Confession of English forensics expert who saw them after the war in Kosovo

All this experience, but other experiences around the world, Professor Sue Black summarized them into her book of memoaries called “All That Remains” (all that remains) where she speaks of the horrors she has seen in postwar Kosovo. She says that even after all these terrible images there are no nightmares and adds that “are the living that freak me out of”.

Dame Sue Black is one of the world's most famous Anatomists and anthropologists. Its expertise has been relevant to many criminal cases of high profiles, and in 1999 it had led anthropologists for the work of the British Forenzice Team during war crimes investigations in Kosovo, Koha.net reports.

The British newspaper “rial” has extracted an extract from this book where it talks about Kosovo:

June 1999, I went to Kosovo to help identify a large number of troops and confirm witness statements supporting war crimes against Slobodan Milosevic and his associates.

I came to the first location of the indictment “and wore my usual white suit for crime scenes, double laptop gloves and black work boots at a temperature of 38 degrees Celsius.

On March 25th, Serbian special police forces headed the village of Krusha the Great.

Armed men had separated men and boys from their families and had gathered them into an abandoned house.

An armed man comes out to the door and the Kalashnikov light goes on. Fellow workers then set the building on fire.

Forty men and boys reportedly lost their lives that night.

I stood at the door and I saw a nightmare scene.

There were at least 30 bodies one-on-one in one room and over 10 in another room, that all burned heavily and decomposing.

They had stayed there for about three hot months, filled with worms, scattered, and eaten by animals.

There was only one way to clear that space and that was to make it crawling, collecting every remnant.

The goal was to collect body parts and personal items that could be identified as well as evidence of crime involving bullets and shelling.

We cleaned both rooms and placed as many identification marks as we could from each of the victims.

The oldest was likely in the 80s, while the youngest in the 15s.

In another country, the elderly, women, and children were separated from men from a convoy of refugees.

The children were placed on one side of a meadow and were told to run to their mothers. With their mothers and grandparents forced to watch, kidnappers fired at the children while they were running.

When they were killed, men turned weapons to women and the elderly.

A cold, calculated murder of the innocent. As we were approaching the cemetery, our mood was gloomy.

It was a disgusting place where unfathomable acts were committed to the sport of barbarians.

The bodies were exhumed one by one of the mass graves. The buried remains were more likely to be preserved by ground temperatures is cooler, slower, and protected by predators.

At times, though, the good condition of the mortor remains makes work for us more difficult.

A two-year-old girl was placed in a plastic bag lying before me, still dressed in pajamas and red boots.

My job was to strip her off, let the police get their testimony clothes and then start anatomical study by revealing the wounds that had devastated her fine form.

Suddenly I felt a calm blanket ruling.

I looked up and I saw a police cord blocking my view. One of our team had made a cardinal mistake by shifting in his mind the face of his young daughter into the crippled body of this little girl and it was hard to reconcile with him.

So my colleagues were blocking her from seeing her dead child.

Without saying a word, I walked across the man's cord and embraced him until I overcame the situation by crying.

When dealing with the terrible death of the innocent, one must shed tears.

Having a receptive heart is not always a sign of weakness. It's often a sign of humanity.

Extract extracted from Rachel Blakely from memoaries “All That's Remains” written by Professor Sue Black, translated and adapted by Koha.net's editorial.