Račak massacre

The Račak massacre or Račak operation was the mass killing of 45 Kosovo Albanians that took place in the village of Račak in central Kosovo in January 1999. The massacre was prompted by Albanian separatist activity in the region, and perpetrated by Serbian security forces. The Serbian government refused to let a war crimes prosecutor visit the site, and maintained that the casualties were all members of the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army killed in combat with state security forces.

The killings were investigated by two separate forensic teams, the first a joint Yugoslav–Belarusian team and the second an external Finnish team representing the EU. The first team's report, which was commissioned by the Yugoslav government, concluded that those killed, who included a woman and 12-year-old child, were all separatist guerrillas and not civilians. The findings of the second team, however, sharply contradicted the Yugoslav investigation's report, determining that the deaths constituted killings of unarmed civilians. The lead Finnish investigator, anthropology expert Dr. Helena Ranta, called it a "crime against humanity", though refusing as a scientist to directly label it a massacre or assign blame to any specific party. Many of the details of the Finnish team's findings were left undisclosed for two years, for fear that they would negatively impact tribunal proceedings in the Netherlands, seeking to punish Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milošević for alleged war crimes.

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