Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide evoked many conspiracy theories about “the real” cause of his death. Online media from the region, mainly from Montenegro and Serbia, went a step further and succeeded in bringing the whole story in a connection to Kosovo.
Jeffrey Epstein was an American millionaire who sexually abused underage girls and subjected them to men with whom he maintained private and business relationships. In 2008 Epstein was convicted for child prostitution in a criminal proceeding in the State of Florida. He was charged guilty with a minimal sentence which he spent mostly out of jail. Back then, Epstein was a subject of FBI’s investigation which should have resulted in Federal-level prosecution, but then he was salvaged by at-the-time State Attorney from Southern District of Florida. In the aftermath, a series of private indictments were filed against Epstein by his victims and their families. All this resulted in putting him under the arrest in July 2019. Epstein committed suicide in a jail in New York on August 10, which is a day after the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit released to the public over 2,000 pages of documents about his case.
The horrific story about Epstein’s “getaway” from legal system besides accusations and investigations, is yet to be finished since it received another dimension: the story got linked to Epstein’s private and business acquaintances from realms of politics and finance. Amongst people with whom Epstein had connections to are the two Presidents of the US: Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.
Although Trump’s connections to Epstein were documented and revealed to the public (along with facts that he appointed Acosta as a Member of his Administration – the same Acosta who was responsible for Epstein’s sentence evasion), Trump does not hesitate to publicly support those conspiracy theories which tend to claim that Epstein was murdered because he had “compromising information about Bill Clinton”.
Some media from the region readily embarked on presenting these stories as legitimate news mostly by translating various “conspiracy-theorist” articles, blogs and social networks’ posts. Some of these media went a step further so recently we got one authentic fake news on this topic. In a nutshell, this fake news comes down to two main allegations: first – there is an alleged testimony about Clinton’s involvement in child prostitution – or, as the tabloids call it “the pedophile orgies” organized by Epstein; and second that Epstein himself brought his victims from Kosovo, with the help of international officials and those from Kosovo.
The first article that appeared with such content in our region was published on August 19, 2019, on a Montenegro-based website IN4S. As the source was, IN4S has listed a site Fort Russ – or to be precise an article titled: “Teenage girl recruited by a paedophile Jeffrey Epstein reveals: Bill Clinton snared in a pedophile ring: From Kosovo to Iraq”, which was published on August 10, 2019.
In the time span of just a couple of hours, the text of the article got redistributed, partially or entirely, by approximately twenty websites from Montenegro and Serbia, followed by a few from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia.
Although the story emerged in regional websites only a few days ago, it is much older, and this represents a “solo venture” of one person who managed to come up with the story by merging parts of five unrelated articles. And the following five articles, which had been published in the time span of eight years, were used as the basis:
- Captive market: The sexual slave traffic in children, Gordon Thomas, Canada Free Press, October 8, 2006.
- Blackwater Used Child Prostitutes in Iraq/Lawyers Trade Accusations over Blackwater, Alex Constantine, Constantine Report, August 9, 2009.
- Teenage girl recruited by paedophile Jeffrey Epstein reveals how she twice met Bill Clinton, Sharon Churcher & Polly Dunbar, Daily Mail, March 6, 2011.
- Kosovo’s Mafia: A hotbed of human trafficking, Matt McAllester & Jovo Martinovic, Global Post, March 27, 2011.
- Disgusting: Clinton Snared In Pedophile Ring, Kris Zane, Western Journalism, March 27, 2014.
The text that came as a result of the merging these sources was originally published on March 28, 2014, on a blog There must be justice which was deleted in the meantime. The identical text was published on a blog Big and mighty nose in 2017. In both cases, the text was signed by Grey Carter, which is a pseudonym used by the owner of both blogs – Danijela Dorado Radojičić, accompanied with the pseudonym “Kisha D. Dorado” which could be found even on her third blog.
Not only did Danijela Dorado Radojičić take sections of different articles, but she also readjusted them to fit in the story on the alleged chain of child prostitution that spans from Kosovo to the former President of the US Bill Clinton. The website IN4S while translating this “collage”, has added few interventions so the crucial assertion of this website’s article was the following:
According to former sex slave’s testimony, Clinton was present during sex parties involving up to twenty underage girls on a secluded island in the Caribbean. Flight records show that Clinton flew in Epstein’s private jet to the island a couple of times. Clinton was in close connections to Epstein’s company employees, who compiled thousands of photos of naked young girls. These photos were used as a catalogue by which Epstein could have rent his girls to powerful politicians and British owners, including Clinton.
This claim was taken from the website Western Journalism from the article which served as a direct inspiration for the text published by Danijela D. Radojičić since it was published only a day before her blog was published. Unnamed “sex slave” from the IN4S article in the original text published in English was identified as Virginia Roberts – one of the women who sued Epstein and his partner Ghislaine Maxwell for abuse and compulsion to child prostitution.
However, Roberts had never stated that Clinton was present at “sex parties” with underage people, nor was he “Epstein’s client”. On the contrary, she directly denied having any knowledge of this.
Her statements were cited in the Daily Mail’s article which served as one of the sources for D. Radojičić’s blog. She took multiple sections dealing with Bill Clinton from this article, but she missed statements where Roberts denies that Epstein had subjected her to Clinton. Her statement is as follows:
Yet Virginia Roberts stresses that she was never “lent out” to Mr. Clinton. On one occasion, she adds that Epstein did invite two young brunettes to a dinner which he held on his Caribbean island for Mr. Clinton shortly after he left the Oval Office. But, as far as she knows, the former President did not take the bait.
(…)
“Maybe Jeffrey thought they would entertain Bill, but I saw no evidence that he was interested in them”.
(…)
“I don’t remember seeing Bill again on the trip but I assume Ghislaine flew him back”.
In the court testimony, she gave under the oath, Virginia Roberts (today Virginia Giuffre) named many influential men with whom she had sexual relations, under the Epstein’s order. Those she named included Alan Dershowitz, Jean Luc Brunel, and British Prince Andrew, Duke of York. As for Clinton, she said the following:
“I have seen reports saying or implying that I had sex with former President Bill Clinton on Little St. James Island,” an island Epstein owns in the US Virgin Islands.
Clinton was present on the island at a time when I was also present on the island, but I have never had sexual relations with Clinton, nor have I ever claimed to have had such relations. I had never seen him having sexual relations with anyone.
On the left: Daily Mail; on the right: court testimony of Virginia Roberts.
The article which initially published this claim is no longer available on Western Journalism website. On its web address, there is an announcement that some older materials were removed from the website since Western Journal “started to enforce stricter redactory standards”.
Author of the article is Kris Zane who on his YouTube channel regularly publishes conspiracy theories about politicians of American Democratic Party discussing which member is “the Antichrist” and who is a “reptile”.
Besides his claim that Roberts witnessed Clinton’s participation in “sex parties”, there is no other source or testimony that something like that has ever happened. Over 2,000 pages of documents from court proceedings against Jeffrey Epstein that were declassified a day prior to his suicide do not contain any testimony that former US President used to be his “client”.
Western Journal
Founder of Western Journalism website is a republican lobbyist/activist Floyd Brown. Website, altogether with his founder, is well known for sharing the conspiracy theories and fake news which target political opponents, at the same time promoting extremist right-wing narratives including various islamophobic contents.
A couple of years ago, the website was renamed into Western Journal and went through a process of “changing its image” as Google and Facebook introduced measures to reduce the visibility (and profitability) of fake news and disinformation. Part of this “rebranding” was an introduction of “stricter redactory standards”.
One of the fake news published by WJ has also reached our region, and it was a subject of Raskrinkavanje’s analysis (a claim that the State of California is adopting legislation which “prohibits the Bible”).
The assertion about fabricated testimony of a real victim of Jeffrey Epstein is presented in a wider context of the story that Clinton and Epstein were involved in forced prostitution and child trafficking in Kosovo. An article published by IN4S contains an entire introduction of an article published on Fort Russ website whose author is Drago Bosnić (one of its editors). The introduction was translated and published as follows:
FRN has published a few articles in the last couple of months …..It is worth mentioning that despite the indictment in the case of child slavery it certainly does not cover the full extent of Epstein’s horrific crimes. On the contrary, it is just the tip of an iceberg and it comes down to just a few factors.
Before 2002-2005, which is encompassed in a federal indictment, Epstein was involved in a pedophile scheme, involving numerous high ranking NATO and American officials, army staff and politicians. This was happening in the 1990s, during the NATO aggression and demolition of Yugoslavia.
Besides the official presence of NATO and the USA, Western PMCs (private military contractors, primarily MPRI – Military Professional Resources Inc.) were present and involved in the pedophilia ring as well – which is one of NATO’s and US’ war crimes hidden by Western media.
The involvement of a powerful clan Clinton (together with many other powerful American politicians – including Biden) was the main reason why this awful crime was completely ignored and concealed by extremely hypocritical Western media. However, Clinton’s and Epstein’s “humanitarian endeavors” did not go unnoticed in the former Yugoslavia. Many were watching and listening to it with great attention.
The article itself does not contain any evidence or sources which could confirm that Epstein’s criminal activities had anything to do with the War on Kosovo or NATO officials. Instead, the article was made out of bizarre “mix” from Dorado Radojičić’s blog while merging and processing five distinct articles.
In some parts of the article, original sources were “edited” in order to fit the text into the story that the author wanted to tell. The reportage of Gordon Thomas from 2006 about women trafficking and forced prostitution in former Yugoslavia countries was utilized for the purpose of her story. (However, it should be noted also that Thomas’ text contains certain statements that are false – for instance, a statement that Arizona marketplace, where indeed sex slave was taking place in years after the war ended, was based at the “periphery of Kosovo”, although this marketplace is in the vicinity of Brčko, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In a similar manner, Thomas while writing about women and girls trafficking in Bosnia, used to cite sources from Kosovo and B&H interchangeably, making the impression that the story is about the officials of institutions and bodies of the same state.)
The part of a text in which Thomas wrote about the experience of a girl from Moldavia who ended up being a victim of human trafficking in Bosnia was adapted to Danijela D. Radojičić’s blog in a way that it seems the story was about child trafficking in Kosovo. Thomas’ text featured words that did not exist in the original (such as “Albanian” and “Muslim”), while the part explaining that the story takes place in B&H was deliberately left out. In the photo below it can be seen how the original text looked in 2006, and how its “edited” version published on Fort Russ website looks like (altered parts are underlined in red).
On the left: Canada Free Press (2006); On the right: Fort Russ (2019)
In the text of Danijela D. Radojičić, shared by Fort Russ, no sources for these claims have been listed. At the end of the article, there are links to texts published by Western Journalism, Daily Mail and Global Post websites, but there was not a link to Gordon Thomas’ article whose parts have been falsified. This “edited” version was translated (containing numerous errors) and published on IN4S website:
After the occupation of the Serbian province, child prostitution, previously unheard-of, started to increase. In Kosovo, the UN peacemaker, who asked to remain anonymous, said: Often, even the Muslim girls are sold by the brothel keepers. They are traded as a cattle and they are routinely beaten and drugged. If a girl tried to escape, she got raped and tortured – or she was told that she will be returned home to be killed”.
For $20 a child is left to a “client” for 30 minutes. For $2,5, a client could buy a bottle of beer while he’s being satisfied.
All children receive three poor meals per day, they have a dirty place to sleep on and skimpy clothes which their Albanian owner insists they must wear to attract clients.
In Danijela D. Radojičić’s text, a similar treatment was given to an article published by Global Post in 2011. Unlike the previous one, Global Post was cited as a source for her text (altered parts to be found on the photo below, underlined in red).
On the left: Global Post (2011); on the right: Fort Russ (2019)
It seems like the coverage on human trafficking in Kosovo was not dramatic enough so Radojičić decided to “spice things up” in some parts. Hence, to an assertion about the recruitment of teenage girls, it was added that these girls were also kidnapped; “women and girls trafficking” became “trafficking of girls and boys”; “the former commanders of Kosovo Liberation Army (abb. KLA)” became “former KLA terrorists”. The author also added the formulation of “child prostitution” to “sex trafficking” (human trafficking accompanied by forced prostitution). As in the previous case, information which did not fit the story were simply removed from the story. The redesigned text was published on IN4S as it follows (again with multiple errors in the translation):
The victims of the trade are typically minor and teenage girls who are kidnapped, seduced and often forced into sexual slavery. There is prostitution in Kosovo*, that services the international community, the US and NATO military forces and the UN and aid workers who operate there. But more frequently, investigators say, Kosovo is a trafficking hub for children and women sold into prostitution rings in the United Arab Emirates, Israel Western Europe capitals and elsewhere.
For a couple of years, the United States and its NATO allies as well as the United Nations, have been publicly stating that corrupt officials within Kosovo’s* government and the police have sometimes taken part in the illegal trade of girls and boys.
According to Global Post’s investigation, some senior political figures, specifically former KLA commanders, were indeed involved in the trafficking of women and little girls. Furthermore, Global Post had obtained several intelligence reports from NATO military and intelligence services that also claim senior former KLA commanders have been involved in the sex slavery business. Meanwhile, various well-informed people, including a former NATO intelligence official who worked in Kosovo* and a Western diplomat with experience in the region, said that it has been common knowledge for the US, NATO and UN circles for years that former KLA terrorists, commanders – many of them now in positions of great power in Kosovo* – are linked to sex-trafficking and child prostitution.
This is how by combining 5-year-old fake news about Epstein’s victim testimony with 13-year-old coverage on human trafficking victims in Bosnia and 8-yeas- old coverage from Kosovo – with no mentionings of Epstein or Clinton in neither of them – a “Frankenstein-like” blog of Danijela D. Radojičić became assembled as a “shocking news about Epstein’s and Clinton’s pedophile circle in Kosovo.”
Espreso, as one of the websites that shared the news from IN4S, did not hesitate to add extra fake news in its headline, besides already existent false statements. This time Bill Clinton “got a child for 20 dollars for 30 minutes”. The same news emerged in the headlines of the majority of websites which shared this news from Kurir’s Espreso:
Creepy details of child trafficking for the world’s leaders! KOSOVO – PEDOPHILE RECRUITMENT CENTER FOR EPSTEIN AND CLINTON’S ORGIES: For 20 dollars you get a child for half of an hour!
GIRLS FROM KOSOVO WERE BROUGHT TO CLINTON FOR PEDOPHILE ORGIES: For 20 dollars you get a child for half of an hour! Disgusting details.
GIRLS FROM KOSOVO WERE BROUGHT TO EPSTEIN AND CLINTON FOR PEDOPHILE ORGIES: For 20 dollars he got a child for half of an hour! Creepy details of child trafficking for the world’s leaders!
DISGUSTING PEDOPHILE STORY ABOUT CLINTON HAS ECHOED! ‘For 20 dollars he got a child from Kosovo for 30 minutes’
Some websites added photos to their articles, including pictures from the front page of the fourth issue of Kosovo 2.0 magazine from December 2012, which is about sex and sexuality. The photo was published with the following inscription: “Kosovo’s offer for tourists”, implying that the photo shows the “offer” of human trafficking and/or prostitution in Kosovo.
The Headline of Kosovo 2.0 presented as “an offer for tourists”
The original version from D. Radojičić’s blogs and Fort Russ website contained additional claims regarding Blackwater company and the connection to human trafficking in Iraq, which was retrieved from Blackwater Used Child Prostitutes in Iraq/Lawyers Trade Accusations over Blackwater article, published on Constantine Report website in August 2009. However, this was not listed as a cited source in the original text. As this part of the text has not been included in translated versions published on regional websites, it is not going to be subject of our analysis (review of all articles and ways how they have been modified, translated and then published as legitimate news in our region is available on the link).
It is interesting to mention that the source for this section is a website managed by another conspiracy theorist – Alex Constatine, who is the author of books in which he writes on how CIA and Pentagon develop methods of “remote mind control via electromagnetic and biotelemetric experiments”.
Raskrinkavanje reached out to media websites who published this text. We received feedback from IN4S, Vidovdan and Info Media Balkan websites, but none of these corrected their false claims. In correspondence with our journalist, a person from IN4S (who wanted to remain anonymous) said that she/he cannot see anything disputable with these claims, since the links we sent, “confirm the essence” of the published text.
Based on the data we were able to retrieve from CrowdTangle tool, until the publication of this analysis, this disinformation “mishmash” was shared, liked and commented by almost 10,000 people on social networks. Out of those number, over 4,500 interactions were reported on a text, published by Fort Russ. In addition, the English version of this text was shared on other websites, and it was translated into German as well.
We rank the article, published on IN4S and its “derivate” from Espreso, as fake news. Articles which were retrieved from these sources we rank as the redistribution of fake news, while those that featured disinformation in headlines, which could not be found in the text – we rank as clickbait.
(Raskrinkavanje.ba)
