[Seguono, nell'ordine, gli articoli integrali di "El Pais", "Stratfor", "L'Unità", "Nuova Venezia" e "Los Angeles Times", citati nel dossier sulle speculazioni riguardo alle vittime in Kosovo]

ESPERTI SPAGNOLI NON VEDONO ALCUN GENOCIDIO IN KOSOVO
di Pablo Ordaz - ("El Pais", 23 settembre 1999)

Esperti della polizia e giudiziari spagnoli non hanno trovato prove di genocidio nel Nord del Kosovo.

Crimini di guerra sì, genocidio no. Ciò è stato definitivamente dimostrato ieri dal gruppo di esperti spagnoli formato da ufficiali della polizia scientifica e da legali civili appena tornati da Istok, la zona nel Nord del Kosovo sotto il controllo della Legione [il contingente spagnolo della NATO, composto da 1174 militari; 670 di essi controllano la zona di Istok (600 km2, il 6% circa della superficie del Kosovo) all'interno del settore KFOR italiano, che ha sede a Pec; gli altri si trovano nel settore francese, ai confini con la Serbia ("El Pais", 13 novembre 1999) - N.d.T.]. 187 cadaveri trovati e analizzati in 9 villaggi erano sepolti in tombe singole, orientati per la maggior parte verso la Mecca, in rispetto delle convinzioni religiose degli albanesi kosovari e senza segni di tortura. "Non c'erano fosse comuni. Per la maggior parte, i serbi non sono così cattivi come sono stati dipinti", ha osservato il funzionario legale Emilio Perez Pujol.

Ma non è l'unica ironia. Vengono messi in dubbio anche i successivi conteggi che vengono offerti dagli "alleati" in merito alla tragedia del Kosovo. "Ho letto i dati dell'ONU", ha affermato Perez Pujol, direttore dell'Istituto Anatomico Legale di Cartagena. "E cominciavano con 44.000 morti. Poi si sono abbassati a 22.000. E ora stanno parlando di 11.000. Aspetto di vedere quale sarà il conteggio finale". La missione spagnola, che ora dovrebbe presentare un rapporto al Tribunale Internazionale per i Crimini di Guerra dell'Aja, era partita da Madrid all'inizio del mese di agosto con la sensazione di avviarsi su una strada d'inferno. "Ci hanno detto che stavamo andando nella zona peggiore del Kosovo. Che ci saremmo dovuti preparare a effettuare più di 2000 autopsie. Che avremmo dovuto lavorare fino alla fine di novembre. Il risultato è molto diverso. Abbiamo trovato solo 187 cadaveri e ora stiamo per tornarcene", ha spiegato il capo ispettore, Juan Lopez Palafox, responsabile dell'Ufficio di Antropologia presso la Polizia Scientifica.

I legali, così come la polizia, hanno messo in atto le esperienze accumulate in Rwanda al fine di determinare cosa è successo in Kosovo, almeno nella sezione assegnata al distaccamento spagnolo, e non sono stati in grado di trovare prove di genocidio.

"Nella ex Jugoslavia", ha detto Lopez Palafox, "sono stati commessi dei crimini, alcuni senza dubbio orribili, ma derivavano dalla guerra. In Rwanda abbiamo visto 450 corpi di donne e bambini, uno sulla cima dell'altro, tutti con le teste spaccate". L'Ispettore Capo ha aggiunto che in Kosovo, al contrario, ha trovato molti corpi isolati. "Dà l'impressione che i serbi abbiano dato alle famiglie una possibilità di abbandonare le proprie case. Se alcuni membri del clan, per qualsivoglia motivo, decidevano di rimanere, al ritorno venivano trovati morti da un colpo di arma da fuoco o in qualsiasi altro modo".

Uno dei membri della missione spagnola ha gettato luce sugli eventi nella prigione di Istok, bombardata alla fine di maggio dagli aerei della NATO. Il lavoro, diretto da Lopez Palafox e Perez Pujol era mirato a risolvere il seguente mistero: chi aveva ucciso i più di cento prigionieri - le bombe della NATO o le pallottole dei soldati serbi? La risposta, secondo gli studi preliminari, è chiara. Alcuni dei cadaveri analizzati avevano ferite da frammenti di ordigni e quindi chiaramente sembravano essere stati uccisi dal bombardamento. Ma altri erano morti per chiare ferite da pallottole, forse da pallottole di mitragliatori. La tesi più probabile è che dopo il bombardamento i prigionieri abbiano cercato di fuggire e le guardie serbe abbiano sparato loro.




Where Are Kosovo's Killing Fields? - 17 October 1999

Summary

During its four-month war against Yugoslavia, NATO argued that Kosovo was a land wracked by mass murder; official estimates indicated that some 10,000 ethnic Albanians were killed in a Serb rampage of ethnic cleansing. Yet four months into an international investigation, bodies numbering only in the hundreds have been exhumed. The FBI has found fewer than 200. Piecing together the evidence, it appears that the number of civilian ethnic Albanians killed is far less than was claimed. While new findings could invalidate this view, evidence of mass murder has not yet materialized on the scale used to justify the war. This could have serious foreign policy and political implications for NATO and alliance governments.


The Justification for War

On Oct. 11, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Republic of Yugoslavia (ICTY) reported that the Trepca mines in Kosovo, where 700 murdered ethnic Albanians were reportedly hidden, in fact contained no bodies whatsoever. Three days later, the U.S. Defense Department released its review of the Kosovo conflict, saying that NATO's war was a reaction to the ethnic cleansing campaign by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. His campaign was "a brutal means to end the crisis on his terms by expelling and killing ethnic Albanians, overtaxing bordering nations' infrastructures, and fracturing the NATO alliance."

The finding by The Hague's investigators and the assertion by the Pentagon raise an important question. Four months after the war and the introduction of forensic teams from many countries, precisely how many bodies of murdered ethnic Albanians have been found? This is not an exercise in the macabre, but a reasonable question, given the explicit aims of NATO in the war, and the claims the alliance made on the magnitude of Serbian war crimes. Indeed, the central justification for war was that only intervention would prevent the slaughter of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian population.

On March 22, British Prime Minister Tony Blair told the House of Commons, "We must act to save thousands of innocent men, women and children from humanitarian catastrophe, from death, barbarism and ethnic cleansing by a brutal dictatorship." The next day, as the air war began, President Clinton stated: "What we are trying to do is to limit his (Milosevic's) ability to win a military victory and engage in ethnic cleansing and slaughter innocent people and to do everything we can to induce him to take this peace agreement."

As NATO's first intervention in a sovereign nation, the war in Kosovo required considerable justification. Throughout the year, NATO officials built their case, first calling the situation in Kosovo "ethnic cleansing," and then "genocide." In March, State Department spokesman James Rubin told reporters that NATO did not need to prove that the Serbs were carrying out a policy of genocide because it was clear that crimes against humanity were being committed. But just after the war in June, President Bill Clinton again invoked the term, saying, "NATO stopped deliberate, systematic efforts at ethnic cleansing and genocide."


The Claims Grow

Indeed, as the months progressed, the estimates of those killed by a concerted Serb campaign, dubbed Operation Horseshoe, have swollen. Early on, experts systematically generated what appeared to be sober and conservative estimates of the dead. For example, prior to the outbreak of war, independent experts reported that approximately 2,500 Kosovar Albanians had been killed in the Serbian ethnic cleansing campaign.

That number grew during and after the war. Early in the campaign, huge claims arose about the number of ethnic Albanian men feared missing and presumed dead. The fog and passion of war can explain this. But by June 17, just before the end of the war, British Foreign Office Minister Geoff Hoon reportedly said: "According to the reports we have gathered, mostly from the refugees, it appears that around 10,000 people have been killed in more than 100 massacres." He further clarified that these 10,000 were ethnic Albanians killed by Serbs.

On Aug. 2, the number jumped up by another 1,000 when Bernard Kouchner, the United Nations' chief administrator in Kosovo, said that about 11,000 bodies had already been found in common graves throughout Kosovo. He said his source for this information was the ICTY. But the ICTY said that it had not provided this information. To this day, the source of Kouchner's estimates remains unclear. However, that number of about 10,000 ethnic Albanians dead at the hands of the Serbs remains the basic, accepted number, or at least the last official word on the scope of the atrocities.

Regardless of the precise genesis of the numbers, there is no question that NATO leaders argued that the war was not merely justified, but morally obligatory. If the Serbs were not committing genocide in the technical sense, they were certainly guilty of mass murder on an order of magnitude not seen in Europe since Nazi Germany. The Yugoslav government consistently denied that mass murder was taking place, arguing that the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was fabricating claims of mass murder in order to justify NATO intervention and the secession of Kosovo from Serbia. NATO rejected Belgrade's argument out of hand.

Thus, the question of the truth or falsehood of the claims of mass murder is much more than a matter of merely historical interest. It cuts to the heart of the war – and NATO's current peacekeeping mission in Kosovo. Certainly, there was a massive movement of Albanian refugees, but that alone was not the alliance's justification for war. The justification was that the Yugoslav army and paramilitaries were carrying out Operation Horseshoe, and that the war would cut short this operation.

But the aftermath of the war has brought precious little evidence, despite the entry of Western forensics teams searching for evidence of war crimes. Mass murder is difficult to hide. One need only think of the entry of outsiders into Nazi Germany, Cambodia or Rwanda to understand that the death of thousands of people leaves massive and undeniable evidence. Given that many NATO leaders were under attack at home – particularly in Europe – for having waged the war, the alliance could have seized upon continual and graphic evidence of the killing fields of Kosovo to demonstrate the necessity of the war and undercut critics. Indeed, such evidence would help the alliance undermine Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, by helping to destroy his domestic support and energize his opponents.

As important, no one appears to really be trying to recover all of the Kosovo war's reported victims. Of the eight human rights organizations most prominent in Kosovo, none is specifically tasked with recovering victims and determining the cause of death. These groups instead are interviewing refugees and survivors to obtain testimony on human rights violations, sanitizing wells and providing mental health services to survivors. All of this is important work. But it is not the recovery and counting of bodies.

It is important to note that a sizable number of people who resided in Kosovo before the war are now said to be unaccounted for – 17,000, according to U.S. officials. However, the methodology for arriving at this number is unclear. According to NATO, many records were destroyed by the Serbs. Certainly, no census has been conducted in Kosovo since the end of the war. Thus, it is completely unclear where the specific number of 17,000 comes from. There are undoubtedly many missing, but it is unclear whether these people are dead, in Serbian prisons – official estimates vary widely – or whether they have taken refuge in other countries.


The Investigation

The dead, however, have not turned up in the way that the West anticipated, at least not yet. The massive Trepca mines have so far yielded nothing. Most of the dead have turned up in small numbers in the most rural parts of Kosovo, often in wells. News reports say that the largest grave sites have contained a few dozen victims; some officials say the largest site contained far more, approximately 100 bodies. But the bodies are generally being found in very small numbers – far smaller than encountered after the Bosnian war.

Only one effort now underway may shed light on just how many ethnic Albanian civilians were – or weren't – killed by Serb forces. The ICTY is coordinating efforts to investigate war crimes in Kosovo. Like human rights organizations, the tribunal's primary aim is not to find all the reported dead. Instead, its investigators are gathering evidence to prosecute war criminals for four offenses: grave breaches of the Geneva Convention, violations of the laws of war, and genocide and crimes against humanity. The tribunal believes that it will, however, be able to produce an accurate death count in the future, although it will not say when. A progress report may be released in late October, according to tribunal spokesman Paul Risley.

Under the tribunal's guidance, police and medical forensic teams from most NATO countries and some neutral nations are assigned to investigate certain sites. The teams have come from 15 nations: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. The United States has sent the largest team, with 62 members. Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom have each sent teams of approximately 20. Most countries dispatched teams of fewer than 10 members.

So far, investigators are a little more than one quarter of the way through their field work, having examined about 150 of 400 suspected sites. The investigative process is as follows: ICTY investigators follow up on reports from refugees or KFOR troops to confirm the existence of sites. Then the tribunal deploys each team to a certain region and indicates the sites to be investigated. Sites are either mass graves – which according to the tribunal means more than one body is in the grave – or crime scenes, which contain other evidence. The teams exhume the bodies, count them, and perform autopsies to determine age, gender, cause of death and time of death all for the purpose of compiling evidence for future war crimes trials. The by-product of this work, then, is the actual number of bodies recovered. The investigations will continue next year when the weather allows further exhumations.

In the absence of an official tally of bodies found by the teams, we are forced to piece together anecdotal evidence to get a picture of what actually happened in Kosovo. From this evidence, it is clear that the teams are not finding large numbers of dead, nothing to substantiate claims of "genocide."

The FBI's work is a good example. With the biggest effort, the bureau has conducted two separate investigations, one in June and one in August, and will probably be called back again. In its most recent visit, the FBI found 124 bodies in the British sector of Kosovo, according to FBI spokesman Dave Miller. Almost all the victims were killed by a gunshot wound to the head or blunt force trauma to the head. The victims' ages were between 4 and 94. Most of the victims appeared to have been killed in March and April. In its two trips to Kosovo since the war's end, the FBI has found a total of 30 sites containing almost 200 bodies.

The Spanish team was told to prepare for the worst, as it was going into Kosovo's real killing fields. It was told to prepare for over 2000 autopsies. But the team's findings fell far short of those expectations. It found no mass graves and only 187 bodies, all buried in individual graves. The Spanish team's chief inspector compared Kosovo to Rwanda. "In the former Yugoslavia crimes were committed, some no doubt horrible, but they derived from the war," Juan Lopez Palafox was quoted as saying in the newspaper El Pais. "In Rwanda we saw 450 corpses [at one site] of women and children, one on top of another, all with their heads broken open."

Bodies are simply not where they were reported to be. For example, in July a mass grave believed to contain some 350 bodies in Ljubenic, near Pec – an area of concerted fighting – reportedly contained only seven bodies after the exhumation was complete. There have been similar cases on a smaller scale, with initial claims of 10 to 50 buried bodies proven false.

Investigators have frequently gone to reported killing sites, only to find no bodies. In Djacovica, town officials claimed that 100 ethnic Albanians had been murdered but reportedly alleged that Serbs had returned in the middle of the night, dug up the bodies, and carried them away. In Pusto Selo, villagers reported that 106 men were captured and killed by Serbs at the end of March. NATO even released satellite imagery of what appeared to be numerous graves, but again no bodies were found at the site. Villagers claimed that Serbian forces came back and removed the bodies. In Izbica, refugees reported that 150 ethnic Albanians were killed in March. Again, their bodies are nowhere to be found. Ninety-six men from Klina vanished in April; their bodies have yet to be located. Eighty-two men were reportedly killed in Kraljan, but investigators have yet to find one of their bodies.


What Happened?

Killings and brutality certainly took place, and it is possible that massive new findings will someday be uncovered. Without being privy to the details of each investigation on the ground in Kosovo, it is possible only to voice suspicion and not conclusive proof. However, our own research and survey of officials indicates that the numbers of dead so far are in the hundreds, not the thousands. It is possible that huge, new graves await to be discovered. But ethnic Albanians in Kosovo are presumably quick to reveal the biggest sites in the hope of recovering family members or at least finding out what happened. In addition, large sites would have the most witnesses, evidence and visibility for inspection teams. Given progress to date, it seems difficult to believe that the 10,000 claimed at the end of the war will be found. The killing of ethnic Albanian civilians appears to be orders of magnitude below the claims of NATO, alliance governments and early media reports.

How could this have occurred? It appears that both governments and outside observers relied on sources controlled by the KLA, both before and during the war. During the war this reliance was heightened; governments relied heavily on the accounts of refugees arriving in Albania and Macedonia, where the KLA was an important conduit of information. The sophisticated public relations machine of the KLA and the fog of war may have generated a perception that is now proving dubious.

What is clear is that no one is systematically collecting the numbers of the dead in Kosovo, even though such work could possibly topple Milosevic and would only help NATO in its efforts to remain in Kosovo. What can be learned of the investigations to date indicates deaths far below expectations. Finally, all of this suspicion can be easily dispelled by a comprehensive report by NATO, the United Nations, or the United States and other responsible governments detailing the findings of the forensic teams, and giving timeframes for completion and results. It is unclear that, even if the ICTY releases a report soon, it will address all these issues. The lack of an interim report indicating the discovery of thousands of Albanian victims strikes us as decidedly odd. One would think that Clinton, Blair and the other leaders would be eager to demonstrate that the war was not only justified, but morally obligatory.

It really does matter how many were killed in Kosovo. The foreign policy and political implications are substantial. There is a line between oppression and mass murder. It is not a bright, shining one, but the distinction between hundreds of dead and tens of thousands is clear. The blurring of that line has serious implications not merely for NATO's integrity, but for the notion of sovereignty. If a handful – or a few dozen – people are killed in labor unrest, does the international community have the right to intervene by force? By the very rules that NATO has set up, the magnitude of slaughter is critical.

Politically, the alliance depended heavily on the United States for information about the war. If the United States and NATO were mistaken, then alliance governments that withstood heavy criticism, such as the Italian and German governments, may be in trouble. Confidence in both U.S. intelligence and leadership could decline sharply. Stung by scandal and questions about its foreign policy, the Clinton administration is already having difficulty influencing world events. That influence could fall further. There are many consequences if it turns out that NATO's claims about Serb atrocities were substantially false.



NELLE FOSSE DEL KOSOVO 200 MORTI
di Paolo Soldini - ("L'Unità", 20 ottobre 1999)

**Ecco le cifre di Fbi e dei medici legali spagnoli**

BRUXELLES - Quanti kosovari di etnia albanese sono stati uccisi dai serbi durante la guerra? All'inizio dello scorso agosto l'amministratore dell'Onu Bernard Kouchner avanzò la cifra di 11mila attribendola a fonti del Tribunale penale per i crimini nella ex Jugoslavia (Icty) e venne seccamente smentito da un portavoce dello stesso tribunale, il quale precisò che le indagini sugli eccidi erano in corso e non si potevano fornire cifre. Ora le indagini sono, almeno provvisoriamente, concluse e avrebbero portato a un risultato ben lontano non solo da quello indicato da Kouchner, ma anche dalle 10mila vittime di cui hanno sempre parlato i responsabili della Nato.

In queste cifre veniva radicata la necessità di fermare il "genocidio" addotto come motivi primario dei bombardamenti alleati contro la Serbia. I cadaveri ritrovati finora (ed è bene sottolineare finora) sarebbero sull'ordine delle centinaia. Si tratta di una contabilità certamente impropria e ben triste. Centinaia di persone uccise e in molti casi con documentata efferatezza (in alcune fosse sono stati trovati corpi di bimbi di 4 anni e di vecchi di oltre 90), costituiscono comunque un formidabile atto d'accusa contro i dirigenti serbi. Ma la differenza nell'ordine di grandezza tra qualche centinaio e diverse decine di migliaia è tutt'altro che indifferente in relazione al giudizio da dare sull'iniziativa Nato e costituisce dunque un delicato problema politico.

Il rapporto dell'ITCY dovrebbe essere pronto per la fine del mese. Ma sul numero delle vittime che vi è indicato esistoo altre fonti, tutte attendibili e al di sopra di ogni sospetto. Come l'Fbi americano. Dalla fine dell'agosto scorso si trovano in Kosovo 62 tra agenti investigativi, analisti di laboratorio e medici legali che, coordinati da quattro specialisti dello Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP), sono stati invitati dal Tribunale proprio per trovare le prove degli eccidi. Finora gli uomini del Fbi, che hanno indagato nella zona controllata dai contingenti Kfor britannico e canadese, hanno trovato prove dell'uccisione di 124 kosovari albanesi, massacrati probabilmente nei mesi di marzo e aprile. Contando tutti i corpi trovati in presunte "fosse comuni" e che contenevano in relatà due o tre cadaveri si arriva a meno di 200.

Gli americani non sono i soli a svolgere questa tristissima indagine. L'ICTY ha chiesto l'intervento di squadre di medici legalei e investigatori di 15 paesi: oltre agli Usa, Austria, Belgio, Canada, Danimarca, Finlandia, Francia, Germania, Islanda, Lussemburgo, Paesi Bassi, Spagna, Svezia, Svizzera e Gran Bretagna. Sull'attività degli spagnoli esiste una relazione che è stata pubblicata, giorni fa, sul quotidiano "El Pais". Partiti con le attrezzature necessarie per compiere 2000 autopsie, i medici legali hanno trovato solo 187 corpi da esaminare, tutti esumati da sepolture individuali. Il dottor Juan Lopez Palafox, che guidava il team, ha sostenuto che, per quanto i suoi uomini avevano potuto constatare, "nella ex Jugoslavia sono stati commessi dei crimini senza dubbio orribili, ma conseguenza della guerra".

Il fatto che i corpi ritrovati non hanno superato (finora) l'ordine di grandezza delle centinaia è provato indirettamente da un'altra circostanza: in nessuno dei luoghi teatro delle presunte stragi di cui si era dato notizia durante la guerra sono stati trovati cadaveri corrispondenti all'eccidio denunciato. Il più delle volte, anzi, non è stato trovato alcun corpo. E' stato così, ad esempio, nelle miniere di Trepca, dove si era detto che i serbi avessero nascosto i cadaveri di 700 vittime. L'11 ottobre scorso un portavoce dell'ITCY ha ammesso che non è stato trovato alcun cadavere. La fossa comune di Ljubenic, presso Pec (zona controllata dagli italiani) in cui si diceva fossero sepolti 350 cadaveri ne ha restituiti "soltanto" sette. A Djacovica, dove i testimoni avevano parlato dell'uccisione collettiva di cento uomini, non si è trovato nulla e solo a questo punto i testimoni si sarebbero ricordati che i serbi dopo il massacro erano tornati di notte a portar via i corpi. Idem a Pusto Selo, dove i morti "scomparsi" sarebbero 106 e dove gli investigatori non hanno trovato traccia delle presunte "fosse comuni" riprese dagli aerei Nato e mostrate alla tv. Né sono stati trovati i resti di 96 presunte vittime a Klina e di altre 82 a Kralijan. C'è poi il caso clamoroso di Izbica, il villaggio che tutto il mondo vide nelle riprese "segrete" di un profugo albanese: 130 uomini uccisi, neppure un corpo trovato. Eppure il massacro di Izbica figura nell'atto di accusa formulato dalla procura dell'ITCY il 22 maggio scorso contro Milosevic e di 4 dirigenti di Belgrado. Così come una strage di donne e bambini che sarebbe avvenuta il 2 aprile nella regione di Djakovica.

Le indagini, ha precisato ieri il portavoce del tribunale, verranno sospese dopo il primo rapporto provvisorio per essere riprese a primavera. Con lo stesso esito?



Da "la Nuova Venezia", 25 ottobre 1999, pag. 8

IL PUNTO

Pulizia etnica e guerra Nato in Kosovo: siamo stati ingannati?

L?inchiesta internazionale in corso smentisce, o ridimensiona clamorosamente, gli eccidi attribuiti ai serbi

di Giorgio Tosi

Durante la recente guerra nei Balcani pur nella diversita dei giudizi sull'opportunita o meno dell'intervento militare Nato, nessuno ha mai posto in dubbio che in Kosovo fosse in atto una crudele "pulizia etnica" da parte dei Serbi contro la popolazione albanese, con massacri e fosse comuni. lo stesso che in numerosi articoli ho condannato duramente l'aggressione militare Nato come illegittima, immorale e inopportuna - ero fermamente convinto che le esecuzioni di massa, gli incendi dei villaggi e la fucilazione degli abitanti maschi corrispondessero a verita, e dovessero essere condannati e fermati dalla comunita internazionale (non dalla Nato quindi, ma dall'Onu).

Durante i due mesi di guerra, giornali e televisioni ci hanno bombardato di notizie e di immagini sconvolgenti, arrivando a parlare di genocidio, con l'effetto di aumentare l'orrore e di giustificare i bombardamenti aerei presso l'opinione pubblica. Quasi ogni giorno veniva data notizia della scoperta di fosse comuni e il numero dei sacrificati aumentava ogni settimana arrivando a un totale alla fine della guerra di circa 50.000 vittime.

A quattro mesi dalla fine della guerra leggo con stupore un articolo «fuori del coro» di Paolo Soldini (L'Unita, 20 ottobre) che pone la domanda di "quanti Kosovari di etnia albanese siano stati effettivamente uccisi dai Serbi durante la guerra". Il giornalista riferisce che secondo l'esponente dell'Onu Bernard Kouchnner le vittime furono circa 11.000, attribuendo la fonte al Tribunale per i crimini nella ex Jugoslavia. Il Tribunale pero, scrive Soldini, ha serenamente smentito. E' da notare che da agosto si trovano in Kosovo 62 agenti del Fbi americano (compresi analisti e medici legali) che conducono le inchieste coordinati dall'Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.

Contando i corpi ritrovati, isolatamente e nelle fosse comuni, gli uomini del Fbi sono arrivati a un totale di 200. Gli Americani non sono i soli a svolgere questa terribile indagine. Sono al lavoro ormai da tre mesi investigatori e medici legali di 15 Paesi che hanno partecipato all'attacco e di altri che ne sono rimasti fuori. Secondo una relazione pubblicata dal giornale spagnolo El Pais le vittime certe sarebbero 187. Il numero in se e piccolo, anche se il crimine resta grande e tale sarebbe anche se le vittime fossero ancora meno. La differenza pero, come cerchero di spiegare, e politicamente di grande portata.

Secondo le fonti citate da Soldini «in nessuno dei luoghi teatro delle presunte stragi di cui si era dato notizia durante la guerra sono stati trovati cadaveri corrispondenti all'eccidio denunciato. Il piu delle volte, anzi, non e stato trovato alcun corpo». E' stato cosi ad esempio per le miniere di Trepea dove si era detto che i Serbi avessero nascosto i cadaveri di 700 vittime. L'ottobre scorso un portavoce del Tribunale per i crimini nella ex Jugoslavia ha ammesso che non e stato trovato alcun cadavere. Nella fossa comune di Ljubenic, presso Pec (zona controllata dagli italiani) in cui si diceva fossero sepolti 350 cadaveri ne sono stati trovati soltanto sette. «A Pusto Selo» scrive Soldini «dove i morti sarebbero 106 e dove gli investigatori non hanno trovato traccia delle presunte fosse comuni riprese dagli aerei Nato e mostrate alla tv... C'e poi il caso clamoroso di lzbica, il villaggio che tutto il mondo vide nelle riprese segrete di un profugo albanese; 130 uomini uccisi, neppure un corpo trovato".

Che dire? E' troppo presto per affermare che le bugie hanno le gambe corte, o e tardi per accorgersi che il naso di Solana e quello del generale Clark sono piu lunghi di quello di Pinocchio? Emotivamente non si riesce a sfuggire alla sgradevole sensazione di essere stati travolti da un'ondata di menzogne, fabbricate a freddo per preparare l'opinione pubblica a digerire i bombardamenti perfino sugli ospedali e sugli asili nido.

Politicamente va detto che la differenza nell'ordine di grandezza delle vittime, cioe fra 200 e diverse decine di migliaia, e essenziale in relazione al giudizio da dare all'iniziativa Nato e costituisce un problema politico ed etico (anche per i giornalisti del video e della carta stampata). E' chiaro a tutti che 200 omicidi sono un crimine orrendo ma non costituiscono pulizia etnica, come invece sarebbe stato con 50.000 o anche soltanto 10.000 vittime.

Forse abbiamo fatto la guerra per una pulizia etnica che non e mai esistita, e dietro la quale si sono impudicamente nascosti i governi europei e quello degli Usa.



THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, Friday, October 29, 1999

Where's the Evidence of Genocide of Kosovar Albanians?

Yugoslavia: Uncertainties are immense, but body counts still don't show extermination plan.

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

So, is there serious evidence of a Serbian campaign of genocide in Kosovo? It's an important issue because the NATO powers, fortified by a chorus from the liberal intelligentsia, flourished the charge of genocide as justification for bombing that destroyed much of Serbia's economy and killed about 2,000 civilians.

Whatever horrors they may have been planning, the Serbs were not engaged in genocidal activities in Kosovo before the bombing began. They were fighting a separatist movement, led by the Kosovo Liberation Army, and behaving with the brutality typical of security forces. One common estimate of the number of Kosovar Albanians killed in the year before the bombing is 2,500. With NATO's bombing came the flights and expulsions and charges that the Serbs were accelerating a genocidal plan; in some accounts, as many as 100,000 were already dead. An alternative assessment was that NATO's bombing was largely to blame for the expulsions and killings.

After the war was over, on June 25, President Clinton told a White House news conference that tens of thousands of people had been killed in Kosovo on Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's orders. A week before came the statement from Geoff Hoon of the British Foreign Office that, according to reports, mostly from refugees, it appeared that about 10,000 Kosovar Albanians had been killed in more than 100 massacres.

Of course, the U.S. and British governments had an obvious motive in painting as horrifying a picture as possible of what the Serbs had been up to, since the bombing had come under increasingly fierce attack, with rifts in the NATO alliance.

The NATO powers had plenty of reasons to rush charges of genocide into the headlines. For one thing, it was becoming embarrassingly clear that the bombing had inflicted no significant damage on the Serbian army. All the more reason, therefore, to propose that the Serbs, civilians as well as soldiers, were collectively guilty of genocide and thus deserved everything they got. Teams of forensic investigators from 15 nations, including a detachment from the FBI, have been at work since June and have examined about 150 of 400 sites of alleged mass murder.

There's still immense uncertainty, but at this point it's plain that there are not enough bodies to warrant the claim that the Serbs had a program of extermination. The FBI team has made two trips to Kosovo and investigated 30 sites containing nearly 200 bodies.

In early October, the Spanish newspaper El Pais reported what the Spanish forensic team had found in its appointed zone in northern Kosovo. The U.N. figures, said Perez Pujol, director of the Instituto Anatomico Forense de Cartagena, began with 44,000 dead, dropped to 22,000 and now stand at 11,000. He and his fellows were prepared to perform at least 2,000 autopsies in their zone. So far, they've found 187 corpses.

A colleague of Pujol, Juan Lopez Palafox, told El Pais that he had the impression that the Serbs had given families the option of leaving. If they refused or came back, they were killed. Like any murder of civilians, these were war crimes, just as any mass grave, whatever the number of bodies, indicates a massacre. But genocide?

One persistent story held that 700 Kosovars had been dumped in the Trepca lead and zinc mines. On Oct. 12, Kelly Moore, a spokeswoman for the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, announced that the investigators had found absolutely nothing. There was a mass grave allegedly containing 350 bodies in Ljubenic that turned out to hold seven. In Pusto Selo, villagers said 106 had been killed by the Serbs, and NATO rushed out satellite photos of mass graves. Nothing to buttress that charge has yet been found. Another 82 Kosovars allegedly were killed in Kraljan. No bodies have been turned up.

Although surely by now investigators would have been pointed to all probable sites, it's conceivable that thousands of Kosovar corpses await discovery. As matters stand, though, the number of bodies turned up by the tribunal's teams is in the hundreds, not thousands, which tends to confirm the view of those who hold that NATO bombing provoked a wave of Serbian killings and expulsions, but that there was and is no hard evidence of a genocidal program.

Count another victory for the Big Lie. Meanwhile, the normally reliable Society for Endangered People in Germany says 90,000 Gypsies have been forced to flee since the Serbs left Kosovo, with the KLA conducting ethnic cleansing on a grand scale. But who cares about Gypsies?

Alexander Cockburn Writes for the Nation and Other Publications