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The United Nation's International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has sentenced Bosnian Army Commander Rasim Delic to three years in prison for crimes committed by foreign Islamic fighters against captive Bosnian Serb soldiers during the 1992-1995 war. General Delic's defense argues that he did not have control over the El Mujahid Detachment and that they received their orders directly from al-Qaida commanders, bypassing the Bosnian Army. According to the court's ruling, Delic failed to prevent or punish the crimes committed by the members of the El Mujahid Detachment in the fall of 1995 in Central Bosnia. El-Mujahid was...

SARAJEVO -- Nine people were injured at the opening of the Queer Festival in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina police said. Dozens of hooligans tried to stop the first exhibition of homosexual culture in Bosnia-Herzegovina. They threw rocks at the Sarajevo Art Academy building during the opening of the event. The police was able to push back the rioters. The hooligans, some with their faces covered, and other with long beards, were yelling insults at the festival participants and shouting, “Allahu Akbar!” They also dragged people out of their cars and physically attacked others in the festival on the street. Six people were...

Those who have asked questions about the Srebrenica numbers over the last ten years have invariably been treated with withering scorn. At best they have been characterised as would-be revisionists; at worst, deniers of a modern-day holocaust. Yet no serious analysis of events in and around Srebrenica in the summer of 1995 could be complete without detailed examination of the numbers. From the outset the numbers were used and abused, for a variety of political and other purposes, to conceal the fundamental truth of what had happened.Origins of the massacre allegationsOver the years it has been held to be highly...

Belgrade, 19 Sept. (AKI) - Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik has said that the disintegration of Bosnia-Herzegovina, torn by internal disputes between its Muslims, Serbs and Croat population, would not be a tragedy. “The tragedy would be if such disagreements evolve into violence,� Dodik told Radio Free Europe. Thirteen years after the 1992-1995 civil war, the mistrust and quarrels between the three ethnic groups have not subsided and are on the rise again ahead of the 5 October municipal elections. For the past thirteen years, majority Muslims with the support of the international community, have been pressing for the creation...

THE HAGUE- The former leader of Bosnia's Muslim army, Rasim Delic, was jailed for three years yesterday by the Hague Tribunal for allowing the torture of Bosnian Serb soldiers by a Mujahideen unit in 1995. By majority decision, Delic, who was the chief of staff of the Bosnian Army in 1995, was found guilty of violating customs and laws of war, when he did nothing to prevent cruel treatment of Serb prisoners by a Mujahideen unit under his command. Judge Bakone Justice Moloto, citing the "appalling brutal" mistreatment meted out by Islamic foreign fighters, said that tribunal judges had decided...

LONDON (CNS) -- The Vatican has authorized "severe cautionary and disciplinary measures" against a priest who served as spiritual director to the visionaries in Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has written to Bishop Ratko Peric of Mostar-Duvno, whose diocese covers Medjugorje, to inform him that they are investigating the case of Franciscan Father Tomislav Vlasic. The congregation has asked the bishop, for the good of the faithful, to inform the community of the canonical status of the Bosnian priest, whose actions automatically provoked Vatican sanctions. In a statement posted on the Web site of the...

BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AFP)--Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik warned Tuesday that Bosnia could break apart if Muslim leaders questioned the existence of his entity, a local weekly reported. "Republika Srpska (or RS) is being challenged by the Muslim political elite," Dodik told the Fokus weekly. "We are facing on daily basis attacks by officials of Bosnia's Islamic religious community and their conception on how to annul RS." The Dayton peace accords, which ended the 1992-95 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, divided the erstwhile Yugoslav republic into two entities which make up Bosnia - the Serbs' Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation. Dodik...

Sarajevo, 2 Sept. (AKI) – A Canadian firm will begin exploring potential oil reserves in northeastern Bosnia worth an estimated 80 billion dollars, Sarajevo daily Oslobodjenje said on Tuesday. Preliminary research has indicated that some 50 million tonnes of crude oil may be lying near the northeastern town of Tuzla and further research will start this month. Representatives from the Canadian company, Seedrock Capital Partners, are due in Bosnia this month to seek agreement on the terms of an exploration agreement with the government, the paper said. The company is reportedly ready to invest 40 million euros in initial research...

Pentagon Makes Fighting Extremism Top Priority Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon on Thursday officially named "the long war" against global extremism as its top priority and pledged to avert any conventional military threat from China or Russia through dialogue. The Defense Department, in a new national defense strategy, also emphasized the need to subordinate military operations to "soft power" initiatives to undermine Islamist militancy by promoting economic, political and social development in vulnerable corners of the world. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he hoped the change would help establish permanent institutional support for counterinsurgency skills...

Italy: 5 arrested on suspicion of planning attacks ROME - Police broke up a suspected terror cell Saturday and arrested five North Africans, including the alleged leader who Italian officials said recruited Islamic extremists for attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Italian police has arrested four Tunisians and a Moroccan on suspicion of recruiting Islamic fighters for Iraq and Afghanistan. ... Police say the recruits were trained in Bosnia.

Sarajevo, 6 August (AKI) – The Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, once a symbol of ethnic diversity, has become an entirely Muslim city, a Croat deputy in the Bosnian Parliament, Branko Zrno, said on Wednesday. “Sarajevo definitely isn’t a multi-ethnic city, but the city of one group, the Bosniacs (Muslims), " Zrno told local media. He pointed out that Serbs and Croats in Sarajevo have no institutional protection, and continue to leave the capital. Zrno echoed allegations from Bosnian Serb leaders, including Serb entity Prime Minister Milorad Dodik, that non-Muslims in Sarajevo suffered discrimination and were denied their rights. Zrno said...

Karadzic demands Holbrooke, Albright appear in court AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic demanded on Wednesday that former U.S. peace mediator Richard Holbrooke and ex-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright appear at the U.N. war crimes tribunal to back his claims of an immunity offer from the United States. Karadzic, who was transferred to the Hague's International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia last week to face war crimes and genocide charges after 11 years on the run, challenged the legality of the case against him, a filing released by the tribunal showed. In the document, Karadzic repeated...

Belgrade, 1 August (AKI) – Bosnia's wartime president Radovan Karadzic may testify "embarrassing" secrets to the UN's Hague war crimes tribunal, a former senior international representative, Christian Schwarz-Schilling, said on Friday . "I believe Karadzic knows certain things which in any case aren’t pleasant for the international community,” Christian Schwarz-Schilling (photo) told German radio on Friday. “I suppose that he, having been involved in the events, will have to say some new things which were unknown until now,” Schwartz-Schilling said. Schwarz-Schilling, a German diplomat, was appointed High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina and as the European Union's special representative in...

The United States, Britain, the European Union, the Vatican and a grossly perverse mass media machine will have a lot to answer for when the full extent of their anti-Serb bias is revealed. That’s not going to happen soon. The minds of a gullible public are being shaped to demonize one individual and the ethnic group he represents and, through him, to heap upon them the collective sins of opposing political forces still seeking their own selfish gain from the Balkan wars of the 1990s. Believe it or not, it was the revival of the old German dream of European...

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There is nothing that better reflects the cowardly, obsequious performance “I tell you only what you want to hear” Barack Obama gave during his European tour last week than the fact that right smack in the middle of the continent, he never mentioned the real lessons of Bosnia. Of course, that omission didn’t surprise those of us who understand that the “agent of change” who never misses an opportunity to vacuously boast “this is our moment, this is our time” is nothing more than a made in Chicago retread liberal. No, unlike Belfast’s Telegraph, we weren’t foolish enough to believe...

THE HAGUE (AFP) — Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic stood before the UN war crimes court Thursday to face genocide charges, in his first public appearance since his arrest after nearly 13 years on the run. Shorn of the beard and long hair he had used as a disguise until his capture on July 21, Karadzic was again recognisable as the man who became one of the most reviled figures in the Bosnian conflict of the 1990s. Wearing a dark jacket and tie, Karazdic appeared before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to hear the 11...

The arrest of Radovan Karadzic in Serbia on Tuesday has provided yet another occasion for all the tired old propaganda about the Balkans wars to be taken out of the cupboard and given one last airing. In particular, the war is presented as one between a Serb aggressor and an innocent victim, the Bosnian Muslims, and the former is accused of practising genocide against the latter. Even if one accepts that crimes against humanity were committed during the Balkan wars, it should be obvious that both these claims are absurd. First, the Serbs were no more the aggressors in the...

Lord Ashdown's warning about the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina � which was intended to rouse Europe's capitals from their "comfortable slumber" � certainly dampened the optimism that accompanied last week's arrest of Radovan Karadzic. However, in attributing the problems facing Bosnia and Herzegovina to the actions of Bosnia's Serbs, Lord Ashdown overlooked � intentionally or not � several broader issues that continue to undermine the state's viability. From the fiscal frailty of one of Bosnia and Herzegovina's two entities, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, to persistent discord amongst Bosnia's Croats, the country is beset by a number of...

Radovan Karadzic is accused of the most heinous crimes against humanity, from the siege of Sarajevo to the Srebrenica massacre. He is charged with having the blood of 20,000 lives on his hands and of bringing an entire country down by ethnic hatred. Today relatives of the thousands of victims said they had been waiting for this moment of justice for 13 years.

.....Radovan Karadzic will be duly convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity, and he will not come out of jail alive. The verdict is already written, but it reflects a fundamental imbalance. It ignores the essence of the Bosnian war—the Serbs’ striving not to be forced into secession—while remaining mute about the culpability of the other two sides for a series of unconstitutional, illegitimate and illegal political decisions that caused the war. The judgment against Karadzic at the U.S.-sponsored and largely U.S.-funded tribunal at The Hague will be built on this flawed foundation. It will be neither fair or just,...

Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic has been arrested in Serbia, presidential and government sources in Belgrade say. The Bosnian Serb wartime political leader disappeared in 1996 and was subsequently indicted by the UN War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. He is accused of war crimes and genocide over the massacre of 7,500 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica. His wartime military leader, Ratko Mladic, remains at large.

Most of the mujahedin fighters who arrived to fight alongside government forces during the Bosnian war knew virtually nothing about the country. “They joked about how at the beginning they didn’t know if Bosnia was in South America, North America, Europe or Australia,” said Evan F Kohlmann, an expert on terrorism and adviser to the American government and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The revelation is contained in a little-publicised book – “Al Qaeda in Bosnia: Myth or Reality?” by Vlado Azinovic – which tells more about the mujahedin and their role in the Bosnian war of 1992 to 1995...

A gigantic poster of genocidal Bosnian Serb war criminal Radovan Karadzic hung on the outside wall of a hideous communist-style apartment block. “Get a picture of that,” I said to my friend and traveling companion Sean LaFreniere as I drove our rented car through the outer suburbs of Serbia's capital Belgrade. I had the wheel and he had the camera. “Too late,” he said. We were driving fast on a four-lane road and were almost out of the city. Our road trip from Serbia to Kosovo via Bosnia, Croatia, and Montenegro was just beginning. “That’s okay,” I said. “We’ll probably...

A US-born man pleaded guilty Tuesday to helping to train fellow Al-Qaeda agents to carry out bombings in Europe and the United States, after a five-year global investigation, officials said. The targets included European tourist resorts frequented by Americans, as well as US military bases, embassies and consular offices in Europe. "Today's guilty plea brings an end to the long, dangerous career of Christopher Paul, an Ohio native who joined Al-Qaeda in the early 1990s, fought in Afghanistan and Bosnia and conspired with others to target Americans both at home and abroad," said Acting Assistant US Attorney General Patrick Rowan....

The Hunt for American al Qaeda The United States is turning up the heat in the hunt for the California boy turned al Qaeda operative, Adam Gadahn, who has been charged with treason and is believed to be hiding in Afghanistan. If caught and convicted, Gadahn could face the death penalty. The State Department along with the Department of Diplomatic Security announced the beginning of a publicity campaign in Afghanistan urging locals to provide any information on Gadahn's whereabouts, with a reward if the information leads to his capture. Radio advertisements with information concerning the $1 million reward have...

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - A man accused of joining al-Qaida in the early 1990s and helping teach fellow Muslim extremists how to bomb U.S. and European targets pleaded guilty Tuesday to planning terrorist attacks. Christopher Paul, 44, pleaded guilty to a count that carries a maximum life prison sentence, but entered into a plea agreement with prosecutors that calls for a 20-year term. U.S. District Court Judge Gregory Frost accepted the plea but said he would not give final approval to the deal until he sees the government's pre-sentence report, which is not expected for several months. No sentencing date...

Posted on Sat, May. 31, 2008 Special Report By Chris Mondics INQUIRER STAFF WRITER DOBOJ, Bosnia - For years, Saudi Arabia flatly denied it had provided money and logistical support for Islamist militant groups that attacked Western targets. But that assertion is disputed by a former al-Qaeda commander who testified in a United Nations war-crimes trial that his unit was funded by the Saudi High Commission for Relief of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a government charity. Ali Ahmed Ali Hamad, the former al-Qaeda fighter, gave the same account to The Inquirer in an interview in this struggling city in the central...

BRUSSELS, Belgium - European Union defense ministers agreed Monday to keep the bloc's 2,500 peacekeepers in Bosnia, citing concern that tensions in Kosovo could spill over into other parts of the Balkans. "The region is not yet fully stable," said Slovene Defense Minister Karl Erjavec, who chaired the meeting. "It is necessary to continue being present militarily." Some EU nations had hoped that growing stability in Bosnia would allow them to pull the troops out, leaving just a police and civilian mission. However, the failure of Bosnia's ethnically based political parties to agree on a new constitution and the tensions...

Banjaluka, 21 May (AKI) – Al-Qaeda and the Muslim fundamentalist Wahabi movement's operatives have been smuggling weapons and explosives into neighbouring Croatia, Bosnian daily Nezavisne novine reported on Wednesday. Quoting Bosnian security sources, the paper said huge quantities of weapons and explosives have been smuggled into the areas of Croatia with sizeable Muslim population in recent months. The weapons were shipped to the Croatian capital Zagreb, nearby Karlovac and the Adriatic port of Split, according to a document from the Bosnian security agency, quoted by the paper. The document said the operation has been masterminded by Bosnian Muslims Vladimir Popilovski,...

On a pleasant Thursday in December 1948, Emilio Traubner, a correspondent for The Palestine Post, found himself near Abu Kabir, not far from Jaffa. Trenches and expended cartridges were strewn about, reminders of the fighting between units of the Irgun and local Arab forces that had taken place there seven months previously. There was a large Arab villa from where Traubner recovered a diary. It turned out to be the daily record of Yusuf Begovic of Pale, a town near Sarajevo in modern-day Bosnia-Herzegovina. In it Begovic had described his activities as a cook for the "Arab Army of Liberation."...

Here’s a nice dilemma for Lefties. What if UN peacekeepers in the Congo turn out to have been encouraging elephant poaching? Would they continue to give the organisation their unconditional support? Elephant poaching in Africa: sanctioned by the UN? The UN gets away with an extraordinary amount. Because it is thought to embody a lofty ideal, many liberal-minded people are prepared to overlook what it actually does. Never mind that it betrayed the Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica. Never mind that its officials were illicitly running oil-for-food scams with Saddam. Never mind that it ordered its local commander not to seize...

U.S. Wary Of Small Boat Terrorism As boating season approaches, the Bush administration wants to enlist America's 80 million recreational boaters to help reduce the chances that a small boat could deliver a nuclear or radiological bomb somewhere along the 95,000 miles of U.S. coastline and inland waterways. According to an April 23 intelligence assessment obtained by The Associated Press, "The use of a small boat as a weapon is likely to remain al Qaeda's weapon of choice in the maritime environment, given its ease in arming and deploying, low cost, and record of success." While the United States...

Chamber of Bosnia-Herzegovina's state Court in Sarajevo on Wednesday sentenced Bosnian Muslim Zijad Kurtovic to 11 years jail for war crimes against Bosnian Croats during the 1992-1995 war. Kurtovic, 41, was found guilty of having acted against Croat civilians and prisoners of war as a member of Bosnia's Muslim- dominated army. The court found his crimes in the vicinity of the southern city of Mostar in 1993 to have directly violated the provisions of the Geneva Conventions. As commander of military police of the 4th Corps of the army in October 1993, during the 1992-1994 Muslim - Croat conflict within...

SARAJEVO -- Richard Holbrooke maintains that he "never made a deal with Hague fugitive Radovan Karadžić". The American diplomat, who helped create the Dayton peace deal that ended the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, yesterday in Sarajevo denied allegations that he reached an agreement with the former Bosnian Serb president. The long-standing claim, recently repeated by the Hague Prosecution's former spokeswoman Florence Hartmann, says that Karadžić received guaranties he would never be arrested if he withdrew from Bosnia's political life. “I did not make any kind of deal with Karadžić, he is a war criminal. He is the Osama Bin Laden of...

YOU TUBE - THE HILLARY PINOCCHIO SING-ALONG

WASHINGTON - Former President Clinton has added to the falsehoods surrounding his wife's tale of her trip to Bosnia 12 years ago. In Indiana on Thursday, Bill Clinton defended his wife's mistake in claiming that she landed under sniper fire in Bosnia, accusing the media of treating her like "she'd robbed a bank" for confusing the facts. The New York senator had repeatedly described a harrowing scene in Tuzla, Bosnia, in which she and her daughter, Chelsea, had to run for cover as soon as they landed for a visit in 1996. Video footage of the day instead showed a...

Bill Clinton Retells Hillary's 1996 Bosnia Story April 10, 2008 7:10 PM ABC News' Sarah Amos and Eloise Harper Report: After a trip to Puerto Rico and two days entirely off the campaign trail, former President Bill Clinton eagerly discussed myriad topics with the crowd that awaited him in Boonville, Ind., and what he said of a trip his wife made to Bosnia in 1996 seemed a bit misleading. "I am so glad to be here. And I'm glad that Indiana is gonna have a say in who the nominee of the Democratic Party is and the next president of...

Hillary Clinton met her Waterloo at Tuzla. She’d been regaling audiences with tales of a dangerous landing under sniper fire in Tuzla 12 years ago and then running for cover. None of this occurred. When CBS provided the tape, she was forced to admit to “a misstatement.” Now, confabulation is a fairly common psychological phenomenon. We all have internalized childhood stories so oft repeated by elders that we come to falsely “remember” the actual experience. Adult memories are less susceptible to such unconscious inventions, but past experiences embellished over time by repeated recounting can reach the point where we actually...

The militant is known as Abu Ubaida al Masri, and charting his path reveals his vulnerabilities and those of the terrorist group. COPENHAGEN -- If Al Qaeda strikes the West in the coming months, it's likely the mastermind will be a stocky Egyptian explosives expert with two missing fingers. His alias is Abu Ubaida al Masri. Hardly anyone has heard of him outside a select circle of anti-terrorism officials and Islamic militants. He has overseen the major plots that the network needs to stay viable, investigators say: the London transportation bombings in 2005, a foiled transatlantic "spectacular" aimed at U.S.-bound...

YOUTUBE - DEFENDING HILLARY FOR BOSNIA SNIPER STORY I have been very critical of Hillary for many years. Here is a fair and balanced piece.

Barack Obama - To Hell and Back -

The punishment visited on Sen. Hillary Clinton for her flagrant, hysterical, repetitive, pathological lying about her visit to Bosnia should be much heavier than it has yet been and should be exacted for much more than just the lying itself. There are two kinds of deliberate and premeditated deceit, commonly known as suggestio falsi and suppressio veri. (Neither of them is covered by the additionally lying claim of having "misspoken.") The first involves what seems to be most obvious in the present case: the putting forward of a bogus or misleading account of events. But the second, and often the...

March 31, 2008 -- SARAJEVO, Bosnia - The Bosnian girl who famously read a poem to Hillary Rodham Clinton during her 1996 visit to the war-torn country is shocked - and her countrymen infuriated - that the former first lady claimed to have dodged sniper fire that day. Emina Bicakcic, now 20 and studying to become a doctor, told The Post she stood on the tarmac at the air base in Tuzla, greeted Clinton and even had time to share the lines of verse she'd written - all without fear of attack from an unseen enemy. "I was surprised when...

The Religion Ministry dismissed the remarks of the "subjective, irresponsible and politically biased Bosnian Islamic Community." The leadership, or Riyaset, of the Sarajevo-based Islamic organization was reacting to the latest unrest in Serbia's southwestern Sandžak region and the "situation of Muslims in Serbia". The ministry said in a statement issued in Belgrade late on Thursday the call made to international organizations "to react to flagrant human rights violations of Muslims" was "cynical, irresponsible and politically ill-intentioned". The statement, sent to Tanjug, also pointed out that police efforts, following developments in Tutin on March 7 and 9, to keep peace and...

In this series, exclusive to FreeRepublic, we will examine the military resume of Senator Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton. She did much more than dodge sniper fire in Bosnia with her daughter because Bill was too afraid to go, and the voters are entitled to know about her exploits before they decide whom they want for commander in chief. No. 1 - THE ENOLA GAY No. 2 - CROSSING THE DELAWARE ======================================================================= The charge up an obscure Cuban hill on July, 1 1898 was a pivotal point in Theodore Roosevelt's political career. When war broke with Spain in April of that...

...Which brings us back to our question: Why would so smart a candidate play political Russian roulette with virtually all the bullet chambers loaded? Sometimes only a shrink can decipher why some politicians persist in flagrantly taking giant risks, all but daring others to catch them in the act (see: Spitzer, Eliot). Carl Bernstein, a sometimes admiring Hillary Clinton biographer, has called the Bosnia debacle “a watershed event” for her campaign because it revives her long history of balancing good works with “ ‘misstatements’ and elisions,” from the health-care task force fiasco onward. But this event may be a watershed...

Imagine what it must be like now for Serbian-Americans and American Serbs. I can and have often in the past 10 years. Now, with the issue forced for real on American soil, the Serbian issue takes on even deeper meaning. I love this country, America. I love it more now, and appreciate it more now, than ever before. I've grown less and less tolerant of Anti-Americanism over the years, despite my education and some of those around me teaching and preaching at me that America is flawed and that she does not deserve the blind faith and allegiance she has...