Posted on 9/3/2004, 12:37:50 PM by Doctor13
Massacres in Kosovo never happened, say Canadians who investigated mass graves.
The war crimes tribunal in The Hague is "beginning to panic" over its case against former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic according to a Vancouver detective sent to unearth mass graves in Kosovo and a Canadian filmmaker who documented the exhumations.
"I would think they'll have a tough time with the charge of genocide with only 5,000 bodies," said retired Vancouver detective sergeant Brian Honeybourn. "It seems as though The Hague is beginning to panic."
Mr. Milosevic's trial is to resume next week with the former Serbian dictator defending himself against charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. Former Canadian Supreme Court justice Louise Arbour made history when she laid the charges -- the first against a head of state -- as the tribunal's special prosecutor.
Calgary filmmaker Garth Pritchard and Sgt. Honeybourn are critical of Ms. Arbour, now UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and her claims that the Serbs, directed by Mr. Milosevic, murdered as many as 200,000 civilians during its ethnic cleansing of Kosovo.
The alleged massacres were used by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Western leaders as justification for their bombing campaign and intervention in Kosovo, and were regularly and routinely reported as fact on television networks such as the CBC and CNN, as the West backed the Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) against the Serbs.
"This was a massacre that never happened," Mr. Pritchard maintains.
"I was standing there when the forensic teams were telling Louise Arbour there were no 200,000 bodies and she didn't want to know."
Mr. Pritchard, who has produced more than a dozen documentaries on the Balkan and Afghan wars, said yesterday he has been approached by Hague prosecutors to testify in their case against Mr. Milosevic after turning down a request to appear as a defence witness for the former president.
"I was telephoned by an RCMP officer seconded to the Hague tribunal's investigative unit, a corporal named Tom Steenvoorden, who told me the total number of bodies they have recovered amounts to 5,080, which is a far cry from 200,000," he told the Citizen.
"I want someone like Peter Mansbridge or Ms. Arbour to tell me where the other 195,000 bodies are. This is a massacre that never happened."
Mr. Pritchard said he refused to co-operate with the Hague prosecutors, just as he had with representatives of Mr. Milosevic.
Other Canadians who have been named as potential defence witnesses include Citizen reporter David Pugliese and retired Maj.-Gen Lewis MacKenzie, who have both said they will refuse, and war correspondent and magazine publisher Scott Taylor, who has agreed to defend articles he wrote for the Citizen from Kosovo.
Sgt. Honeybourn and forensic team leader Brian Strongman echoed Mr. Pritchard's doubts that the genocidal massacre by the Serbs ever took place.
"I can't say that there weren't 200,000 bodies because I wasn't covering the entire country," said Sgt. Honeybourn.
"But I never saw any sign of anything like 200,000. If there were that many, then why did they have us exhuming single graves? The biggest mass grave we examined contained about 20 and there was another one of 11. But mostly our nine-member team worked on single graves."
Mr. Strongman said he recalls that exhumations by the Canadian group and 11 other international teams never matched the "rumours" of mass graves holding the bodies of many thousands.
"We only spent 45 days there," he said, "but I believe the largest mass grave we investigated held 20 bodies. I was in Bosnia and remember one mass grave that held 200 -- certainly we never saw anything like that in Kosovo. Of course, Louise Arbour and people had to talk about figures like 200,000 to justify bringing in NATO."
Sgt. Honeybourn, a veteran of more than 30 years of police work, was a member of the first Canadian forensic specialist team that joined units from several western countries in the search for the alleged 200,000 buried victims.
Now he maintains that the Hague staff under Ms. Arbour was confused and incompetent.
"Our resources were not maximized, simple as that," he said. "There seemed to be a pronounced lack of co-ordination, which was extremely frustrating. I don't think we were deployed properly."
In the six weeks Sgt. Honeybourn spent digging up fetid graves in Kosovo during the sweltering summer of 1999, the Canadian team exhumed 86 bodies.
Outside of being able to give information to family members of bodies they exhumed and identified, he regarded the mission, which cost Canada more than $1.2 million, as an investigative failure and "a waste of time."
Well, the fix is in, I'm sure, but, Bill Clinton is still a terrorist.
Where were the protestors when we were terrorizing Christian Serbia on behalf of Mulsim Kosovo, for NO REASON?
Did it win us favor in the Mohammedan world? LOL!
You know that some way, some how they will be forced to convict Slobo of something.
The glorious world consensus rears its ugly head.
Deduct 5,000,000 points from the Hague in the category of "Relevancy"
But now that the court has assigned, imposed, it's own 'defense' team on Milo and given them an entire week to come up to speed and present a case, I'm just sure that he will have a much better chance of proving his (oops, their) case. Right!
Don't worry, they'll convict no matter what comes out in court or what Milo tries to bring out in court.
What irks me is this article list a bunch of canadians with apparently well founded opinions, all of whom refuse to state them in court. Is canada so totally unable to commit to anything that it extends to withholding evidence that might prove someone not guilty?
Clinton IS a war criminal. In the outrageous NATO-led assault on a sovereign nation – which according to some estimates cost as much as $75 billion – we bombed Belgrade for 78 days, killed almost 3,000 civilians, and shredded the civilian infrastructure (including every bridge across the Danube.)
We devastated the environment, bombed the Chinese embassy, came very close to engaging in armed combat against Russian forces, and in general, pursued a horrific and inhumane strategy to rain misery on the civilian population of Belgrade in order to pressure Milosevic into surrendering.
Why did we do all that? The US did not even have an arguable interest in the Balkans, and no one ever tried to claim that Serbia represented any kind of threat to our nation or our interests.
But for months the Clinton administration had told us that Milosevic was waging a vicious genocide against Albanians Muslims, and needed to be stopped. The New York Times called it a “humanitarian war.” In March 1999 – the same month that the bombing started – Clinton’s State Department publicly suggested that as many as 500,000 Albanian Kosovars had been murdered by Milosevic’s regime. In May of that year, as the bombing campaign was drawing to a close, Secretary of Defense William Cohen lowered that estimate 100,000.
Now, five years after the bombing, after all the forensic investigations have been completed, the prosecutors at Milosevic’s “War Crimes” trial in the Hague have barely been able to document a questionable figure of perhaps 5,000 “bodies and body parts.” During the war, the American people were told that Kosovo was full of mass graves filled with the bodies of murdered Albanians. But none have been found.
And yet, we have seen no protestors screaming: “Where are the mass graves?” – even though, in fact, there aren’t any. Well, actually, there are. But they are not in Kosovo or Serbia. They are in Iraq, where the bodies of more than 300,000 murdered Iraqis have been discovered so far, and the toll keeps mounting.
It is my very strong opinion that ANYONE who opposed the War in Iraq, but failed to condemn the Bill Clinton/NATO war crime in Kosovo at the time it was happening, has absolutely nothing to say that is worth listening to about the Bush administration’s decision to overthrow Saddam.
Great post! Well noted.
damn clinton legacy.
Does this in fact, make Bill Clinton a "war criminal" for his participation in the war?
Bill Clinton, Mad Albright and Wes Clark could and should all be tried for violating the Geneva and Hague Convention's proscription of murdering innocent non combatants (civilians). They did this by ordering indescriminate bombing of Kosovo from 30,000 feet.
-Retired U.S. Army Officer
It really takes a certain class of nutcut UN bureaucrats to make Milosevic look good!
I would not have believed it possible.
BTTT!
You will never hear the left squawking about the "lack of mass graves" the way they do about the "lack of WMD" in Iraq. The difference is that the WMD did exist, but were moved to Syria at the last minute. In Kosovo, the much trumpted "ethnic cleansing" of Muslims never happened. In fact, because of our intervention, the only ethnic cleansing was that of the Christians in Kosovo. Face it, thanks to the Clintonistas, we handed the Muslims a great victory in Kosovo.
Interesting argument you make.
We've been hearing on FR for a year now that just because we haven't found WMD in Iraq doesn't mean they're not there somewhere.
Is not the same logic applicable here?
Milosevic is not one of the good guys. The world is a better place without him running a country. That doesn't make those he was fighting against the good guys either. It's not that simple, I don't believe every conflict can be reduced to such simple terms.
JMO.
"Milosevic is not one of the good guys. The world is a better place without him running a country. "
Since Milosevic has claimed that he was fighting against an 'islamic insurgence' and considering the events of 9/11,the Cole, the 93 WTC, and the embassies, along with the current terrorist attacks, and the fact that a 'massacre' has NOT occurred, what makes you think Milosevic is NOT one of the good guys?
Because the Hague says so?
The original claim, and the reason we bombed over there was the insistance that 200,000 or more people were slaughtered.
You can easily move 2 tons of WMD's to another country overnight, but I really doubt you can move 195,000 bodies out of the country without anyone noticing.
There is a huge difference between a proven dictator having HAD WMD's and using them and a Leader of a country trying to defend against an insurgency of islamic extremists.
Is he guilty of crimes against humanity?
I don't know.
And neither do you.
Don't be so quick to buy into the pablum.
I'm glad they're not trying Saddam!
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