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Jenin inquiry a witch
hunt?
By Aleksandar Pavic April 29, 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 in Belgrade covers Yugoslavia for
www.WorldNetDaily.com.
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Pres. Bush is ready to finish off the Security Council, too
Zev Chafets
I have a feeling the sophisticated governments
of the Old World have been set up by a Texas cowboy. |
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| "No matter what the whip count is, we're calling for the vote," he | Oleg at http://www.gamla.org.il for http://www.womeningreen.org |
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| said of a new resolution that would green-light an invasion. "We want to see people stand up and say what their opinion is about Saddam Hussein and the utility of the United Nations Security Council." | ||
Why should Bush want to force a vote he could
very well lose?
Some losses are victories in disguise. And Bush is getting ready to use this
defeat to finish off the Security Council.
He set the trap in September. In a speech to the UN General Assembly, he
challenged the body to remain "relevant" and avoid the fate of the League
of Nations. His implication was clear: No international body can survive
without the approval and participation of the U.S.
The Security Council responded to Bush's threat with Resolution 1441, which
calls for the disarmament of Iraq. But a lot of the hands raised on behalf
of the measure, which passed 15 to 0, had crossed fingers. France, Russia,
China and others were betting that Bush would be mollified by a pro forma
inspection regime in Iraq.
They were very wrong, because they didn't get what Bush is really after.
The President is serious about getting rid of Saddam - but only as a first
strategic step in the creation of a 21st century international order. He
intends to make the world safe for the U.S. and its friends by imposing a
Pax Americana that is based on American values, promotes American interests
and relies on American economic and military power.
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Under the post-9/11 Bush Doctrine, the U.S. claims the right to defang - unilaterally, and by armed preemption, if necessary - regimes and organizations that he regards as hostile and dangerous. This is obviously an approach that can't live in harmony with an independent-minded and internationally empowered Security Council.
If the lesser powers, including the permanent
members of the council, were willing to go along, the UN could serve as a
convenient multilateral forum through which the U.S. would run the world
by subcontracting spheres of influence and control to Russia, China, France,
Germany and others. |
Bush saw this coming, and he gave his answer
Thursday: "When it comes to our security, if we need to act, we will act.
And we really don't need United Nations approval to do so."
The President added that he wants the UN to be a "robust, capable body."
By this he meant a body capable of following America's robust lead. If the
Security Council reassesses the situation and comes around, swell. If not,
well, look what happened to the League of Nations.
Governments that vote against America in the coming Security Council roll
call are about to learn - if they haven't figured it out already - that America's
cowboy President has led them into a genuine Texas ambush. War is coming
to Iraq, but the real shootout is about to take place at the UN corral.
JWR contributor Zev
Chafets is a columnist for The
New York Daily News. Comment by clicking
here.
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United? Nations?
David Warren
Readers will appreciate that I have no idea
at present, and suspect neither have they, what the Bush administration in
the United States plans to do about the United Nations. Therefore I cannot
possibly represent any present American position, public or secret. I mention
this because a proportion of my readers are under the impression that I am,
in the words of one, "a minor White House spokesman". This is not true; there
are good reasons why they do not hire me. |
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Oleg at http://www.gamla.org.il for http://www.womeningreen.org |
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| good enough to justify what has
since happened -- and which, as I argued months ago, would almost certainly
happen. Far better to ignore the U.N., than to confer moral recognition upon
the sort of interests that must be served when the U.N. is asked for support.
The concession was demoralizing, in the full and original sense of that word. By agreeing to go before the U.N., President Bush has detracted from the justice of the U.S. cause. George Will pointed, this last week, to the height of absurdity to which the U.N. has ascended. "The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire, the United Nations is a disunited collection of regimes, many of which do not represent the nations they govern." When its own Secretary General, Kofi Annan, avers that by going to war in vindication of the plain words in Security Council Resolution 1441, the United States would be acting in defiance of the U.N. Charter, we are fully aloft in the faux-empyrian. It necessarily follows, and let me spell this out, that going to the rescue of the victims in Rwanda would have been against the U.N. Charter. Exactly the same principle applies. The Korean War of 1950-53, and the Gulf War of 1991, were the only military actions upon which the U.N. ever conferred its supposed legitimacy. France, and verily, Jacques Chirac, were instrumental in keeping the allied confrontation with Milosevic's Yugoslavia out of the U.N. -- for the express purpose of avoiding the quagmire, when he thought action urgently necessary. He did not dream of asking U.N. permission before recently dispatching French troops to the Ivory Coast. The only reason the U.N. vote carried, when North Korea invaded the South, was because the Russian delegation happened to walk out before the vote was called. They would otherwise have vetoed even the Korean War, and Kim Jong-il would today control the entire peninsula. And in 1991, George Bush the elder stopped the attack on Iraq a little beyond the Kuwait frontier, because he did not have a U.N. mandate to proceed. He turned to the U.N. to deal with the rest of the problem, caused by the survival of Saddam Hussein; and 12 years later, see what it achieved. See what is achieved by Mr. Blair's ludicrous six-point plan, quickly cobbled together this last week to persuade such incidental Security Council members as Cameroon and Guinea to support another plain statement of fact, in the face of threatened French and Russian vetoes. Reading through the text, I was reminded of when I was a teenager, and went to a Model United Nations in which my high school participated. The resolutions were similarly childish and impractical -- "Saddam must get on TV and say he is hiding WMD" is the sort of thing we might have come up with -- for we were, after all, around 15 years old. And one of my discoveries, now that I am almost 50, is that the world's business is conducted thus -- that grown men are not merely capable of thinking like early adolescents, but incapable of laughing at themselves a moment later. But as Mr. Blair persisted, only grim laughter. Heretofore the British and Americans, Spaniards, Czechs and others in their train, had in fact been making a deadly serious case. It was by stooping to where they must try to win favour from various small, sleazy regimes, and engage in sophistries with continental politicians of the moral ilk of Schroeder and Chirac, that they tipped over. From the beginning, the proposal to take the problem of Iraq to the United Nations was an act of folly. But now that the folly is complete, some kind of lesson must be taken from it. This latest U.N. travesty has demonstrated, beyond reasonable doubt, that the U.N. is itself a counter-productive institution. No organization that puts advanced constitutional democracies on a par with corrupt, dysfunctional, Third World dictatorships can have any moral authority. No bureaucracy such as that which has sustained the inspections rackets of Hans Blix and Mohammed El-Baradei has any business entering into serious matters of life and death. And while there is hardly space to review the whole comprehensive disaster of the U.N.'s organizational efforts in social, economic, and cultural affairs -- or the very mixed results of its humanitarian efforts -- I can find no part of the main institution worth retaining. Such useful agencies as those which regulate civil aviation, intellectual property, or cross-border mail delivery, do not require the U.N. edifice to continue their work. Most such were founded long before the U.N., and the only contribution from headquarters is to make them bloated, inefficient, and political. |
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| But that is hardly the worst sin of which
the organization can be accused. In the final view, the evil of the U.N.
consists in its having appropriated to itself the very ideals of human
co-operation and solidarity, our hopes for international order and peace.
By making all effort towards such ends dependent upon an apparatus of bottomless
cynicism and corruption, the U.N. subverts those ideals and hopes. The most effective way to proceed is for the United States to lead, by withdrawing its membership and all support, including all diplomatic and even parking privileges accorded to delegations in New York. For all that it has achieved, the U.N. deserves to be reduced from an international, to a municipal problem. |
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JWR contributor David
Warren is a Columnist for the Ottawa Citizen. Comment by clicking
here.
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