Helena Ranta Accused Western Officials of Pressuring her to Set the Serbs Up

Several days ago, a Finnish online news source reported Helena Ranta, forensic dentist involved in Racak hoax, complained in her recently published biography she was pressured by the Western authorities to accuse the Serbs for the “massacre”.

Ranta also revealed William Walker, an American official stationed in Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija in 1999 under the OSCE umbrella — notorious for being sent to stir problems in various parts of the world, rather than help calm the tensions — was so angry over her apparent refusal “to use sufficiently strong language” against the Serbs, that he broke the pencil at some point and threw the pieces at her.

Ranta’s story sparked a lot of interest in Serbia, since the Racak fraud was used as a justification and trigger for the US-led NATO bombardment of Serbia that lasted almost three months (78 days). Ranta was promptly interviewed by Vecernje Novosti, where she further explained Walker insisted she should tell the media that Serbs have committed a massacre in the village of Racak, and that the killed were not combatants, but “innocent civilians”.

At the same time, she resolutely denied there were two different forensic reports she had put together, as established by the three Berliner Zeitung reporters, Bo Adam, Roland Heine and Claudius Technau. Speaking to Belgrade reporter, Ranta insisted there was only one report she wrote and that she acted perfectly professionally at all times, being it was simply not up to her to issue judgments on one side’s innocence or guilt.

However, according to the Serbian forensic expert Dr. Slavisa Dobricanin, the head specialist who examined the bodies of 40 Albanians in the Racak ravine, and investigative judge Danica Marinkovic who inspected the scene of the alleged crime, Ranta is merely weaving a new web of lies almost ten years later.

Too Little, Too Late: Do Spare Us the Crocodile Tears!

According to them, the woman who appears to have “opened her very soul” these days to the media, revealing the kind of pressures she was under while working on the bodies piled in the Racak ravine has, in fact, personally stated everything for which she blames the former OSCE Mission chief in Kosovo province, William Walker. That those were the “innocent victims massacred” in Racak, that they were “unarmed civilians” and that it was a “crime against humanity” — those were Helena Ranta’s words, former Director of the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Pristina Professor Slavisa Dobricanin confirmed for Novosti.

“I’m not surprised by the things Ranta is saying now, but she still hasn’t admitted her own statements back then were false. I clearly remember she was constantly under surveillance by the German embassy and the Finnish ministry. The Finnish Minister for Human Rights Timo Labelma (sp?) was at the Institute all the time, as well as the German embassy’s Second Secretary. She was very nervous and constantly outside the autopsy room. She was always in the Institute hallways, talking to someone on her mobile phone”, Professor Dobricanin, who was leading the team of Serbian pathologists in the Racak case, recalls.

Pointing out Ranta did not have sufficient expertise to determine the nature of the Racak conflict, Dobricanin is not prepared to forgive the lies with which Ranta smeared Serb pathologists at the time, claiming their analysis of the gunpowder residue found on the hands of the KLA terrorists piled up in the Racak ravine was “outdated”.

“When a person shoots from the firearm, the traces of unburned gunpowder remain on the palms of the hands. When we suspect someone has been using firearms, we check for those remains with the adhesive strips and diphenylamine solution to determine whether the residue found is the gunpowder. We have followed the same procedure in the Racak case. On the palms of the hands of 37 bodies out of 40 we have found the gunpowder residue. There was absolutely no question that those men were the terrorists,” Dr. Dobricanin asserted.

“But, for Helena Ranta this method was ‘old and outdated’. She claimed Interpol had prohibited it way back in 1968. Only she said that much later, despite the fact that every single autopsy report, and there was a total of 40 of them, was jointly signed by the international and Serb pathologists without a shred of disagreement,” Dobricanin said.

“Her claim that such analysis was ‘outdated’ was incorrect. When I testified at the trial against Slobodan Milosevic in the Hague, I submitted to the judges an article from the American magazine about the company which produces the material we have been using in our analysis. Would the Americans continue to produce ‘outdated’ forensic tools and material for their own market?,” Dobricanin asked.

He said that, after the autopsy reports were completed and jointly signed without any objections on behalf of the international forensic experts, the members of the international team decided to hold a press conference in Pristina. Members of the Serbian forensic team were not allowed to attend.

“William Walker was extremely nervous. He could barely stand still and he kept drumming his fingers on the chair. He did not speak. It was Helena Ranta that said all of it: that the killed were the unarmed civilians, that the massacre was committed, and that it was the crime against the civilians. The very three things a forensic specialist can not say,” Dr. Dobricanin concluded his recollection.

Investigative Judge Danica Marinkovic confirms the bodies found in the Racak field belonged to the armed terrorists, not “innocent civilians”. She went to the inquest with her team of investigators the moment the bodies were reported as discovered.

“As soon as we arrived to the village we found a large amount of weapons, both heavy and light. Machine guns, automatic, semi-automatic guns, the ammunition cases.. were all over the place,” Judge Marinkovic remembers.

“They opened fire at us when we went to examine the bodies. That lasted for three days, whenever we tried to enter the village. All the reports, by everyone who was involved in performing the autopsies in the line of duty, were the same — in regards to the cause of death, the injuries and in every other respect. But Helena Ranta, who was sent there with the political agenda, had issued her own statements. The reason why only her claims made it to the public was the bombardment that started only few days later”, Marinkovic said.

Racak Charges Removed from All the Indictments

Danica Marinkovic and Slavisa Dobricanin both testified at the Hague, on behalf of the former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s defense. As expert witnesses, they refuted prosecution charges, especially in respect to the names, gender and the age of the victims. Then-prosecutor Geoffrey Nice went as far as calling the Serbian judge and forensic pathologist “criminals”. After a while, when the prosecution data on the Racak KLA victims was “reevaluated”, he too quoted Marinkovic and Dobricanin, citing results of their investigation.

Following the evidence presented by the Judge Marinkovic and Professor Dobricanin, Hague prosecution removed Racak charges from all the indictments: from that of the late Yugoslav and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, from the process against the former Serbia’s President Milan Milutinovic, and from the processes against another five former Yugoslav and Serbian functionaries.

To this day, biography and all, Helena Ranta has never expressed regret over the ugly role she played in providing an alibi for Washington and NATO to start an aggression against Serbia, based on lies, conjectures and false allegations.