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Kosovo Jubilant at KLA Acquittals
Institute For War And Peace ^ | dec 2nd 2005. | Janet Anderson

Posted on 12/02/2005 3:50:24 PM PST by kronos77

Tribunal Update Tribunal home Kosovo Jubilant at KLA Acquittals

Kosovo’s majority Albanian population welcomes result of Hague tribunal’s first case against former guerrillas.

By Janet Anderson in The Hague (TU No 432, 2-Dec-05) The streets of Pristina erupted with flags, horns and celebratory gunfire on December 1 as news spread that the Hague tribunal had acquitted two of the first three members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, ever to face trial there for war crimes.

Judges in The Hague sentenced one former foot soldier, Haradin Bala, to 13 years in prison for his role in a KLA prison camp in the village of Lapusnik where Serbs and suspected Albanian collaborators were tortured and murdered in 1998.

But they declared themselves unconvinced that former commanders Fatmir Limaj and Isak Musliu had played any role at the facility. Limaj, who held a senior role in the guerrilla army which helped drive Belgrade security forces out of Kosovo, gained a high profile as a politician in the wake of the conflict.

While the verdict has met with a predictably downbeat response in Serbia, reactions amongst Kosovo’s majority ethnic Albanian population have been jubilant. Many feel that the court ruling, despite confirming that horrific individual crimes were committed, vindicates the KLA as an organisation.

The judgement comes at a particularly welcome time for Albanians in Kosovo, with talks set to begin on the future political status of the region. Most hope that the process will result in independence from Belgrade.

Observers in Pristina described a collective sense of relief as the judgement hearing in the case was broadcast live on television screens in homes and bars across Kosovo.

The resulting celebrations were a far cry from the dire predictions published in local newspapers of what might happen if the three were found guilty. Just two days before the judgement was issued, an estimated 20,000 people filed through the streets of Pristina protesting the innocence of the three men.

When Limaj went to The Hague in 2003, Kosovo’s then prime minister, Bajram Rexhepi, declared that the trial would give the accused “a chance to prove his innocence and the purity of the war that was led by the KLA”.

Some observers now see particular significance in the judges’ decision to dismiss charges of crimes against humanity against the three accused. They did so on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence that the atrocities at the Lapusnik camp were committed as “part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population”.

“It’s been understood here as a cleansing of the resistance,” said Petrit Selimi, the managing director of Pristina’s new Daily Express newspaper. The verdict, he explained, has been “seen as recognition that there were [individual] crimes, not a campaign”.

Kosovo parliamentarian Enver Hoxhaj told IWPR that the judgement is “a good message while Kosovo’s final status talks are going on”, explaining that it has given the local population a feeling that they are supported by the international community.

With Kosovo’s president Ibrahim Rugova in bad health and former prime minister Ramus Haradinaj currently awaiting a Hague war crimes trial, there have been concerns that Albanians will lack a strong figurehead for the talks on Kosovo’s future.

Analysts in Kosovo told IWPR that Limaj is viewed by some as having the potential to fill the vacuum. Selimi explained that Limaj is now viewed as a “sympathetic figure” because of the dignity with which he went to The Hague.

Hoxhaj, who is a senior member of Limaj’s Democratic Party of Kosovo, PDK, told IWPR that he thought Limaj would step back into the “crucial” role he played in the party before being indicted. “We missed him,” he added.

The judgement has also served to support the view that Hague tribunal’s first case involving former KLA fighters was in fact only launched as part of an effort to show the court’s impartiality with regard to the various parties involved in the Balkans conflicts of the Nineties.

A series of senior Serbian generals and politicians, including former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, have been indicted for their role in alleged ethnic cleansing in Kosovo in 1999.

There has also been speculation about what consequences the outcome might have on the joint trial of Haradinaj and two others said to have been his subordinates in the KLA. They are charged with involvement in the abduction and murder of Serbs, Roma and suspected Albanian collaborators.

Edgar Chen, a long-time observer of proceedings at the Hague tribunal for the Coalition for International Justice, told IWPR, however, that it is important to remember that these are two distinct cases. “Haradinaj is charged under a different set of alleged facts,” he said. “Judges will have to consider Haradinaj's case on the evidence that [prosecutors] and his defence presents.”

The judges hearing the case against Limaj, Musliu and Bala in The Hague appeared keen to emphasise that the acquittal of two of the accused did not mean that crimes had not taken place.

They underlined that civilians had been held in horrific conditions at the KLA camp in Lapusnik, with “gross overcrowding” and some chained to the wall; KLA soldiers, often wearing hoods to hide their faces, beat inmates into unconsciousness; detainees, including some who had been shot, were denied medical treatment despite the existence of a clinic in the village where KLA personnel were treated.

Apart from three prisoners who were murdered at the camp itself, Bala was also found to have taken part in the massacre of nine prisoners in nearby mountains.

But the judges said they were not satisfied that Limaj and Musliu held positions in the KLA which would have made them responsible for the camp.

While there was a “strong possibility” that Limaj had been personally present at the facility, they said, there was not enough evidence to convict of personal involvement crimes there. As for Musliu, the judges ruled that there was in fact “little evidence to identify... [him] as having any kind of involvement in the prison camp”.

Meanwhile, reactions in Belgrade to the verdict have been unsurprisingly gloomy. Rasim Ljajic, president of Serbia’s National Council for Cooperation with the Hague tribunal, told the Beta news agency that the result would bolster the positions of those who are hostile to the United Nations court.

Janet Anderson is IWPR’s programme manager in The Hague.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: albania; albanians; balkans; christianity; clintonistas; clintonlegacy; clintonsquagmire; corruption; crime; genocide; humanrights; islam; islamofascists; kla; kosovo; murder; muslims; religion; serbia; terror; wrongplace; wrongside; wrongtime; wrongwar
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To: palmer
I gave you the result of ten years of experience, not a judgement "on the spot". What you do with is is your responsibility.

I haven't said your "unbiased" historian repeats Serb lies, although it happens to be the case. It is enough for me that he doesn't confuse objectivity with even-handedness; he is simply a victim of the relative dominance of Serb historiography on the matter until 1997, which is why I found him rather professional, given that he is not an expert on the subject.

On the other hand, I did say that YOU are systematically biased and that YOU repeat Serb lies, as a consequence of trying to be even-handed in a context where even-handedness automatically implies repeating lies and, for that matter, ignoring crimes. The difference is that I gave you more information than he had, and you seem to make nothing of it.

Maybe you would have a better understanding of what drives me here if I asked you whether one should be "even-handed" between anti-Nazis and Holocaust deniers, and take at face value the pronouncements of the latter while calling "propagandists" those who denounce them?

(Here is a bunch of people who are even more exercised than I am about the deniers of Serb crimes, since they have set up whole websites to refute them

http://www.glypx.com/balkanwitness/Articles-deniers.htm

http://www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/reports.html.

To be sure, they also report crimes against the Serbs, but there is no way you won't call them "propagandists" since they can't help saying that the Serbs started the wars, initiated the atrocities and committed an overwhelming majority of the crimes.)

And yes, I have also proved that there was no massive Albanian immigration into Kosovo during WWII. This is a case where absence of evidence is evidence of absence, while the thesis has no a priori plausibility.

Now, in addition to not understanding what I said, you don't even read it any more. The quote you make about "Greater Albania" is completely consistent with what I said, even if the use ot the term Metohia is proof of a pro-Serb bias.

(The neutral term is "Western Kosovo" or "The upper Drin/Drim Basin". while the Albanians call it "The Dukagjin Plateau").

61 posted on 12/05/2005 2:02:24 AM PST by Hunden (Email)
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To: Hunden
I glanced through the Serb-hater sites, that's the reason we have these threads so people can argue both sides. I don't find such one-sided sites very useful because it takes a lot of my time to research each of their points, most of which is obvious propaganda: "attempted genocide in Kosovo"

I am not attempting to be even-handed, as I pointed out before I did not criticize the Serb propagandists on this thread. I merely pointed out that you are also a propagandist albeit with 10 years of experience.

Now, in addition to not understanding what I said, you don't even read it any more. The quote you make about "Greater Albania" is completely consistent with what I said, even if the use ot the term Metohia is proof of a pro-Serb bias.

In post 53 you said "annexation to Albania of southern Kosovo", but Wikipedia shows it as most of Kosovo and part of Serbia bordering Kosovo. Either you didn't read what you said or you didn't read the link I sent.

And you still haven't answered my question, do you advocate ethnic cleansing for all people you deem to be colonists, including Jews in Palestine? It's ok to be hypocritical and say Israel is a special case as long as you admit you are being hypocritical.

62 posted on 12/05/2005 2:20:16 AM PST by palmer (Money problems do not come from a lack of money, but from living an excessive, unrealistic lifestyle)
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To: palmer
I admitted to an exaggeration, the rest is absolutely true And I was answering to an accumulation of inaccuracies none of which you even noticed:

The Albanians never lived in eastern Turkey, the Georgians are not Illyrians, the Albanians appeared under that name in Albania and never in Croatia, which was then independent and not under German domination ; there was never a Serbian kingdom of Bosnia, and Macedonia was then a Bulgarian kingdom. The Turks never used the Albanians as colonists, like they used the Serbs in Bosnia, no Albanian immigration took place into Kosovo during the Second World War, there was no German or Italian policy of extermination of Serbian villages, which didn't resist them. Tito only allowed Rankovic to expel hundreds of thousands of Albanians, and then fired him. The EU has no responsibility in Kosovo and wouldn't approve of any violence there, and the churches there are not 1,200 years old.

This is but a sample of the inaccuracies you have let pass, while criticizing me — and for noting the ignorance of such propagandists. Do you understand that I am beginning to suspect some kind of dishonesty in those double standards of yours?

I do not understand what you mean by propaganda. I have been more truthful and knowledgeable than anyone here —including, by far, yourself. If what is wrong is to take sides in a debate, what is a discussion for?

What part of "I won't claim to be competent on subjects I haven't studied." don't you understand?

63 posted on 12/05/2005 2:52:24 AM PST by Hunden (Email)
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To: Hunden


"Kosovo is Albanian as France is French".

France is COUNTRY and belongs to the French people.
Kosovo= Field OF Black Bird, on serbian, and do not have name "Field Of ALbanians" :)))

ALBANIA= country of Albanians
FRANCE= country of French.
KOSOVO= province of Serbia with large Albanian minority.


"Kosovo belongs to Albanians" = Serbian province of Kosovo belongs to the foreighn Muslim invaders.


Personaly, I take greater care for christian burned monuments and Churches on Kosovo than in burned-down Louvre.


64 posted on 12/05/2005 3:10:59 AM PST by kronos77 (Kosovo I Metohija - "Field of Blackbirds And Land of The Monastry" full ofitial name.)
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To: Hunden
What part of "I won't claim to be competent on subjects I haven't studied." don't you understand?

I never claimed competence and have stated so. I have merely analyzed your postings and found them to be propaganda.

I do not understand what you mean by propaganda. I have been more truthful and knowledgeable than anyone here --including, by far, yourself. If what is wrong is to take sides in a debate, what is a discussion for?

You admit errors and inaccuracies time and again. See my post 55. Most of your postings are similarly either propaganda or watered down propaganda (vague words like "most"). If you are trading propaganda with the Serb propagandists, that is not a debate or discussion. If you refute their specific points, then it can be, but often you stoop to ad hominem (calling people ignorant). Don't your admitted exaggerations undermine your claim of truthfulness?

Just because you believe I am ignorant doesn't mean I can't see enough of both sides to notice your propaganda and your denial is curious. Also curious is the way you read into my posts a bunch of things I never talked about like "the Georgians are not Illyrians" which doesn't refute my first post to you which was that the Albanians - Illyrians linkage is in dispute. Because you don't admit to that dispute and take every Albanian claim as gospel to repeat here, you are a propagandist.

65 posted on 12/05/2005 3:34:48 AM PST by palmer (Money problems do not come from a lack of money, but from living an excessive, unrealistic lifestyle)
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To: palmer
So far, you have only proved that I exaggerated in the course of answering to an incredible bunch of lies, some of which were even unknown to me after all these years, the rest of what I said being both true and unknown to you. You couldn't even name an argument favorable to the Serb theses about Kosovo which I wouldn't not be willing to accept if it were true. Of course, since 90 % are false and you don't know which ones aren't…

If you feel entitled to call that "propaganda", I am to call it an empty concept.

Indeed, holding some people to impossible standards while giving a pass to every outrage from their opponents reminds me of a standard socialist trick:

Let's apply ideal standards to the reality of what people can actually do, and we will be able to disqualify them automatically.

66 posted on 12/05/2005 3:57:46 AM PST by Hunden (Email)
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To: Hunden
standard socialist trick

I thought you were only qualified to talk about the Albanians in Kosovo. Anything else is outside of your competence since that is the reason you won't answer my question about ethnically cleansing Jews from Palestine. They are colonists even more than the Serbs who colonized Kosovo hundreds of years ago.

I exaggerated in the course of answering to an incredible bunch of lies

No, your propaganda was about equal to the Serb propaganda I have seen, you profess certainty about events in WWII based on the absence of evidence which you will certainly never look for, you constistently use words like "all" and "only" until called on it, then notch it down to "most". No, your propaganda is just as dogmatic as theirs, no real difference.

67 posted on 12/05/2005 4:09:37 AM PST by palmer (Money problems do not come from a lack of money, but from living an excessive, unrealistic lifestyle)
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To: palmer
So I am a propagandist because after several years I have been able to conclude, based on evidence you didn't see, that the Albanians are indeed the descendants of the Illyrians and that happens to be the Albanian thesis?

I support the Albanian thesis because no alternative makes sense, and you haven't even mentioned any. I have had to provide the Thracian one myself, if only to prove that it cannot be true; and the only objection you could find is that someone else, whom I have identified as a non-specialist and who quotes neither the arguments nor the bibliography on the issue, says that it is still in dispute. But he simply doesn't know enough.

I mentioned the fabrication about the Georgians as an example of the many you have let pass without notice, not as one you were repeating. It is enough that you believe in one of the numerous episodes of "Albanian immigration" Serb propagandists have invented.

I have admitted to one exaggeration, in a context where you let the camel pass and objected to the fly, and none other. You haven't found other errors and inaccuracies on my part, and I have even less admitted any.

68 posted on 12/05/2005 4:36:52 AM PST by Hunden (Email)
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To: palmer
You claim that my "propaganda" was the same as the Serbs' while I have exposed dozens of Serb lies and you haven't been able to prove one on my part. I call that double standard dishonest.

I don't care if you don't believe what I know about the Second world war; I have given you my proofs, you have provided none, and I don't owe you further proof nor further research.

Concerning the Jews in Palestine, i know enough history to give you an answer: the Jews are the first known settlers of the territory who still lay claim to it and it therefore belongs to them.

69 posted on 12/05/2005 4:51:34 AM PST by Hunden (Email)
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To: Hunden
I support the Albanian thesis because no alternative makes sense,

Your thesis is Albanian propaganda, of course it is designed to make sense, just as much as the Serb thesis.

I have admitted to one exaggeration

And ignore the rest. Your post #15, answered in #17 with no response from you.
Your post #26, answered numerous times, particulary post #32, but your response is "of course I have alternative information"
Your post #27, answered in #35 ad hominem which you correctly pointed out (a rare exception)
Your post #28, answered in #29, which you deflected in 37 rather than answer.
Your post #40 almost pure propaganda, you admit part of it was exaggerated and the rest the few undeniable facts in the rest are fairly trivial (churches at most 7 centuries old, etc).

In short, your postings are not part of a debate about the validity of Albanian claims because you aren't answering critical issues such as the connection to the Illyrians. Your "debate" follows the usual pattern: you assert that Albanians descend from Illyria, then dismiss my unbiased link talking about the lack of certainty. It's your certainty that makes debate impossible even though you claim to want it. History by definition is far from certain, we do the best we can with the facts at hand. But that means using all the facts with no preconceived conclusions.

70 posted on 12/05/2005 5:33:50 AM PST by palmer (Money problems do not come from a lack of money, but from living an excessive, unrealistic lifestyle)
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To: Hunden

Oh, Albanians have avry right on kosovo cause, they are linked to Ilirians.

sounds Arian trashtalk to me.

Albania, Albania uber alles!


71 posted on 12/05/2005 5:36:53 AM PST by kronos77 (Kosovo I Metohija - "Field of Blackbirds And Land of The Monastry" full ofitial name.)
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To: palmer

Man, lay off, this discussion is useless. Frenchie will blab his version until he got to go to toilet.

Anyway, inshort, this is map of "Great Albania"

Man, not even Hitler wanted to enlarge Germany 200%

(img)http://www.historyofmacedonia.org/AlbanianTerrorism/images/galbania.gif(/img)


72 posted on 12/05/2005 5:41:16 AM PST by kronos77 (Kosovo I Metohija - "Field of Blackbirds And Land of The Monastry" full ofitial name.)
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To: kronos77

Sorry for the link

http://www.historyofmacedonia.org/AlbanianTerrorism/images/galbania.gif


73 posted on 12/05/2005 5:41:55 AM PST by kronos77 (Kosovo I Metohija - "Field of Blackbirds And Land of The Monastry" full ofitial name.)
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To: Hunden
The Wikipedia article on Illyria is interesting reading. It looks to me like modern Albania was part of ancient Macedonia and part of Illyria. See map: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/macedonia_1849.jpg Once Illyrium the Roman province was broken up in 10AD, there was not much of modern Albania left it in. It doesn't look like a strong connection to me at all.
74 posted on 12/05/2005 5:51:19 AM PST by palmer (Money problems do not come from a lack of money, but from living an excessive, unrealistic lifestyle)
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To: Hunden; jb6
Of course, I have alternative information.

Dictated by Mr. Soros himself, undoubtedly.

75 posted on 12/05/2005 5:55:03 AM PST by FormerLib (Kosova: "land stolen from Serbs and given to terrorist killers in a futile attempt to appease them.")
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To: kronos77

Thanks for the link, I already showed him something like it from Wikipedia in post 54.


76 posted on 12/05/2005 5:55:56 AM PST by palmer (Money problems do not come from a lack of money, but from living an excessive, unrealistic lifestyle)
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To: Hunden; palmer
...while I have exposed dozens of Serb lies...

You've done nothing of the sort! You've only given verbal support to the Muhammedan ethnic cleansing of the Serb Christians in Kosovo and shown yourself to be a fool and a liar.

77 posted on 12/05/2005 5:57:54 AM PST by FormerLib (Kosova: "land stolen from Serbs and given to terrorist killers in a futile attempt to appease them.")
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To: FormerLib

Thanks for taking over....I need a nap.


78 posted on 12/05/2005 6:32:58 AM PST by palmer (Money problems do not come from a lack of money, but from living an excessive, unrealistic lifestyle)
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To: palmer

"do you advocate ethnic cleansing for all people you deem to be colonists, including Jews in Palestine?"

I hate to bring this up because I admire the job you are doing refuting the Muslim apologist who believes in ethnic cleansing of Serbians. But Jews in the land of Israel predated the so-called Palestinians by centuries. So-called Palestinians have little connection to the land of Israel. They are mostly nomadic Arabs who settled there from the Arabian Peninsula after the land was improved by a surge in Jewish immigration and cultivation in the late 1800's and early 1900's.

Please consult Mark Twain's travelogue of 1867 "The Innocents Abroad" which documents how barren and unpopulated Israel was, and the absence of any group known as "Palestinians."


79 posted on 12/05/2005 9:07:52 AM PST by dervish (no excuses)
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To: dervish
I realize that and I only brought it up to raise a point or two. One is that the determine of colonization is difficult and subject to debate which he doesn't allow for Kosovo, it's all black and white. Secondly, he advocates ethnic cleansing when "he decides" that colonization occured as he decided in Kosovo. He proved beyond a doubt that he is biased in what he said and how he phrased it. His main argument, that the Serbs "colonized" Kosovo and therefore deserve to be cleansed is very un-American given the history of WWII.

I support the country of Israel for historical reasons to some extent, but mostly as a sanctuary for Jews. I think the world owed them that after kicking them around for centuries and I'm proud our country and Britain came through for them.

80 posted on 12/05/2005 9:26:23 AM PST by palmer (Money problems do not come from a lack of money, but from living an excessive, unrealistic lifestyle)
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