HIR | The Freezer Truck Hoax: How NATO framed the Serbs

An old saw, relevant to science and journalism, says that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” The freezer-truck story is a string of truly extraordinary claims -- with no evidence to support them. I shall begin by summarizing the claims.

According to the mainstream media, “Hundreds, maybe thousands, of bodies disappeared from Kosovo during the Nato air strikes in 1999.” This was supposedly a “large-scale attempt to remove traces of thousands of civilians killed by [Milosevic’s] troops in Kosovo.” Why? So as to prevent them from becoming “the source for investigations by the [Hague] tribunal.”[1-3]

But the media explained that, “Fortunately for investigators, the Serbs were as sloppy in their cleanup as they were in their killing.” For starters, after many a massacre, these rather unprofessional murderers forgot even to bury the bodies out of sight, and surviving “Albanians…dug the graves themselves.” Some anxiety later developed over whether this was a good enough cover-up! So “Milosevic,” alleges the media, “ordered top police commanders ‘to remove all evidence’ of civilian casualties in the crackdown in Kosovo.”[4-6]

But the Serbs were still sloppy. According to the official story, the bodies were dug up, and then “truckloads of bodies were shipped from Kosovo to Serbia proper and dumped underwater” -- that is to say, truck and all -- in rivers and lakes.[7]

But this again was not a good enough cover-up. Some bodies floated, and some trucks were visible... So the trucks were fished out and destroyed, and the bodies were transported in other trucks to different locations where they were finally buried out of sight.

As the script to a Woody Allen movie, this might work. But how could the mainstream media present this story, which is chock-full of absurdities, with a straight face, and without any documentation?

By way of example, let’s take a closer look at the important British daily The Independent, which had a very prominent role in disseminating the freezer-truck story. Here is what it wrote on June 29th 2001:

“Hundreds, maybe thousands, of bodies disappeared from Kosovo during the Nato air strikes in 1999. In many cases, Albanians saw their loved ones buried, or even dug the graves themselves. But when they returned to show the graves to investigators from The Hague, they were empty.

. . .As the Nato bombs rained down, body-snatchers roamed Kosovo. Mete Krasniqi saw them in action, after Serb forces machine-gunned the inhabitants of his village, including his son. The villagers buried them. A month later, hiding in the woods, they saw men in orange overalls dig up the bodies and load them into two trucks.”[8]

The Yugoslavs supposedly did the impossible. Fighting the terrorist KLA with one hand, and defending from an unprecedented shower of NATO bombs with the other, they were still able to haul “hundreds, maybe thousands” of dead bodies out of Kosovo. And they succeeded without once getting caught in the act by either NATO or the KLA.

But for evidence that “hundreds, maybe thousands” of people were massacred and their bodies removed from Kosovo you are given nothing -- or else the closest thing: that, when Albanians allegedly “returned to show the graves to investigators from The Hague, they were empty.”

The ‘graves’ could be empty because they never contained any bodies in the first place -- say, for example, because no Albanian civilians were ever massacred by Milosevic's forces. If so, any Albanian ‘witnesses’ giving stories about mysterious freezer trucks would be lying.

For starters, it is always possible that an alleged ‘witness’ is lying. In an American court of law witnesses must be cross-examined in order to give the other side a chance to show that a witness has lied. No witness is simply assumed to be truthful.

In the context of war, journalists should subject alleged witnesses to the most stringent tests because the temptation for fabrication is especially strong here. Painting your opponents as genocidal monsters gives a good bang for the propaganda buck, and so allegations of war crimes should be scrutinized with utmost care.

The most questionable sources were presented as self-evidently truthful
__________________________________________________________

An accusation of war crime is very serious. According to the media, this accusation was made by Albanian ‘witnesses.’ The proper sequence of steps is the following:

If, on the other hand, the supposed witness has a track record for chronic lying, and moreover has a clear motivation to lie again in this case, and there is furthermore no evidence whatever to back up the allegation, then the proper thing is not to proceed beyond the first point. There is nothing worth investigating, let alone anything worth reporting. This piece of obvious common sense is known as The Boy Who Cried Wolf Principle. Applying it here, I ask: Should The Independent have taken seriously Albanian ‘witnesses’ who alleged that Serbs had carried out massive atrocities followed by freezer-truck cover-ups?

Three months before The Independent piece on the alleged freezer trucks, an article had appeared in The Toronto Sun summarizing what several investigations had long since shown: that Milosevic's forces had not massacred any Albanian civilians in the Kosovo town of Racak.[10] The so-called 'Racak massacre' had instead been a KLA hoax.

And yet plenty of Albanian ‘witnesses’ had alleged a massacre at Racak by Milosevic's forces. So they lied.

This was not a white lie. The allegation of a massacre at Racak is precisely what NATO used as an excuse to start bombing the Serbs. Once this is absorbed, what surfaced in the London Times no longer comes as a big surprise: the American OSCE mission that cooperated in perpetrating this hoax had been composed of CIA operatives.[11] Moreover, there was also cooperation between NATO and the Hague Tribunal to push the allegation of a massacre at Racak in the media (see here, and here).[12] So Racak was of monumental importance -- it was a very big lie. Given that Albanian so-called ‘witnesses’ had alleged a massacre at Racak, this does not inspire confidence in Albanian ‘witnesses.’

But why did supposed Albanian ‘witnesses’ join NATO in lying about Racak? Because, along with NATO, they wanted the Serbs bombed. And why did they want the Serbs bombed? According to the official story, because the Serbs were supposedly committing genocide against the Albanians.

To see whether that official story makes sense, consider a parable. Suppose that somebody stabs me and the police question me. Would I tell the police that somebody shot me with a gun? What would I gain? I was stabbed! The police would examine me, find that I have a stab wound, and conclude that I am a liar. And that would make it harder for me to get justice, because they would start doubting the rest of my story. The point is that lying involves taking risks, and bigger lies represent bigger risks. Therefore, if a person can get what they want without lying, then they will naturally tell the truth, unless they are imbeciles. Thus, if you choose to believe that that the Serbs really were massacring Albanians in Kosovo, then you are automatically forced to believe that NATO and the KLA are run by imbeciles, because instead of accusing the Serbs of a real massacre, they went and carried out an expensive and risky hoax.

I myself do not think that NATO and the Albanian KLA are run by imbeciles. If they staged a hoax in order to give NATO an excuse for war, I think this is because they could not use the truth to go to war. The Serbs, in other words, were not massacring Albanian civilians.

But we were talking about The Independent. Given that the Albanian KLA orchestrated a spectacular and complicated hoax at Racak, and given that by the time The Independent published the freezer-truck allegations this had been made public, shouldn't the journalists at The Independent at least become suspicious that Albanian ‘witnesses’ might lie to the world again? Say, for example, when a preposterous story emerges about thousands of Albanian civilians supposedly being massacred, buried, then dug up, hauled away hundreds of miles in freezer trucks, dumped in rivers and lakes, pulled out again, re-hauled away, reburied in graves and, mind you, all of this during a massive aerial bombardment?

I think the journalists at The Independent should become at least somewhat suspicious. At a minimum, they should refrain from reporting the new accusation as if it were confirmed fact, I would say. Wouldn't you?

There is also the problem that the freezer-truck accusations were being made by the KLA. This was not a reputable source. The KLA was getting funded by, and had terrorist trainers from, Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda.[15] The US (later to become the KLA’s air force) at first openly recognized this, correctly labeling the KLA as a terrorist organization.[17] And the KLA has always gotten its main funds from its prominent role in international heroin trafficking.[16] Even more to the point: the KLA was in the business of killing Albanian civilians, which is easily documented because they boasted about it every time.[18] This is quite enough, but in fact there is more. It was no secret that the KLA leadership repeatedly encouraged Albanians to make stories up for the media describing the Serbs as genocidal monsters, because there was a bit of a storm about this in the mainstream Western press, despite the anti-Serb propaganda onslaught.[9] In addition, as mentioned above, the allegation of a Serbian massacre of Albanian civilians at Racak, in the same political category as the freezer-truck allegations, had in reality been a hoax staged by...the KLA.

One might hesitate, therefore, before accepting an allegation of Serbian atrocity from the KLA. And yet, The Independent's ‘witness’ for these new freezer-truck allegations is a man who goes by Mete Krasniqi, and as you probably don't know, but as the journalists at The Independent certainly did, the tightly-knit Krasniqi clan is who founded the Albanian KLA.[14]

Did it make sense for The Independent to rush headlong and vouch for Krasniqi's accusation?

Something is deeply wrong at this paper. But it is worse than you think. One might be tempted here to conclude that the problems are three. The Independent:

The real problem, I am afraid, is that The Independent knowingly published a fabrication. We are not dealing here with pathologically bad journalism but with deliberate dishonesty.

The Independent did not get its facts wrong; it lied.
__________________________________________________________

This is a strong charge. However, the alternative is that The Independent made some remarkably large and yet honest mistakes. By the logic adduced earlier, this hypothesis would require me to believe that the people who run The Independent are imbeciles.

Just as I don't believe those running NATO and the KLA to be mentally handicapped, neither do I believe those who run The Independent like a Kafkaesque metaphor to be similarly impaired. I believe they are dishonest.

Below I shall demonstrate this beyond a shadow of a doubt. I will do it carefully, because my claim is extraordinary, and by my own stated dictum so must be the evidence that I will present. My argument will rest on the following important point: the accusation of freezer truck cover-ups was never made when it should obviously have been made, which demonstrates that it was made up.

The allegation of cover-ups in 1999 did not include anything about freezer trucks
___________________

As I documented in Part 1, NATO's allegation that Milosevic's forces had massacred 100,000 Albanian civilians (or 500,000, as they sometimes said, but who's counting?[20]) shrank to zero when the forensic investigators tried to find the bodies after the bombing.

Without so much as one body to pin on Milosevic, how could NATO justify the war in retrospect? How could they try Milosevic at The Hague? This was NATO’s problem.[22]

That NATO and The Hague felt the heat of the embarrassment is obvious from how defensive they became. One tactic was to speak out of both sides of their mouth, counting every dead body in the total as an alleged civilian victim of Milosevic's forces.

For example, in her November 1999 press briefing,[23] Hague Special Prosecutor Del Ponte tried to explain away the low body count by claiming that the 2,108 corpses she had found so far…

“…did not necessarily reflect the actual number of actual victims, because evidence of grave tampering had been discovered. There was also a significant number of sites where the precise number of bodies could not be counted. In those places, steps had been taken to hide the evidence. Many bodies had been burned, but the forensic evidence was nonetheless consistent with witness accounts of the crimes.”

So not only was Del Ponte pretending that all of her 2,108 found bodies were “victims” of “crimes” (which people would read to mean civilian victims of Milosevic's forces), but we also have the bold suggestion that the body count was low because of “grave tampering.”

NATO officials were equally un-shy. Britain’s war crimes coordinator explained the low figure reported in November 1999 by saying that “Victims of atrocities in Kosovo were dumped in rivers, burned in buildings and buried in cemeteries by Serbs trying to hide evidence of the massacres.”[24]

Hastily made accusations, born of desperation, typically contain absurdities. For example, the above NATO official apparently forgot that dead bodies in rivers will float. And who has the time and resources to massacre whole multitudes of people -- thousands! -- and then bury them in cemeteries -- which is to say, in individual graves -- while under massive NATO aerial bombardment?

Not surprisingly, these allegations all turned out to be false, as the Hague's barely higher final body count, reported in August 2000, soon demonstrated to NATO's further embarrassment (more on this below).

And yet the most interesting thing here is the dog that didn't bark in 1999, when allegations of cover-up were first being made. You see, nobody said anything -- and I mean nothing at all -- about cover-ups that involved shipping thousands of murdered bodies out of Kosovo in freezer trucks. Not in 1999. The Chief Prosecutor Del Ponte, who hired the forensics, didn't mention freezer trucks (see for yourself),[25] and neither did anybody else. In fact, this particular allegation of cover-up was not made for the first time until April 2001.

Now, if there had been such a vast freezer truck operation, how plausible is it that nobody would have made the accusation in 1999, when both NATO and The Hague were clearly motivated to allege cover-ups?

For all these reasons, any Albanian civilians coming forth with stories of Serbian cover-ups would have been saying the safest and most politically correct thing possible, to the most receptive audience possible. And thus, we can be sure that any Albanians who had any kind of allegation about Serbian 'cover-ups' were definitely brought to speak with The Hague's forensic investigators.

This is confirmed by the multitude of cover-up allegations of all sorts that NATO and The Hague indeed produced in 1999, and which were 'supported' by the declarations of Albanian 'witnesses' who indeed were eagerly coming forth with such stories (all of them eventually shown to be false).

If the conditions were optimal for alleging Serbian atrocities and cover-ups, and if all sorts of allegations were indeed being made, then the fact that the supposed freezer trucks never were mentioned in 1999 can mean only one thing: no Albanians came forth with this particular story in 1999.

Given that many Albanians in 1999 went out of their way to allege all sorts of supposed cover-ups that did not happen, is it likely they would have kept silent about a massive freezer truck operation that did happen?

When the final body count was reported, in 2000, again nobody mentioned freezer trucks
________________________________

When the international teams of forensics hired by the UN concluded their investigations in August 2000, the final body count was 2,788, and this is the figure that the Hague Tribunal announced to the press. A rather longish article in The Guardian reported on this, taking the liberty of counting all 2,788 bodies as “massacred Albanians” (that is, supposedly massacred by Milosevic's forces).[28]

It could not be true even in principle. According to NATO the supposed massacres had taken place during the bombing, and yet only 788 of the 2,788 bodies could belong to people who died during the bombing, because according to NATO's and The Hague's own official numbers 2000 casualties had already been sustained in KLA vs. Yugoslav army fighting before the bombing started (see P art 1). Moreover, since the final body count was a body count, period, only a fraction of these 788 could even be Albanian civilians in principle. Finally, since Albanian civilian deaths are not more than a fraction of 788, they can all easily be accounted for as resulting from NATO and KLA activity, which activity killed so many Albanian civilians that NATO publicly had to apologize for it.
http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/freezer_app.htm

So why was The Guardian counting all 2,788 as supposed Albanian civilians massacred by Milosevic's forces? I'll tell you: because The Guardian was trying to help NATO out. Take a look, for example, at the following sentence, which The Guardian printed with zero comment:

“‘The final number of bodies uncovered will be less than 10,000 and probably more accurately determined as between two and three thousand,’ Paul Risley, the Hague tribunal’s press spokesman, said yesterday.”[28]

It is true that “between two and three thousand,” is “less than 10,000.” It is also “less than infinity,” “less than 835 billion,” and “less than 20,791.” But the only phrase beginning with “less than” that will properly summarize a number “between two and three thousand” is, of course, “less than three thousand.” So what is the number 10,000 doing there? It is there to distract you, so that the higher, round figure will stick in your memory, or else to confuse you, so that you can't remember any number, and you end up thinking that the actual numbers are not that important (but they are).

Despite these tricks, The Guardian piece had to concede that this was an embarrassment for NATO:

This is quite a shocker. No NATO government cared to find out how many among the 2,788 bodies were murdered Albanian civilians? But NATO destroyed a country because, it said, Albanian civilians were being murdered. Why the sudden loss of interest?

The above quotation is the last paragraph in The Guardian's piece. We can be sure, therefore, that few people read it, because what most people do is skim the headlines, and perhaps read the first or two paragraphs. Notice then, the power of the headline:

What does that communicate? That the full count -- 2,788 -- is supposedly composed of Albanian civilians massacred by Milosevic's forces, an implication that The Guardian reinforces more than once in the body of the article. But the last paragraph in the article, as we saw, explains that NATO didn't even want to count the Albanians among the dead. So the “Under 3,000” cannot be synonymous with “Ethnic Albanians Massacred,” as the headline blares.

And yet there is an incongruity, because if The Guardian was not constrained by pesky facts and had a passionate motivation to help NATO look better, then the best way to do this was to allege a massive freezer-truck cover-up that had whisked away all the mysteriously missing bodies. The Guardian, however, made no such allegation. Once again, in August 2000, this dog didn't bark.

All previous allegations of cover-up (the ones made in 1999) having been shown to be false, no new allegations of cover-up were made or reported at this time by The Guardian (see for yourself).[28] Like other media, The Guardian simply reported what the Hague Tribunal was saying: the search for bodies is over, there is nothing left there to be found. Ahem, any...um...cover-ups? No, that's it, said The Hague Tribunal.

Now, if there had been any truth to the freezer-truck cover-up story, then how likely is it that Albanians who lost their loved ones would have kept quiet about it when they saw the UN forensics pack their bags and declare that no more bodies remained to be found? Impossible. Therefore, the freezer-truck story is obviously a lie; one that, as we saw earlier, nobody thought to invent in 1999, and one that, as we now see, by August 2000 still had not been imagined.

The argument is clinched, but if any doubts should remain, there is also a rather glaring coincidence to consider.

When the freezer truck allegations finally did appear for the first time, in April 2001, NATO, that very minute, was bullying the puppet government it had installed in Belgrade. The message: hand over Milosevic to the Hague Tribunal or dire consequences will follow.[27] This NATO puppet government in Belgrade was in a bit of a fix because Milosevic was still very popular, and the Serbian people did not believe NATO's accusations. Moreover, handing Milosevic over to The Hague was illegal under Serbian and international law.

So it was at this very moment that a new story was desperately needed in order to dupe the Serbian public into believing that perhaps Milosevic really was guilty of something. They needed something to soften the opposition, in Serbia and abroad, to what eventually became the illegal abduction and shipping to The Hague of President Slobodan Milosevic.

And so it is precisely at this time, in the very same month, that people like Mete Krasniqi, from the close-knit clan that founded the terrorist KLA, and other such 'witnesses' materialized out of nowhere with this outrageous story about freezer trucks that nobody had ever heard before.

1) Practically no bodies are found in Kosovo, and no Albanian civilian deaths can be pinned on Milosevic.

2) The mainstream media, in April 2001, explains the total lack of evidence of massacres by alleging a freezer-truck operation that covered them up.

So, what does the hapless media consumer conclude? Why, that nobody debates whether massacres occurred!

After all, if it were legitimate to doubt that the alleged massacres had really taken place, then, faced with no evidence of massacres, wouldn't the free press have rushed to put the 'no massacre' hypothesis on the table? Wouldn't exposés of NATO's and The Hague's duplicity have followed? Wouldn't scandalized headlines have adorned front pages everywhere?

And thus, since no such stories appeared, and since no such international scandal developed, anybody who believes the press is free will reach the following two conclusions:

And no conclusions can be more convenient for NATO, because they allow NATO to justify its illegal war of aggression in retrospect; it allows them to get Milosevic illegally to the Hague without protests all over the world; and it allows them to explain the fact that no massacred bodies were found...

Remember: everything I analyzed here was available to the press. Indeed, they were the ones doing the reporting, and therefore they knew better than anybody that there had been no allegations of freezer truck cover-ups in November 1999, and no allegations of freezer truck cover-ups in August 2000. They knew that nobody had said anything about freezer trucks before April 2001. And they knew that, if this spectacular story had been true, then surely there would have been allegations before April 2001.

Well, that The Independent obviously knew this story was fraudulent when, in June 2001, and showing not the slightest bit of skepticism, it pretended that the most tainted sources conceivable were so impeccably trustworthy that their preposterous allegations could be reported as fact without even the most cursory investigation.

The Independent knew this story was false when it printed it on page 3 with the sensationalistic (and convicting) headline, "Milosevic Faces Judgment: The Missing Bodies Of Women And Children That Came Back To Haunt Him," pretending that the supposedly missing bodies had really surfaced, when they hadn't. In fact, nobody ever produced even one shred of evidence for the freezer truck allegations.

Up next I explain how the very idea that the Serbs would have even thought to carry out these supposed massacres is absurd.

Footnotes and Further Reading
__________________________________________________________

[1] “Hundreds, maybe thousands, of bodies disappeared from Kosovo during the Nato air strikes in 1999.” -- The Independent (London), June 29, 2001, Friday, NEWS; Pg. 3, 615 words, MILOSEVIC FACES JUDGEMENT: THE MISSING BODIES OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN THAT CAME BACK TO HAUNT HIM, Justin Huggler In Skopje

[2] “large-scale attempt to remove traces of thousands of civilians killed by [Milosevic’s] troops in Kosovo.” -- The Associated Press, May 25, 2001, Friday, BC cycle, International News, 662 words, Police accuse Milosevic of covering up war crimes, By DUSAN STOJANOVIC

[3] “the source for investigations by the [Hague] tribunal.” -- The New York Times, June 1, 2001, Friday, Late Edition - Final, Section A; Page 10; Column 4; Foreign Desk, 1153 words, A Dark Secret Comes to Light in Serbia, By CARLOTTA GALL, KLADOVO, Serbia, May 29

[4] “Fortunately for investigators, the Serbs were as sloppy in their cleanup as they were in their killing.” -- Newsweek, July 23, 2001, U.S. Edition, INTERNATIONAL; Pg. 34, 2031 words, Body of Evidence, By Roy Gutman and Rod Nordland; With Christopher Dickey at The Hague and Jeffrey Bartholet in New York.

[5] “Albanians…dug the graves themselves.” -- The Independent (London), June 29, 2001, Friday, NEWS; Pg. 3, 615 words, MILOSEVIC FACES JUDGEMENT: THE MISSING BODIES OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN THAT CAME BACK TO HAUNT HIM, Justin Huggler In Skopje

[6] “Milosevic ordered top police commanders ‘to remove all evidence’ of civilian casualties in the crackdown in Kosovo.” -- The Associated Press, May 25, 2001, Friday, BC cycle, International News, 662 words, Police accuse Milosevic of covering up war crimes, By DUSAN STOJANOVIC

[7] The New York Times, July 31, 2001, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final, Section A; Page 3; Column 1; Foreign Desk, 1347 words, Serbia Finds Where Bodies Are Buried, and Investigates, By CARLOTTA GALL, BELGRADE, Serbia, July 25

[8] The Independent (London), June 29, 2001, Friday, NEWS; Pg. 3, 615 words, MILOSEVIC FACES JUDGMENT: THE MISSING BODIES OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN THAT CAME BACK TO HAUNT HIM, Justin Huggler In Skopje

[9] The Christian Science Monitor; September 13, 1999, Monday;
"Conned in Kosovo: a CBC reporter's dilemma"; Tom Regan, Special to The Christian Science Monitor; HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA
http://emperors-clothes.com/news/cbclie.htm

[10]The Toronto Sun, April 1, 2001 Sunday, Final Edition, Comment;, Pg. C6;, 1382 words, The Hoax That Started A War; How The U.S., Nato And The Western Media Were Conned In Kosovo, PETER WORTHINGTON, TORONTO SUN.

see also Racak, The Impossible Massacre, by Diana Johnstone, at http://www.tenc.net/analysis/racak.htm

[11] "THE ROAD TO JENIN: The Racak 'massacre' hoax, and those whose honesty it places in doubt: Helena Ranta, NATO, the UN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, The Associated Press, and Human Rights Watch." Historical and Investigative Research; October 2005; by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/ranta.htm

[12] "THE ROAD TO JENIN: The Racak 'massacre' hoax, and those whose honesty it places in doubt: Helena Ranta, NATO, the UN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, The Associated Press, and Human Rights Watch." Historical and Investigative Research; October 2005; by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/ranta.htm

"VOLLEBAEK’S RAMBOUILLET DIPLOMACY: A CRIME AGAINST PEACE AND AN INSULT TO REASON"; from The Oslo War Process: Norwegians are the diplomatic 'advance guard' of the US-European empire. They helped destroy Yugoslavia. They set Israel on the path to destruction. Now they will finish destroying Sri Lanka. Next: India.; Historical and Investigative Research; 29 October 2005; by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/oslo4.htm

[13] http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/freezer1.htm

[14] “The Krasniqi clan has lived in Vranoc for centuries. It has its own mosque, school, livestock and gazing lands. Although some Krasniqis have taken jobs outside the village, in nearby factories or overseas, they remain intensely loyal to their families and land.”

SOURCE: FROM BROOKLYN TO KOSOVO, WITH LOVE AND AK 47’S: Cousin Florin raises the money; Uncle Besnik buys the guns; Shefqet does the fighting; the Krasniqi family helped found the Kosovo Liberation Army in 1995, and they aren’t about to let a silly peace plan ruin their dreams of independence. Stacy Sullivan. The New York Times Magazine Nov 22, 1998 p50 col 1 (88 col in);

[15] http://emperors-clothes.com/news/binl.htm

[16] The Gazette (Montreal), November 27, 1999, FINAL, 4850 words, The Kosovo connection: The shooting has stopped, but the Kosovo Liberation Army isn’t resting. It is still a major player in the international heroin trade, ALEX ROSLIN.

[17] In 1998 US special envoy to the Balkans Robert Gelbard “condemned the actions of an ethnic Albanian underground group Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK) which has claimed responsibility for a series of attacks on Serb targets. ‘We condemn very strongly terrorist actions in Kosovo. The UCK is, *without any questions*, a terrorist group [my emphasis],’ Gelbard said.” From: Agence France Presse, February 23, 1998 22:24 GMT, SECTION: International news, LENGTH: 631 words. HEADLINE: Washington ready to reward Belgrade for “good will”: envoy

[18] Here's an example of the KLA boasting that it murders Albanian civilians.

“Text of report by Belgrade-based independent BK TV on 29th March: The so-called [Albanian] Liberation Army of Kosovo…is claiming responsibility for the wounding of Serbian policeman Branislav Milovanovic near Podujevo [Kosovo town], for the murder of Kosovo Albanians Jusuf Halilaj and Fehmi Haziraj and for the wounding of [Kosovo Albanian] Mehmed Gasi near Klina [Kosovo town]. A statement issued by the Liberation Army of Kosovo accuses Milovanovic of anti-Albanian activities, while the other [Albanian] victims are accused of being loyal to the Serbian regime. Our military operations are the best way to deny the claims that the Liberation Army of Kosovo does not exist, the statement says.” BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, March 31, 1997, Monday, Part 2 Central Europe, the Balkins; FORMER YUGOSLAVIA; FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF YUGOSLAVIA; KOSOVO; EE/D2880/A, 130 words, Liberation Army of Kosovo claims it murdered loyal Albanians, Source: BK TV, Belgrade, in Serbo-Croat 1755 gmt 29 Mar 97

And here's an example of the government of Yugoslavia protesting the killing of Albanian civilians.

“Excerpts from report by Tanjug news agency: Klina, 7th May: Hetem Dobruna, 40, has been killed in a terrorist attack in Lozica near Klina [between Pristina and Pec], while Sefedin Javori, 38, escaped unharmed, although the assailants also opened automatic rifle fire on him while he was sitting in his car, Pec district court judge Veselin Cadjenovic said. The attack took place at around midnight two nights ago, near Hazir Javori's shop, where Dobruna and his best friend Sefedin had popped in for a drink... An investigation is under way. The swift and premeditated action points to a classic terrorist attack. Dobruna was an honest, hard-working and respected family man and loyal citizen of Serbia, which the terrorists found hard to swallow. This is the second terrorist attack in Klina municipality in the past six months.” BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, May 9, 1997, Friday, Part 2 Central Europe, the Balkins; FORMER YUGOSLAVIA; FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF YUGOSLAVIA; KOSOVO; EE/D2914/A, 143 words, "Loyal" Albanian shot dead by unknown gunmen, Source: Tanjug news agency, Belgrade, in Serbo-Croat 1456 gmt 7 May 97

[19a] "The Obligatory Bash: Etiquette for a brave new world"
by Jared Israel.
http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/obligato.htm

"When speaking of the Serbs it is considered proper to say something negative. More than one thing is optional. But one is obligatory..."

[20] The Boston Globe, April 20, 1999, Tuesday, City Edition, NATIONAL/FOREIGN; Pg. A1, 974 words, Up to 500,000 unaccounted for in Kosovo; Missing men feared dead, US reports; CRISIS IN KOSOVO; Kornblut reported from Albania. Material from the Associated Press and Reuters was used in the preparation of this article., By Bob Hohler and Anne E. Kornblut, Globe Staff.

[21] http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/bodycount_steele.htm

[21a] http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/freezer_app.htm

[21b] http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/freezer1.htm

[22] http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/freezer1.htm

[23] http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/bodycount_delponte.htm

[24] The Guardian (London), November 19, 1999, Guardian Foreign Pages; Pg. 21, 269 words, Serbs 'hid war crime evidence', By Richard Norton-Taylor

[25] http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/bodycount_delponte.htm

[26] http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/ian/day.htm; and
http://emperors-clothes.com/docs/h-list.htm

[26a] http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/oslo4.htm

[27] As you read the article below, keep in mind that much of the Serbian public was furious at the idea that Milosevic would be sent to The Hague. Keep in mind also that the Supreme Court in Belgrade ruled that extraditing Milosevic would be unconstitutional. Finally, keep in mind that the freezer truck story broke in the *very same month* of April 2001, and that it was very convenient for convincing at least some in the Serbian public that Milosevic really had done some bad things, which softened somewhat the opposition to what became his illegal abduction (for he was never legally extradited) and subsequent shipping to The Hague.

The Seattle Times. April 1, 2001, Sunday, Sunday Edition, ROP ZONE; Opinion;, Pg. B6, 220 words, Milosevic on deadline

BELGRADE embraced former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's murderous vision of a greater Yugoslavia for a decade, and now another kind of vision made him expendable.

Faced with the loss of $100 million in economic aid, Belgrade met the spirit of a Saturday deadline by Congress to cooperate with the U.N. war crimes tribunal at The Hague, Netherlands. Milosevic was arrested this morning, and wisked away to prison after barricading himself in his villa for 26 hours.

The dispute with the government of President Vojislav Kostunica is whether Milsovic will be extradited for trial.

Nothing else would satisfy the rule of law. He would be tried, in particular, for his 1998 crackdown on ethnic Albanians in the southern Serbian province of Kosovo.

Milosevic, his policies and his followers are responsible for countless deaths, nearly ceaseless fighting and a flood of refugees that engulfed Europe.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell properly delayed final decision on compliance until tomorrow, when the smoke and mirrors of this weekend's confusion could be cleared away.

Did Yugoslavia meet the deadline?

Holding Milosevic accountable begins with Belgrade atoning for its own throaty support for ethnic cleansing and other atrocities. That starts with surrendering Milosevic.

[28] The Guardian (London), August 18, 2000, Guardian Home Pages, Pg. 3, 1001 words, Serb killings exaggerated by west: Claims of up to 100,000 ethnic Albanians massacred in Kosovo revised to under 3,000 as exhumations near end, Jonathan Steele.