-mail regarding the conclusions ^[15] .

The director of the Hamburg Institute of Forensic Medicine, Klaus Püshel, who studied the conclusion of Finnish pathologists, said that the examination showed no evidence that the victims were civilians, and even more so that they were killed by the Serbian military ^[16] . According to research by Finnish and Belarusian experts, of the 45 victims found in Racak, 39 were UAC militants killed in battles with the Serbian police and brought from other areas of Kosovo. Klaus Puschel supported these conclusions ^[17] .

On July 10, 2006, four months after the death of Slobodan Milosevic, the Hague Tribunal removed from the list of indictments brought against Serb generals, including the massacre item in Racak ^[18] .

According to Slobodan Milosevic , the Hague Tribunal “there was no massacre in Racak” ^[19] , and “the execution of civilians was staged by Albanian militants” from the Kosovo Liberation Army . According to the former president of Yugoslavia, the Albanian separatists dressed the militants killed in the battle in civilian clothes ^{[20] [21]} and gathered the corpses into a common grave in order to push the international community to tougher measures against Yugoslavia ^[22] .

During the trial, Professor Slavisha Dobrichanin, a former forensic expert in Pristina, speaking as a witness at the trial, questioned the arguments of Helena Ranta ^[23] .

In turn, the American diplomat William Walker (diplomat William ), who led the international control mission in Kosovo, said that "the investigation did not reveal any signs of a fight and dressing up" ^[22] , and also criticized the version of Milosevic ^[22] . Walker claimed that the former Yugoslav leader was well aware of what was happening in Kosovo and lied about the killings of Kosovo Albanians ^[21] . According to him, the first victims he saw were elderly people with gray hair ^{[20] [21]} . According to some observers, Volcker's statement played an important role in shaping global public opinion, which is said to have led subsequently to the NATO war against Yugoslavia ^{[19] [21] [24]} .

The judge of the district court of the city Kragujevac Danica Marinkovic criticized the position of Walker. According to him, the bodies of women and children that Walker allegedly found in Racak were not found by the investigation team ^[8] .

However, British Major General John Drewienkiewicz (military adviser to Volcker), who was also in Kosovo with the OSCE mission, confirms that there was a fierce battle between Albanian militants and Serbian units in the vicinity of Racak, and that after this battle took place “At least 15 hours” before international observers arrived at the scene and saw the “bodies of the executed”. At the same time, the general himself, who was present at the place of detection of the corpses of Albanians, said that they were shot by the Serbian military ^[22] .

On January 15, 2009, the Republic of Kosovo post issued a postage stamp dedicated to the “10th anniversary of the Racak massacre” ^[25] .

• Guskova E.Yu. 1999 NATO aggression against Yugoslavia and the peace process .. - Moscow: Indrik, 2013. - 304 p. - ISBN 978-5-91674-270-1 .

• Articles on the Kosovo Conflict: The Racak Massacre January 15, 1999 . Date of treatment February 24, 2013. Archived February 27, 2013.