[www.ANTIC.org] Freedom fight in the Hague (10)

[Miroslav Antic]

Title: Message

FREEDOM ASSOCIATION SPECIAL BULLETIN No.10 May 22, 2002      THE MASSACRE IN RACAK FABRICATED     As far as the cross-examination of the witnesses of The Hague Prosecution by Slobodan Milosevic goes on, it gets clearer that the alleged massacre of civilians was fabricated in order to serve to NATO aggressors as some kind of pretext to start the bombing of Yugoslavia.   Yesterdays and today's testimony of the Canadian general Michel Maisoneuve, who was member of the OSCE Verification Mission and Head of the Prizren Regional Center, has shown that, too. From his testimony one could see that one of the key tasks of the Prosecution is to present Racak as a crime against civilians, in order to justify the NATO aggression. However, as much as the general tried to respond to the suggestive Prosecutor's questions and present the Racak events as a brutal crackdown of the Police with the locals, confronted with Milosevic's questions he seldom had to confess it was a conflict between the Police and the KLA terrorists. After all, the OSCE Mission itself confirmed that among the deads were KLA members as well.   General Maisoneuve, for instance, on Milosevic's question could not deny that the Verification Mission made efforts to affirm the KLA as a legitimate side in the conflict, since he was the author of the mission document where this was explicitly specified and which Milosevic had quoted. Maisoneuve tried to present this as an attempt of the mission to establish trust. This way he also tried to justify the complaint raised by him and the mission as to why the investigation judge came to Racak the day after the event escorted by the Police. However, when asked if it meant that him and the mission are denying  the sovereignty of Yugoslavia and Serbia on that part of their territory as well as the right of the legal authorities of the State to eliminate the terrorists who are violently struggling for secession, Maisoneuve had to confess that this would not be right and that he does not consider this was the task of the mission.   Maisoneuve had to confess that in all of the occasions when OSCE Mission's verifiers were present, the Police behaved in a correct and professional way. In the OSCE reports, however, brutal crackdowns of Albanian civilians by the Serbian Police were mentioned, which was done according to the witness on the basis of testimonies of the Albanians. Maisoneuve had problems while explaining the allegations from the mission reports about Army tank and artillery attacks on Racak civilian homes from distance. On a direct question if there were any victims in Racak of these mortar attacks, the witness had to admit there were not, reducing his whole story on Army involvement to him being told by one of his verifiers that one tank had hit a house. He was also forced by Milosevic's cross-examination to deny that Army individuals have accused the Police for intervening in Racak.   General Maisoneuve tried not to avoid answers to direct questions, so that Milosevic succeeded to make his answers more useful to the Defence than to the Prosecution. That is why judge May did his best to avoid such a situation. When asked by Milosevic if, after everything he found out so far about the Racak events he still personally considers there had been a massacre, May promptly intervened and explicitly prevented him from answering that question.   A totally separate story are the Racak victims, for whom the OSCE mission chief William Walker affirmed they were civilian ones killed from a close range on the same spot, where the day after dead bodies were found. After the cross-examination of this witness, as well as of other ones before, it came out rather evident that these people perished in combat and were brought to one single spot in order to make it look as if they were executed.   Milosevic has proved that serious fighting took place between the Police and the KLA forces, trenched around the village, and that the bodies were brought and grouped up after the Police and OSCE verifiers had withdrawn. This was evident from the position of the bodies, as well as from the findings of the forensic teams who examined them.   After a series of usuccessful attempts to build-up a Walker's fabricated story about Racak through testimonies of witnesses, the prosecution attempted to bring one of its own investigators to appear as witness with special goal - to present to the court a "summary" of the events in Racak, based on written statements of "many witnesses" who did not appear, as well as on tons of "documents" collected by prosecution. After a sharp complaint by President Milosevic against the "indirect witnesses", the "trial chamber" decided not to accept testimony of the prosecution investigator Barney Kelly. This was considered by many as one of the greatest defets of the prosecution, since the begining of the "trial".     To join or help this struggle, visit: http://www.sps.org.yu/ (official SPS website) http://www.belgrade-forum.org/ (forum for the world of equals) http://www.icdsm.org/ (the international committee to defend Slobodan Milosevic) http://www.jutarnje.co.yu/ ('morning news' the only Serbian newspaper advocating liberation)