James P. Rubin, Department of State Spokesman Press Briefing on 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.

(THE TAPE IS STARTED)

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 are 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.

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

MR. 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 US 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.

QUESTION: (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?

MR. 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.

QUESTION: 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 --

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

QUESTION: Okay. Thank you.

QUESTION: 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?

MR. 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.

QUESTION: 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.

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

QUESTION: Is that --

MR. 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.

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

MR. 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.

QUESTION: 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?

MR. 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.

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

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

QUESTION: The Kosovar Albanians, or the KLA?

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

QUESTION: 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?

MR. 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.

QUESTION: 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?

MR. 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.

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

MR. 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.

QUESTION: 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?

MR. RUBIN: Have you seen the videotape?

QUESTION: I haven't.

MR. 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 --

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

QUESTION: 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 --

MR. 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.

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

MR. RUBIN: Yes.

QUESTION: 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?

MR. RUBIN: I don't understand your question.

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

MR. 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.

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

MR. RUBIN: In Macedonia and Albania.

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

MR. RUBIN: Right.

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

MR. 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.

QUESTION: 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 --

MR. RUBIN: Right, let me answer that question.

QUESTION: 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.

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

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

MR. 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.

QUESTION: 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 --

MR. 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.

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

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

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

MR. RUBIN: You're right about that.

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

MR. RUBIN: In the last few days.

QUESTION: 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 --

MR. 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.

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

MR. 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.

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

MR. RUBIN: Right.

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

MR. 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.

QUESTION: 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 --

MR. 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.

QUESTION: 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?

MR. 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.

QUESTION: 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 --

MR. 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 Untied 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.

QUESTION: 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.

MR. 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.

QUESTION: Thank you.

[end of document]