Of the 17 charges in the Kosovo indictment against Slobodan Milosevic, the massacre at Racak is the only crime that took place before the NATO bombings of May 1999. At his trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the former Serb president is trying to prove that he was fighting a just war in Kosovo against insurgents and terrorists. According to Milosevic, if people were killed in Kosovo, this happened in regular battle and the hundreds of thousands who fled the area did so because of the NATO bombing. The massacre in Racak - in January 1999, bodies were found in a ravine near the village and others in Racak itself - had been "staged", claims the accused. The bodies were those of Kosovar Liberation Army fighters (UCK), he says. When William Walker, chief of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) mission, who arrived at the scene shortly after the killings and immediately alerted the world to this massacre, he provided a justification for the NATO bombing that took place the following May, says also Milosevic.

Last year, forensic expert Helen Ranta testified before the ICTY that the people in the ravine were shot at the site where their bodies were discovered. Some had been slightly moved, but that was understandable, Ranta said. Family members and journalists might have turned over some of the bodies to see whether they were still alive or to check their identity. The bullet wounds, the traces of bullets in the ground and in clothing and the human tissue found in the ground all justified the conclusion, according to the Finnish expert, that the people were killed on the spot and at close range. They were all wearing civilian clothes.

Milosevic called two witnesses, both Serb investigating magistrates from Pristina, who presented an opposing interpretation of the same facts. The dark outer layer of clothing and the uniform belts they had been wearing all pointed to the bodies being those of fighters, they claimed. Moreover, traces of nitrate had been found on 37 out of 40 bodies, proving that they had been in close contact with gunpowder. But the paraffin test they had carried out had been branded unreliable by the FBI in 1968.

Finally, help for Milosevic came from the most unexpected source. Prosecutor Geoffrey Nice alerted Milosevic to evidence that had been provided by his own office in another trial against three UCK members. "Thanks to Mr Nice's kindness", remarked the accused, the witness, the Serb policeman from Kosovo Dragan Jasovic appeared on 25 April as a defence witness. Jasovic gave evidence on some 90 documents relating to UCK actions and activists in Kosovo in 1998 and 1999, of which about 20 were related to the events in Racak. The police documents list the names of UCK members and collaborators. Geoffrey Nice was forced to accept that 30 of the 40 victims in Racak were listed in the Urosevac police documents.

Witnesses under pressure

Thus, on 17 May, the date scheduled for Jasovic's cross-examination, the prosecutor will be attempting to undermine the credibility of the witness. However, he appears to have a few leads. Some time ago, video tapes were presented in the ICTY court showing Albanian witnesses, who had pointed out UCK fighters to the Serbian police, testifying that they had been pressurised to this by the Serbian police acting under the authority of Jasovic. The policeman already countered by arguing that the Albanian witnesses had had to deny giving information to the Serbian police, otherwise in the current political climate in Kosovo, their lives and those of their families would be in danger.

But even if Milosevic manages to prove, in this case, that his witnesses are more credible than prosecutors', he still has a long way to go. If the bodies in the ravine were indeed those of UCK fighters, there is no indication that they fell in regular combat. It would still look like an execution.