[kcc-news] Info: State Dept Briefing on Kosovo Massacre (fwd)

[Mentor Cana]

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TRANSCRIPT: DOS BRIEFING ON VIDEOTAPE CONFIRMING KOSOVO MASSACRE
(Spokesman says it "conclusively" confirms atrocity report)

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Office of the Spokesman

May 19, 1999

ON-THE-RECORD BRIEFING
JAMES P. RUBIN, DEPARTMENT SPOKESMAN

VIDEO OF MASSACRE OF KOSOVAR ALBANIANS

May 19, 1999
Washington, D.C.

MR. RUBIN:  Let me begin by explaining to you what we're going to try to
do today.  First of all, as many of you know, a group of Kosovar National
Albanian American Council released a rather shocking videotape earlier
today.  We're not going to use those same images because of the graphic
nature of them.  We do have some of those tapes available and you all can
get that from the National Albanian American Council.

But what we are going to be able to do -- and this is the first time
we've ever been able to do this -- is to link videotape shot on the
ground with overhead imagery that our national technical means has
provided.  So we've, in the past, had many refugee accounts of massacres
and we've tried to track those accounts and the details provided by those
refugees with overhead imagery.  But this is the first time we've been
able to link video evidence with overhead imagery.  We've tried to put
this together in a videotape that will be helpful to all of you.  There
will be an opportunity for all of you to see it at your leisure, but I
will take this opportunity to walk you through the combination of the
videotape and the overhead imagery on the same screen.

What that combination will show is conclusively that the videotape that
was released earlier today of a massacre of over 100 Albanians in Izbica,
Kosovar Albanians, is the very same location that we were able to release
from overhead imagery earlier in the year on April 17.  So let's begin
the tape.

If you could stop it there, please.  This image may look familiar to all
of you.  This is an image of this particular location near Izbica on
March 9, and as you can see, this field is untouched.  Here is the image
of April 15, and you can see three neat rows of graves right here in this
area.

What I'd like you to be aware of is that on April 18, when we first
showed this imagery, Serb radio and television said there were no graves
in Izbica and that Serb forces were not responsible for mass executions
there.  Someone on camera even claimed that there is no killing in
Izbica, they are lying.

When the videotape was first shown that we're about to show you matched
with the imagery, the Serb radio and television said that it was an
outright forgery -- this combination of imagery and videotape -- and that
the objects seen in the village in this imagery differ from the
videotape, and that obviously this was all taken somewhere else.

What I hope to be able to demonstrate to you all is to conclusively show
that the imagery we're showing you here is the very same location of the
videotape.  So let's now move to a wider shot of this location.

What we're going to show in this wider shot that's appearing right now --
if you could pause the tape -- is that this up here to the right is the
graves.  These are two fields where there are burned tractors and burned
vehicles and where there is a great deal of debris on both sides of this
road here.  Down here where it says tree line is where the refugee says
the actual massacre took place.  This is what we can confirm from above.

The way the refugees and media accounts tell the story -- and again, I'm
stressing here this is now media accounts -- is that a group of refugees
was traveling along this road and were stopped by Serb police; that the
men were separated -- and elderly men, as you can see from the tape that
was distributed earlier today -- that the men were removed from these
tractors;  there was killing that took place along this tree line; and
that then after the Serbs left, Kosovar Albanian villagers came to the
location and moved the bodies from this tree line back up here to the
grave sites that they dug themselves.

Before we move, you should be aware that these two buildings right here
correspond to the grave site that was from the previous picture, and
these two buildings are going to display prominently in the videotape.
So let's move to the videotape.

This is the videotape that Dr. Losci took that was released earlier
today.  It's about to stop and superimpose an overhead imagery right now.
 If you could stop it there.  Now, here we regard as conclusive proof
that this video was taken at the very same location of the imagery.  If
you look up here, you'll see darkened lines in the field.  If you look
over here, you'll see darkened lines in the field.  If you look over
here, you'll see these two buildings; and there you'll see those two very
buildings.  You even see these three trees there that correspond to those
three trees there.

So in our view, this is an example of conclusive proof that this is the
overhead imagery that corresponds directly to the location of the
videotape.  Let's continue now.

Now, as the camera moves, you're going to see it stop before a building
where these are the burnt vehicles, these are the debris, this is the
road and this is the shot from the camera to that building right there
where the arrow is pointing.

Now we're going to move to the mass burial.  This is where the graves
were dug; that's again there.  And you'll see that this building, when
they move the camera, is the very same building that's shown in the
overhead imagery.  Stop right there.

Now, this building, as you can see, has a walled compound around it,
which corresponds identically to that building there, which also has a
walled -- a set of walls around it.

Q:  (Inaudible.)

RUBIN:  Let me work my way through the whole presentation and then take
your questions.  All right, let's continue the tape.

You're next going to see a shot of the people digging the graves; and
again, you're going to see that very same building that you can see in
the overhead imagery as they go about digging the graves.

It will now have a wide shot of the three rows of graves, and that very
same building that we referred to earlier is in the upper left-hand
corner.

This man told Dr. Losci -- he's one of the survivors -- that he survived
by hiding under the bodies of the other men.  He was sitting on the
debris field pointing back towards the hill behind him, where he said the
massacres took place. That's this tree line here and that's this tree
line here.  That is the orientation of the video camera.

Now you're going to see, as they walked up the hill, again, three cues
that demonstrate that the video and the overhead imagery is the identical
location.  Please stop there.

Again you see the darkened areas of the fields there and there; you see
the three trees there, there and there; and the two buildings there and
there, and the two buildings there.  Again, evidence -- conclusive in our
view and in the view of all the analysts in the U.S. Government -- that
this videotape and this imagery come from the same location.

Please continue.

He's walking through and reenacting the location, and that's another cue
of the direction of the videotape.

Finally, if you could stop there.  This survivor is now describing to Dr.
Losci how the Serbs lined him and others into four lines.  The man had
three people in front of him; when the shooting started, he fell down and
people jumped on top of him.  When this videotape was shot, the man
pointed to ground that he said still contained blood and pieces of flesh
and bones -- this is the location where the shooting took place -- and
that his own brother was among the victims of this massacre.

The point of all this -- and you can continue and turn it off at this
point -- is we wanted to demonstrate three things.  First, that the
imagery that NATO released on April 17 and this videotape that was
released earlier today are identical locations where these massacres took
place.  When you look at this kind of visual record and the conclusive
cues that this is the very same location, I hope it will make it clear to
all of you that when Serb radio and television say that these are
forgeries, these are made up, these are propaganda, that it's the same
regime that is telling you that that is responsible for the Serb police
who allegedly committed this massacre.

These kinds of episodes have taken place.  This is not the only example,
but it is the only time we've been able to match actual videotape with
overhead imagery.  It is only a small part of this story.  There are
normally not cameras where these massacres take place, and it will take
many, many days and months of hard work by investigators, after NATO has
achieved its objectives, for us to get the whole story.

But clearly, war crimes are being committed; clearly, this is an example
of that; and clearly, the Serb efforts in Belgrade are to try to lie to
the world and tell you that that just didn't happen.

I'd be happy to take some of your questions, and when we're done with
that, we do have some experts from several agencies interspersed in the
room who will try to give you some technical answers if I can't answer
them.

Q:  (Inaudible) -- related to this because it came up, if you can
entertain a couple of other questions.  BBC is reporting, you said, some
500 deserters;  BBC evidently is reporting 2,000.  Is there any updating
that you'd like to give us?

RUBIN:  Well, I said at least 500 because we did have some indication
that the number was larger.  But I don't have a specific number to offer
you.

Q:  Can I ask on a substantive thing and then I'm sure we'll all get to
the videos in a minute.  It's second-hand and I hate to ask you from
second-hand, but presumably, reportedly, Strobe Talbott said on Helsinki
TV that the fundamental differences between the U.S. and Russia have been
resolved.  I didn't hear it, obviously, but I'm going to use that as a
way to ask you if, since the briefing a few hours ago, if there's been
any narrowing --

RUBIN:  There's been no development since the briefing.

Q:  Okay. Thank you.

Q:  Can you tell us exactly on which day this massacre occurred?  And
what explanation -- did they give any explanation for why -- how you
managed to videotape this?  And what happened to the Serbs after the
massacre?  Did they just abandon the place and leave the bodies there, or
what happened?

RUBIN:  I think at the press conference earlier today, those who released
the tape may have been able to make available some of that information,
but let me tell you what I know.  What we believe is that this massacre
occurred in late March.  Some say March 29, but we can't confirm that;
but clearly in late March.  That's consistent with the imagery that shows
the field without disturbed earth and no graves in mid-March, and the
graves existing in mid-April.

As far as how this was done, my understanding is that after committing
this atrocity, the Serbs left, and that the Kosovar Albanians discovered
the bodies and went through the painful and tragic job of burying the
bodies.  As you saw, there were a lot of people, in response to Roy's
question, in this tape because this was an effort by the Kosovar
Albanians to move the bodies from the area where the massacre occurred
down by that tree line in the lower left-hand part of the screen from
earlier, all the way to where the graves were dug.  That process was
videotaped by Dr. Losci because he felt very strongly that although all
the other massacres may not be recorded for history, that this one ought
to be.

Q:  This may be not best directed to you, but toward him - but in the one
scene where they were digging, there is a guy in the foreground who was
wearing a green uniform with a gun, a side-arm.

RUBIN:  Right.  I wouldn't rule out that the KLA was there.  But when you
see --

Q:  Is that --

RUBIN:  That's perfectly possible that there were KLA fighters who were
working with the villagers to bury the dead.  But I would urge you,
before drawing significant conclusions from that fact, to take a look at
the video that I didn't choose to show because of its graphic nature.
That makes very clear that the people who were killed were elderly men.

Q:  Is this particular area under heavy surveillance by you all, that you
got a before -and-an-after picture?

RUBIN:  Well, it would be very hard for me to talk about our intelligence
capabilities.  Clearly, this is part of the product of that effort; and
given what's going on in Kosovo and the preparations that needed to be
made, I think it would be fair to say that we train a lot of our efforts
on trying to know what's going on inside of Kosovo.

Q:  You said that this is evidence that war crimes are being committed.
I may have misheard you, but did you say that this is an example of a
crime that the Serbs allegedly committed?  Is there any doubt in your
mind that this massacre occurred because of Serb forces?

RUBIN:  Well, again, I try to be very clear in my briefings about what we
know, what we believe to be possible and what we don't know.  What I can
tell you is that we know that the graves were dug, that they were dug
during that area.  We have every reason to believe that the video that
was shot of those men is the very same location on the map where our
imagery took place.  The accounts of who did the killing, we don't have
overhead imagery of the event as it took place.  But the same refugees
who recorded in great detail all of this information and told
investigators and journalists and human rights workers all of the detail
that proved to be exactly accurate when the video came out and when the
overhead imagery came out have said it was Serb police who did this.  But
we don't have a flat, independent, overhead shot of that.  But given the
fact that every other thing -- or nearly everything -- that was told by
the refugees and the survivors was proven to be correct by things we can
prove, we have every reason to believe that they are speaking truthfully
when they said the Serbs are responsible.

Q:  To follow up, how did you get this video?

RUBIN:  It was provided by the Kosovar Albanians to us some days ago.

Q:  The Kosovar Albanians, or the KLA?

RUBIN:  Well, I don't think Dr. Losci necessarily considers himself a KLA
representative.

Q:  Do you have any sort of imagery around that time that would show you
where Serb forces were or anything to back up that they were in the area?

RUBIN:  We've shown some imagery, as you may recall, a couple of weeks
ago, where we had actual scenes of Serbs sweeping through fields, seeking
refugees or civilians who we believe were fleeing.  We don't have that in
this case, to my knowledge; it may exist somewhere.  But again, we just
got this tape a few days ago; we tried to put efforts together to show
the link between this videotape and our overhead imagery and provide that
information to the Tribunal.  Every single bit of information we may
have, we're not always in a position to release publicly, immediately.

Q:  I think on the tape, one of the witnesses said that Yugoslav forces
were surrounding that area, but then the paramilitary came in. Is that
your understanding?

RUBIN:  I don't have direct information of what I answered to Andrea's
first question, I said that it is our understand that the Serb police,
based on the refugee accounts were responsible for this massacre.  But
exactly the array of forces in the area on this particular date, I don't
have information I can provide to you.

Q:  Is there any evidence of the graves being disturbed since the --

RUBIN:  On that subject, I'm not aware there is evidence of these graves
being disturbed but we do believe there is a planned campaign to destroy
evidence by Serbian authorities, including through a variety of means and
destroying those who were killed in rather gruesome ways.  We do believe
that they recognize the importance of trying to hide evidence, but I'm
not aware that in this case they have made any effort to destroy this
evidence.

The fact of the matter is, we decided to release this combination of
video imagery with overhead imagery so that it won't matter if the Serbs
destroy the evidence.  This is the kind of evidence that makes it not
necessarily relevant that the investigator goes to that location.
Because if you have refugee accounts, you have a videotape, you have
overhead imagery and you have a whole other set of information, you don't
necessarily need the kind of direct evidence that would be normally
needed.  The reason why we put this information -- feel comfortable
putting it out is because we have what we need and what we think can
provide a compelling case.  Given that the video was released, it's very
possible the Serbs may choose to destroy this evidence.  But with the
combination of the video and the overhead imagery, they can't destroy
that.

Q:  Since you had the KLA present there, is there any concern or fear
that maybe there might have been a clash between the KLA and the Serbs,
prior to this?

RUBIN:  Have you seen the videotape?

Q:  I haven't.

RUBIN:  I recommend you take a look at that, because what you'll find is
elderly men who were murdered -- one who looked like a woman to me -- and
none of them in anything resembling military uniforms; all of them
elderly men.  And the refugee accounts of the tractors being stopped were
civilians who were stopped on that road I showed you, where the men were
taken out and separated from their women and children.  The women and
children were allowed to leave -- ended up in Macedonia and Albania.  So
I wouldn't go looking for reasons to believe the Serbs in this case,
because --

Q:  I don't think he's doing that.

Q:  The question really is what the KLA were doing there -- what they
were doing there during the time of the massacre, and what happened then
subsequent to the massacre?  They got there within --

RUBIN:  Again, the point is we know the KLA is operating in Kosovo, and I
hope it won't be a surprise to you or anyone else that they're operating
in Kosovo.  A war crime is a crime against civilians.  The fact that the
KLA may have assisted in the burial of civilian victims doesn't change
the fact that it was a war crime.

Q:  Is this material going to the War Crimes Tribunal?

RUBIN:  Yes.

Q:  Do you know what happened?  You have an eyewitness, somebody who's
easily identified, because we know what he looks like -- the fellow who
fell under three bodies -- giving an on-the-record, televised account of
what happened.  He went back to live in that village, with the Serb
troops all around ready to cut his throat; is that what you're telling
us?

RUBIN:  I don't understand your question.

Q:  All right.  You refer to these people as refugees.

RUBIN:  Sometimes I meant civilians, if I said refugees.  It's hard to
say civilians every time when you're talking about refugee accounts of
this massacre from the women and the children who - men were taken from
them on the road, gave accounts of this massacre and thus led us to link
it to our overhead imagery, and now link it further with the videotape.

Q:  I understand, but refugees is used for people who are on their way
out of town --

RUBIN:  In Macedonia and Albania.

Q:  And people who were just -- if it's not bad enough, but who have lost
their homes.

RUBIN:  Right.

Q:  What I'm driving at is whether that eyewitness and other people that
you consider credible eyewitnesses remained in the area, exposed to
retaliation?

RUBIN:  Well, I think everyone in Kosovo is exposed to Serb retaliation.
The whole place has been exposed to Serb retaliation.  Where that
gentleman is, I do not know; I will try to check for you.

Q:  And Roy's point, I would put it a different way possibly.  Nobody, I
don't suppose, I don't imagine anybody's suggesting that any war crime is
justifiable.  It has been known in the Holocaust, for instance, that
civilians are massacred as a response, in retribution, unjustified, of
course, for some other action taken against the people --

RUBIN:  Right, let me answer that question.

Q:  So if the KLA conducted a little campaign and killed a few Serb
soldiers and then the Serbs went out and massacred a lot of old people,
that would be dreadful; but it would be different if, sui sponte, they
came in and killed a bunch of old people.

RUBIN:  Not to the War Crimes Tribunal it wouldn't be different.

Q:  I know it's still a war crime, but do you know the circumstances?

RUBIN:  Again, the way I would answer that question is to say a war crime
is a war crime.  There is no justification for a war crime.  The KLA has
been operating in Kosovo in response to the repression that President
Milosevic committed against the people of Kosovo for the last ten years.
They agreed to a peaceful solution.  They made a decision to choose
peace.  President Milosevic rejected peace and mounted a massive
offensive to eradicate the KLA.  The KLA has been harmed in the course of
that offensive by the tens of thousands of Serb troops who are operating
throughout Kosovo.  As a result of that, they were scattered; they lost
equipment; and they probably had significant losses.

On the other hand, the massive killing of civilians, deportations of
women and children from Kosovo created new recruits for the KLA.  The KLA
continues to operate in Kosovo and engage in hit-and-run operations.
There's no secret about that.  But regardless of that and regardless of
whether it took place in this area or in some other place in Kosovo, it
is a war crime.

Q:  Can you tell us who it was that saw the link in the first place
between this footage and the overhead imagery, and when exactly that --

RUBIN:  Well, maybe after the formal briefing is over, we'll be in a
position to provide you a little bit more information.  But we received a
videotape from the Kosovar Albanians, and we sent it to our experts.  Our
experts examined it and compared it to information they had, and we were
able to put this tape together.

Who exactly our experts are is -- clearly, they're government experts;
they work for the U.S. Government.  I wouldn't be able to be more
specific than that.

Q:  I don't want their names, but what part --

RUBIN:  I wouldn't be able to be more specific than that.

Q:  Well, they don't work for the IRS, do they?

RUBIN:  You're right about that.

Q:  Then can you tell us when exactly whoever it was --

RUBIN:  In the last few days.

Q:  Yes, but it would be nice to be able to say, look, we got the tape on
Monday and on Tuesday one of our ace workers at some agency said, hey,
there's a link here and we --

RUBIN:  It took about a day.  Most of that time was devoted to carefully
studying Dr. Losci's videotape scene by scene to make sure we could
relate it to what we already knew from imagery and other sources.
Putting together this presentation took another day or so.  So it was at
the beginning of this week the tape was examined by our experts; it took
about a day for them to conclude that it could be correlated to the
overhead imagery; and then it took about a day or so to match the
videotape with the overheard imagery in the tape you just saw.

Q:  What day was it that you actually got the tape?

RUBIN:  I think the work began on Monday, really, in earnest.  The tape
found its way to Washington before that, but the work began in earnest on
Monday.

Q:  We have what we need, I think, paraphrasing you, to provide a
compelling case.

RUBIN:  Right.

Q:  Is that a political statement or a legal statement, in terms of war
crimes?

RUBIN:  Well, the question was about whether they would remove the bodies
or their disturbing the earth.  It is our lawyers' judgment that the fact
that one has a videotape, refugee accounts and the overhead imagery
provides a compelling case, ultimately that test will have to be met by
the War Crimes Tribunal itself.

Q:  Can you tell us a little more how that would work, then?  Who would
they have a case against?  I mean, if you can't go in and see exactly who
did it, is it Milosevic?  Who --

RUBIN:  Again, if you followed the previous cases in Bosnia, what you'll
see is that it starts with a process where one refugee identifies - or a
victim or civilian, to help Barry's question there - identifies who they
think did it.  Then the investigators do interviews and use other
information that might be available to try to isolate the unit.  Then
over time, one is maybe able to isolate the leader of the unit.  Then
when one is able to investigate and move closer, one may be able to get
to the individuals themselves who might have committed the atrocity.

The point I was making is that the videotape plus the overhead imagery
plus the refugee and eye witness accounts limit the damaging effect of
any Serb attempt to disturb the earth and hide the evidence that are in
these mass graves.  That's the only point I was making.

Q:  I'd like to ask you two questions.  First, to follow-up Barry's, is
there any witness protection program?  It seems to me a little bit
disturbing if the person who witnessed a massacre, is still in Kosovo.
And secondly, obviously this is a message to Belgrade; but according to
the situation in Bosnia, is it fair to say that having Mladic and
Karadzic at large, after Srbrenica and after everything what happened in
Bosnia, that Belgrade is not going to get -- the perpetrators are not
going to get the right message?

RUBIN:  On the first question, arrangements can be made for dealing with
witnesses. I wouldn't be in a position to detail those arrangements;
those would be done by the War Crimes Tribunal or others.

With respect to the second question, this is a subject that has been
addressed before in this briefing room and my answer is the same as
before; and that is there are a number of people who were indicted -
roughly half of those indicted -- who have either voluntarily surrendered
under pressure from the West or have been captured.  So the fact that
some did not yet face justice in The Hague should not mask the fact that
many have.  The fact also is that there is no statute of limitations on
war crimes, and that Karadzic and Mladic will have their day, and people
in Belgrade, as we know from their effort to hide the evidence and their
concentrated effort to hide evidence, are concerned about this and that's
why they go to some considerable lengths to hide the evidence.

Would it have been better if Mladic and Karadzic had faced justice?  I
think that's a question for historians to debate.  The fact is that many
have faced justice; there are many in prison; there are many in the dock;
and there are many indictees who were submitted to the justice of The
Hague.

Q:  Just one other question.  At the top you said your decision not to
show some of the very graphic images -- you decided they were too graphic
-- but don't you think that by showing them it presents more evidence of
what --

RUBIN:  Well, we're going to make that videotape available.  We'll have
some copies for you, and news organizations can make that judgment for
themselves.  We thought our job here was to make the case as compellingly
as we could of why our overhead imagery about this place matched directly
the videotape that was shown, of which I only showed some selected
excerpts.  The full videotape has been released by the group at the
Foreign Press Center, and we do have some copies.  All of you can make
that judgment for yourselves.

We thought that the right role for the United States here was to make
clear that when the Serbs tell all of you that this is a fabrication,
that this is a lie, that they are lying.  I hope that any fair-minded
person, having seen this videotape, and having an opportunity to look at
some of the stills when we're done, will know that the Serbs have lied to
the world about what happened in Izbica.

Q:  Can I have one more try?  Would you not want to, for the sake of just
making this comprehensible, give the context in which this massacre
occurred?  I mean, what kind of operations were going on in the area at
that time; who was involved; things that you know?  Because I'm sure you
can reconstruct a lot of that from your own data.

RUBIN:  Well, when we have more information to provide on this, I will be
happy to provide it to you.  This information comes very quickly.  I was
just asked how quickly we got it.  We did move very fast to try to create
this videotape and make it available to you.  And as additional
information about Izbica becomes available, we will provide it.

Q:  Thank you.

(end transcript)

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