A Place to Stand

This will include relevant sections or interesting sections of the 9 pages I have been sent & covering letter. My comments will be in italics:

Parliamentary Question 6th Feb 2002

123 Mrs Mahon: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what progress has been made in identifying the bodies found in Dragodan and Suva Reka in Kosovo

124 Mrs Mahon : To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what progress has UNMIK made in tracing the missing Serbs in Kosovo.

No answer is given & I don't know if this is because it is a private written answer or not.
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Source Unknown (not found on Google or Hansard either)

Mr Ancram: To ask the |Secretary of state for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how many of the bodies found in the mass grave at Dragodan, Pristina have been identified, broken down by (a) ethnic background and (b) sex. {10450}
Mr McShane: The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has exhumed 210 bodies from individual graves at the cemetery in Dragodan, Pristina. Of the bodies exhumed, 36 were females and 139 were male. The gender of 35 bodies could not be identified. According to the Missing Persons Unit of the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), 52 of the 210 bodies have been identified to date. Five bodies were Kosovo Serbs (4 male & 1 female), 47 bodies were Kosovo Albanians (40 male & 7 female).
The reference to 210 "individual graves" is deliberate. A mass grave is ipso facto proof of genocide whereas 210 individual graves are merely proof of 210 murders. Normal practice is for the ICTY to classify 2 bodies as a mass grave, so clearly they have no doubts of who the culprits are here. Mr McShane used the same wording in his previous letter to me. Were he to admit the truth he would be admitting to our government complicity in genocide instead of merely 210 over enthusiastic murders.

Presumably the "identification" has been achieved entirely by having locals identify the remains rather than using DNA. Since Serbs had been "cleansed" it is amazing that as many as 5 were identified as Serb. It is quite likely that many of the Albanian "identifications" may be fraudulent since fraudulent claims of massacres by them were very common on the other hand the KLA is widely accepted as having killed as many Albanians as Serbs so finding bodies from both nationalities is not surprising. A DNA check would have proven whether the people identifying relatives were genuine. In fact, had a serious attempt been made there is no possible doubt that all of the bodies could have been identified by sex & most of them by race by the "investigators" testing DNA. I have written previously on the obvious refusal to seriously check DNA in Bosnia.
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the following is marked XXXX where blacked out & ' where a letter is obscured
FM PRISTINA
TO I'@EDIATE FCO
TELNO 64
OF 230600Z AUGUST 99

MASS GRAVES y/war crimes
11. XXXMedia reports talk of a mass grave at DragodanXXX this phrase had been obscured but I assume using a different colour of felt tip than the photocopier is designed for & thus the deleted words are visible. The phrase "war crimes" is handwritten & the stroke points to the censored phrase. I am told that all deletions were because the information is "not relevant" which I think we may take as a lie. I assume this deletion was because it proves that our government knew about this massacre, knew it was a "mass grave" despite MacShane's lie, & had no intention of doing anything about it until it became media knowledge the middle-class suburb of Pristina where our office and residence are located difficult for them not to know of it then. A local doctor reported finding nine sites with civilian bodies while looking for the body of a friend no mention of his nationality but since he was able to move around possibly he was an Albanian on the other hand most professionals were Serb so possibly he was a Serb & was able to persuade British military to give him protection as he searched. British squaddies seem not to have been as willing to turn their eyes from genocide as their superiors. Roma witnesses are reported as saying that there are between 20 and 50 sites in and around Pristina where 250-300 bodies are buried. Roma are generally described in the media as "allies" of the Serbs thus justifying genocide against them too so we can assume they are talking about mass graves created by our KLA "police"

WAR CRIMES: ORAHOVAC
12. KFOR have confirmed the arrest by Dutch & German troops of three Serbs in Orahovac on war crimes charges> Local Serbs have reacted strongly, demanding their release & complaining about double standards in treatment from KFOR. Tanjug Yugoslav news agency has also issued a statement drawing the inevitable comparison over war crimes between here and Bosnia and Croatia: it is always the Serbs that get picked on.
(comment: this along with a KFOR campaign to collect arms from Serbs inn the town, will create an interesting backdrop for the deployment of Russian KFOR troops into the town on 23 August. Albanian residents have threatened to prevent the Russians getting there). this is not relevant to the Dragodan genocide but has been reprinted because it shows the breathtaking dishonesty of the Btitish occupiers - there is no question, as the failure to arrest anybody for Dragodan proves, that the Serbian complaints of bias are 100% true & that the Foreign Office knows it - it is clear that by disarming Serbs but not KLA supporters (whom under the occupation treaty they specificly guaranteed to disarm) they are deliberately inciting the KLA to kill Russian UN troops
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KOSOVO SCENES OF CRIME TEAMS: PROGRESS REPORT

SUMMARY
1. Scenes of crime teams working well. 67 bodies exhumed in first month. Accredited to UNMIK civilian police the "police" were created by swearing in entire units of the KLA . Good relations with ICTY, KFOR and others
DETAIL
2. I visited Kosovo 3-6 June. The first scenes of crime team which had arrived on 4n May, was just leaving, having exhumed 67 bodies. I observed the enthusiastic second team undertaking their first 2 exhumations onn 6th june. The first team had spent a large proportion of their time around Kosovo Polje and had spent a large proportion of their time at Dragodan cemetery in the outskirts of Pristina. The second team was due to work on some sites at Gracanica, but Serb unrest diverted them to the still unfinished Dragodan cemetery. ie NATO really wanted to get away from examining the largest mass grave in Kosovo as quickly as possible

3. The Kosovo Polje sites had proved unproductive, yielding only 3 bodies (all homicides). Of the 64 bodies recovered from unmarked, recent graves at Dragodan cemetery, 27 had died from natural causes but the remainder were homicides I don't know whether the reference to Dragodan cemetery is a separate location from the mass grave but photos of the later which used to be available on Decani suggest the main grave was not the cemetery.http://www.kosovo.net/dragodan6.jpg
. ICTY investigators were at pains to stress that empty grave sites had value in themselves, for example providing evidence of Serb removal of bodies after the intial burial or alternately providing evidence of KLA removal, if that were ever a matter of interest, or indeed that the KLA had been creating false "graves" for propaganda reasons. A thorough, or even not so thorough examination of these "graves" would have shown if they ever contianed human bodies. This, for obvious reasons, has clearly not been done in exactly the same way it was never done for what the CIA had assured us were "mass graves" in Bosnia which contained nothing. Our teams are also well aware that, even if their forensic evidence are not used in ICTY or UNMIK trials, identifying and returning bodies to families is important for Kosovan society this also suggests that all of the 158 bodies Mr McShane said were unidentified were in fact those of Serbs whose families had been ethnically cleansed & that he was perfectly well aware of this fact.

4. The core team members, who will stay for the full 6 month deployment, have built good relations with the key organisations in Pristina:
(a) Since the UN Secretariat's approval on 19 may that the team should be part of UNMIK civilian police ie the KLA, all team members '''''''''''' the 10 police officers & 5 forensic experts) are receiving '''ipol passes. I saw Commissioner Fredericksen who was pleased with arrangement and appreciated that the team were responding to both ICTY and UNMIK tasking (the Gracanic site is an UNMIK priority unlike the far larger Dragodan one) Det Supt XXXXXXXXXXXXX the team leader, and I spoke with the UNMIK finance people who seem agreeable to cope with the rapid turn-over of the 11 rotating team members by giving XXXXXX twice ? their daily subsistence in arrears at the end of their stints in theatre. XXXXXX will then repay the subsistence advances made by the British Office. The teams have UNMIK radios and receive UNMIK fuel looks like a minor scam.
.... ..... I had been disappointed by the obstructive attitude of one (British) member of ICTY staff at the start of the deployment, but I put the problem down to poor communication and a personality clash with the Hague. We have a good ally in John Ralston, Chief of investigations interesting that while all names of British representatives are censored MR Ralston who is not, technically, acting as a British civil servant isn't - such is the madness of bureaucracy in the Hague, and I do not expect the problem to recur I assume that the unnamed member was fired for being unwilling to support the position that Serb bodies don't count. It is always convenient for genocidal mass murderers to have a "good ally" running the organisation whose official duty is to bring war criminals, on all sides, to justice...... The Orahovac team is staffed by 2 international ICTY-funded teams & some gratis personnel small groups of Austrians, Swedes & Canadians and a larger German team so we have "gratis" workers collecting evidence but, with the marginal exception of the Swedes, all from countries which participated in a war which even the British parliament has subsequently acknowledged was criminal...........

The British scenes of crime teams are becoming well-known in Pristina, working within a web of other organisations and earning their respect obviously all other organisations there are KLA/NATO friendly so this acknowledges that the British "investigators" are not going to seriously investigate NATO/KLA crimes They have settled onto a productive working rhythm and morale is high presumably due to "obstructive" members being fired . They are dedicated people who are keen to do a good job.

The scenes of crime work, like any operation in Kosovo, can be thrown of course by various factors: political, personal & practical. But I do not forsee insurmountable problems. XXXXXXXXXXXXX is now more philosophical about taking setbacks in his stride & is coping with his frustrations of UN bureaucracy. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX & I aim to make regular visits over the summer to check things remain on an even keel Many thanks as usual to the British office in Pristina for their support. The invitation to the QBP went down very well with XXXXXXXXXXX and XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Signed XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
War Crimes Coordinator
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UK SCENES OF CRIME TEAMS IN KOSOVO

Many thanks for your letter of 3 May & for your agreement that our team in Kosovo should begin work on the sites identified by the ICTY.

' understand from our people on the ground that their work, with the guidance of the ICTY office in Pristina, is progressing satisfactorily. The team has already investigated 15 reported grave sites in Kosovo Polje, where they have found only 3 bodies. They will move at the weekend to what they expect to be the more substantial site of Dragodan cemetery. first things first & obviously "graves" without bodies which the KLA are keen about come well ahead of 210 murders they aren't & which happened under NATO rule. Since NATO's war ended in June 1999 this letter means that the serious investigation of Dragodan didn't start till at least a year after.
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The original proposal to transfer all bodies to Drahovac, which seemed unnecessarily laborios, has been put to one side. VRIC and/or the families should be able to take custody of identified remains, given the limited capacity at Prisitna & Orahovac, we favour early burial pending possible later identification which means that DNA identification is still possible for the 158 unidentified bodies........

'n media policy, Det Supt XXXXXXXXXXXXX is the laison point with the media. XXXXXXX and I will consider a few media requests for the interviews with other members of the teams, on the strict understanding that they are restricted to personal reactions to the nature of the work, with no comment on the political or legal context. This has worked well in the past: last night's BBC documentary on one of last year's teams, "The Body Hunters", struck the right note. One can rely on the BBC to strike the right note when reporting genocide. If only they had been reporting Auschwitz they could have avoided all the stuff about Jews & concentrated on the "personal reactions" of the poor guards.

Perhaps we could have a quick word on the telephone about any remaining concerns.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Coordinator for War Crimes Issues
United Nations Department
That covers the information I was sent. Perhaps i should also post relevant bits of the covering letter & the reply i will send.