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FREEDOM ASSOCIATION SPECIAL BULLETIN
No.8
May 22, 2002
Science hardly reliable for the Prosecution French forensic expert Eric Bacard today’s
testimonial referred to pathologists reports from different locations in Kosovo
and Metohia where bodies of people died during the conflict were found. It
appeared that these findings, while based on scientific achievements in this
field, were written in order to prejudge crimes against the victims. Namely,
wherever it was not possible to come to a decisive conclusion, meaning different
causes of death were possible, the reports were insisting on causes that meant
crimes had been committed. However, Milosevic managed to unmask such report
tendencies during his cross-examination, since the witness himself while
answering had to remain consequent to his trade and communicate the real truth,
something that often was not coinciding with the Prosecution
intentions. Keeping in mind the high level of expertise to these
questions, in this report only some characteristic examples may be pointed out.
At Milosevic’s question, how come it was possible to induce several death causes
for the same person, Bacard replied that only several causes can be
induced. The witness said that the circumstances of lethal outcome, if there had
been caused by war casualty or a conflict between two persons, may be
established only as a hypothesis, and not as it is been done in a
report. Most of the ambiguous quotes relate to skeletized
corpses, where tissue putrefaction occurred. So at Milosevic’s question, how
possible it may be to make a distinction if injuries were committed with a sharp
object on a person alive or after death, or how such quotes apply to carbonized
corpses, Bacard replied that in most of the cases it is rather difficult or
virtually impossible to give an answer. He was expressed that blindfolds were
never found on victims, which was mentioned in one of the reports.
Several Milosevic’s questions referred to details of the
pathologists report from Racak, and from the witness’s answers no one could have
concluded that reliable findings show murders were committed from a short range,
e.g. there was no massacre as characterized by OSCE Mission chief William
Walker. Bacard even denied the allegations enshrined in the pathologists report
from Racak, stating that in neither of the cases the distance from which the
victims found there were shot could have been precisely established. The witness
insisted no cold-blooded execution took place in Racak, since only shots from
less than a few centimeters could be reliably detected as
such. Typically, in the pathologists report from Racak there
was no analysis of the “parafin glove”, by which it has been proved that the
dead ones before being shot were themselves shooting with firearms. Bacard said
that method was rejected as unreliable. However, he could not give an answer to
the Amici’s question why a traditional analysis of the victims’ clothes had not
been performed, something that even today would be possible to
do. How unprecise and incomplete, and especially one-sided,
are the reports on pathologists’ findings on which the Prosecution relies, was
clearly shown by some of Bacard’s conclusions. In one of the reports it's been
said that some of the victims, due to their health could not take part in the
armed conflicts, like the one who had bladder cancer, but Bacard testified
that illness was in such stage, so that person could take part in armed
conflicts. Also, other report affirms 19 out 20 found skeletons were women, but
the witness had to clarify that their gender could not with certainty be
established for corpses in their stage of
skeletization. In today’s cross-examination Bacard came out with the
conclusion that reports about the victims of NATO bombing of Dubrava
penitentiary were not true, since they were all killed by the blasts, and their
subsequent wounds were caused by bumping on different kinds of objects, meaning
part of them had not been executed after the bombing had
stopped. The unreliability of some of the pathologists’ reports
was evidenced also today by the case of Suva Reka, where Bacard could not be a
judge of two pathologists’ totally opposed
findings. Photographs, shown to the witness by one of the Amici, from which it is clearly visible that the corpses in the ditch near Racak were brought there from another location, made Bacard only conclude that photographs could not constitute a reliable evidence.
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