El Pais
23 septiembre 1999 - Nš 1238

by PABLO ORDAZ in Madrid

Spanish police and forensic experts have not found proof of Genocide 
in the North of Kosovo. Prisoners [in the prison in] Istok were shot 
after the bombardment of NATO.

Crimes of War - yes, Genocide - no. This was definitely shown 
yesterday by the group of Spanish experts formed by officials from 
the Scientific Police and Civilian Forensics that has just returned 
from Istok, the Zone in the North of Kosovo under the control of the 
Legion. {Spanish Legion?} 187 cadavers found and analyzed in 9 
villages were buried in individual graves, oriented for the most part 
toward Mecca out of respect for the religious beliefs of the Albanian 
Kosovars and without sign of torture. "There were no mass graves. For 
the most part the Serbs are not as bad as they have been painted," 
reflected the forensic official Emilio Perez Pujo.

That was not the only irony. Also questioned were the successive 
counts that are being offered by the "allies" on the tragedy of 
Kosovo. "I have been reading the data from UN said Perez Pujol, 
Director of the Forensic Anatomical Institute of Cartagena. "And they 
began with 44,000 deaths. Then they lowered it to 22,000. And now 
they're going with 11,000. I look forward to seeing what the final 
count will really be." The Spanish Mission which should now submit a 
report to the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, left 
from Madrid in the beginning of the month of the August with the 
feeling that they were going on a road to hell. "They told us that we 
were going to the worst zone of Kosovo. That we should prepare 
ourselves to perform more than 2000 autopsies. That we would have to 
work until the end of November. The result is very different. We only 
found 187 cadavers and now we are going to return," explained the 
chief inspector, Juan Lopez Palafox, responsible for the Office of 
Anthropology and Scientific Police.

The forensic people, as well as the police, applied their experience 
in Rwanda in order to determine what occurred in Kosovo at least in 
that section assigned to the Spanish detachment and they were not 
able to find evidence of genocide.

"In the former Yugoslavia," said Lopez Palafox, "crimes were 
committed, some no doubt horrible, but they derived from the war. In 
Rwanda we saw 450 corpses of women and children, one on top of 
another, all with their heads broken open." The Chief Inspector added 
that in Kosovo, on the contrary, they had found many isolated 
corpses. "It gives the impression that the Serbs gave a choice to the 
families to leave their homes. If some member of the clan, for 
whatever reason, decided to remain, upon returning they were found 
dead from a shot or by whatever other method." {our emphasis}

One of the members of the Spanish mission shed light on events in the 
Istok prison, bombed at the end of May by NATO planes. The work, 
directed by Lopez Palafox and Perez Pujol was aimed at solving the 
following mystery: who killed the more than 100 prisoners - the bombs 
of NATO or the bullets of Serbian soldiers? The answer, according to 
the preliminary studies, is clear. Some of the cadavers analyzed had 
shrapnel wounds and therefore clearly appeared to have been killed by 
the bombardment. But others died of clear clean bullet wounds, 
perhaps from the bullets of machine guns. The most likely thesis is 
that after the bombardment, the prison inmates tried to flee and were 
shot by Serbian guards.