Free Republic

ZAGREB, Croatia: U.S. President George W. Bush was warmly welcomed by the government in Croatia on Friday and he praised the ex-Yugoslav country as a trusted ally. But his opponents used the occasion to protest his foreign policies. Bush came to Zagreb from a NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania, where Croatia was invited to join the alliance, one of the government's top goals. "We celebrate your invitation to become one of America's closest allies," Bush said in a toast to President Stipe Mesic. "We're so proud of our relationship," Bush said. Croatia's government sees Bush's two-day visit as a clear...

April 3, 1996 Ronald H. Brown, the U.S. secretary of commerce, is killed along with 32 other Americans when their U.S. Air Force plane crashes into a mountain near Dubrovnik, Croatia. Brown was leading a delegation of business executives to the former Yugoslavia to explore business opportunities that might help rebuild the war-torn region.

Croatia’s recognition of Kosovo has more to do with a desire to please Washington than responsible regional politics, writes Marinko Čulić. In less than the two months since Kosovo became independent, Croatia has been flooded with so many wrong conclusions and theses that they have already started to create a false parallel reality. This is not to say that unforgettable political statements have not been made before, especially during Tudjman’s time, when, for example, the thesis of Croatia as the ‘bulwark of Christianity’ shook the western part of ex-Yugoslavia, and almost the country itself. We thought we had left this...

March 28th, 2008 Zagreb, March 28 (CP) – Retired Croatian army general Ivan Korade is being looked for by some 300 police special forces as he is believed to be involved in the killing of four people in Croatia’s Zagorje region. Ret. Gen. Ivan Korade, 44, known for his short temper and many incidents over the years has gone missing after bodies of people linked to him in some way had been found in two villages, one of which he has a home in. The first body was found in the late hours of Wednesday in a weekend home and...

Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary to soon recognise Kosovo: reports Three countries bordering Serbia -- Bulgaria, Croatia and Hungary -- could shortly recognise Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence, Croatian dailies reported Tuesday. The Zagreb government was expected to recognise Kosovo on Wednesday along with Bulgaria and Hungary, after the breakaway province declared independence from Serbia last month, said the newspaper Jutarnji List. Citing sources close to the government, Vecernji List, Croatia’s largest circulation daily, also reported Zagreb would recognise Kosovo’s independence on the same day as Budapest and Sofia. The decision was likely to be made this week, possibly at a government...

The Hague, 11 March (AKI) – Three Croatian generals went on trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on Tuesday for crimes allegedly committed against Serb civilians in 1995. Ante Gotovina, Ivan Cermak, and Mladen Markac are the first Croatian officers to be tried for crimes committed in the operation, Storm, in August 1995. More than 350 Serb civilians were killed, thousands of homes were destroyed and up to 250,000 Serbs were deported from the country, prosecutor Alan Tieger told the court. He said he would prove that the three generals were part of a “joint...

24 January 2008 | 15:19 | Source: Tanjug SARAJEVO -- The Bosnian HDZ has presented Ivo Sanader a proposal whereby Bosnia-Hercegovina would be split into 4 federal units. During yesterday’s one-hour meeting, President of the Bosnian branch of the Croatian Democratic Community (HDZ) Dragan Čović and the Croatian prime minister discussed the Kosovo crisis and its possible bearing on the situation in Bosnia-Hercegovina, as well as relations between the Bosnian HDZ and HDZ 1990, reported the Bosnian HDZ public relations department. “Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs should transform Bosnia-Hercegovina into a decentralized, democratic, legal and social state, made up of federal...

Zagreb /23/01/ 11:51 Abu Hamza, a Syrian-born Islamic fighter who fought in Bosnia during 1992-1995 war, faces deportation and must leave BiH within next 15 days, Croatian media said. The same sources say Hamza, the informal leader of the former mujahideen community in the central Bosnian village of Bocinja, must be handed over to his homeland Syria or deported to Croatia, the country where he stayed before arriving in Bosnia. BiH TV said Bosnian court overturned Hamza's appeal on Tuesday. The appealed the Bosnian authorities' decision not to grant him an asylum. Abu Hamza was also stripped of Bosnian citizenship....

Zagreb, 14 Jan. (AKI) – The leader of minority Serbs in Croatia, Milorad Pupovac, said on Monday the formation of the country’s new government was an historic moment in the country's 16 years of independence. Pupovac, who as head of the Independent Serb Democratic Party (SDSS), became deputy vice-premier in prime minister Ivo Sanader’s government on Saturday. He said it was an important achievement in overcoming the traumas of Croatia’s war of secession from the former Yugoslavia in 1991-1995. “It is a historic moment because it is the first time since the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia and the existence...

Croatian interior minister Ivica Kirin has resigned after being pictured on a boar hunt with a war crimes suspect. "I... offer my apology to all those that might have been harmed," Mr Kirin said in a resignation letter. Croatian newspapers published pictures of him out hunting before Christmas with former police chief Mladen Markac, who is accused of massacring Serbs. ... Mr Markac, 52, is accused with several other former security figures with involvement in a plan to drive ethnic Serbs from the Krajina region in 1995, when he was commander of police special forces. More than 150 Serb civilians...

LONDON, Nov 21 (Reuters) - England's Euro 2008 hopes finally disappeared at Wembley on Wednesday when they lost 3-2 to already-qualified Croatia having fought their way back from 2-0 down to briefly taste the draw they needed to go through. The home crowd was stunned after eight minutes when Scott Carson, controversially chosen in goal after making his debut in a friendly only last week, allowed a speculative long-range shot by Niko Kranjcar to skid off past him and into the net, and it looked all over when Ivica Olic doubled the lead six minutes later. England got level with...

The European Union wants Hashim Thaci, the former guerrilla leader who looks set to lead the government that emerges from Saturday's polls, to avoid any rash moves that could provoke Serbia and its ally Russia. Noting a December 10 deadline for ending negotiations on the future status of the ethnic Albanian-majority province, EU foreign ministers called on Thaci to let the talks run their course, and do nothing to jeopardize international support. "Kosovo should have her independence (but) it shouldn't be an unmanaged unilateral declaration," said Britain's European affairs minister Jim Murphy. Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said: "We need...

DETROIT A 42-year-old Canadian accused of war crimes against civilians in his native Croatia is expected to remain in a U.S. jail cell at least until Tuesday.

Retired Croatian colonel Marko Jagetic says that 70 bodies of Serb civilians were collected after the campaign Medacki Dzep. Retired Croatian Army medical corps colonel Marko Jagetic testified at the trial of generals Rahim Ademi and Mirko Norac. He said that, after the campaign Medacki Dzep, more than 70 corpses of Serb civilians were collected in nearby villages and that many of them had marks that indicated torture and massacre. - Almost all the executed [people] were civilians and no weapons or documents were found on any of them – said Jagetic, who was the army doctor in charge of...

... "If you stole a car today you would get a harsher sentence than what they got for the biggest crime that was committed here in the past 50 years," he said. ...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6969100.stm

Zagreb, 31 August (AKI) – Croatia on Friday held a day of national mourning after six firemen died fighting a forest blaze on the central Adriatic archipelago of Kornati, local media reported. The tragedy occurred Thursday night when a forest fire encircled the firemen fighting a blaze, killing six and seriously injuring another seven. The ages of three of those killed ranged from 17 to 18 years old. Another 14 firemen escaped with light burns, the reports said. Prime minister Ivo Sanader and President Stipe Mesic called for an investigation whether the fire was started deliberately and asked for severe...

<p>Nine years of shoe-leather reporting, nine years of doggedness, nine years of bucking an unhelpful bureaucracy took J. Robert Lunney to the deck of an aircraft carrier off the coast of Croatia.</p> <p>This is a Memorial Day tale, though the events occurred before the observance yesterday. It is a Memorial Day tale because it is about remembrance. And honor. And duty.</p>

11 August 2007 | 11:22 | Source: FoNet PRIŠTINA -- A Croat-owned house burnt to the ground Friday, in a village near Lipljan, Kosovo. The fire caused no injuries. Marija Palić, who owns the house, has lived in Croatia for the past fifteen years. KFOR troops helped put out the fire that completely destroyed the house. Kosovo police (KPS) spokesman Veton Elshani said the investigation was ongoing to determine whether the fire was an accident or the work of arsonists. The village of Janjevo, where the fire happened, was the largest ethnic Croat settlement in Kosovo. The mining community used...

The connection between the Islamofacists and the NAZI's can no longer be denied. They (Bosnian Muslims & Albanian Muslims) even revived the old infamous ISLAMIC-NAZI WAFFEN SS TERRORIST HANDZAR DIVISION well known for it's savage brutality towards the Jews, Christians, and Gypsies during World War. This is the same group of people the US government now backs in the Balkans. This is a pro-Al-Qaeda policy put in place by the Clinton Administration and foolishly continued by the Bush State Department.We are currently aiding and abetting the same exact genocidal side that the NAZI Germans did back in World War 2...

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) recently reported about Canadian officers being frustrated by inaction over On March 27, 2006, Taylor wrote again about the Medak Pocket slaughter in Croatia: “[...] Over 200 Serbian inhabitants of the Medak Pocket were slaughtered in a grotesque manner (the bodies of female rape victims were found after being burned alive). Our traumatized troops who buried the grisly remains were encouraged to collect evidence and were assured that the perpetrators would be brought to justice.... “Nevertheless in 1995, Ceku, by then trained by U.S. instructors as a general of artillery, was still at large. In fact,...

Received this morning from Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel Director Efraim Zuroff (bold emphasis added): “Wiesenthal Center Expresses Outrage At Massive Outburst of Nostalgia for Croatian Fascism at Zagreb Rock Concert”:Jerusalem – The Simon Wiesenthal Center today expressed its sense of outrage and disgust in the wake of a massive show of fascist salutes, symbols and uniforms at a rock concert by popular ultra-nationalist Croatian singer “Thompson” attended by 60,000 people in Zagreb last night. In a letter sent today to Croatian President Stjepan Mesic, the Center’s chief Nazi-hunter Israel director Dr. Efraim Zuroff noted the presence of Croatian dignities, including...

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) -- The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal convicted a wartime leader of Croatia's rebel Serbs of murder, torture and persecution Tuesday and sentenced him to 35 years in prison for a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign of non-Serbs in Croatia. Judges said Milan Martic, 52, was responsible for hundreds of murders from 1991 when Serbs in the Krajina region of northeastern Croatia rebelled and set up a breakaway ministate until 1995 when Croatian forces recaptured the area. He also was convicted of ordering two days of indiscriminate cluster bomb shelling of the Croatian capital, Zagreb, in May 1995...

Zagreb Mayor Milan Bandic and Mufti Sevko Omerbasic laid foundations for the building of a memorial outside the Zagreb Mosque in tribute to the fallen defenders of Muslim ethnicity. On the occasion the two officials recalled all Bosniaks who took Croatia’s side in 1991. There were almost 25,000 Bosniaks under arms, most of them citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Many of them still have not been granted Croatian citizenship, 1,100 were killed and as many were wounded, including 150 disabled.

Belgrade, 30 May (AKI) - Serbia’s special prosecutor for war crimes on Wednesday ordered the detention of twelve people on suspicion of having committed war crimes against Croatian civilians in October 1991, during the war following Croatia's secession from former Yugoslavia. The prosecution said in a statement that during two and a half years of investigations more than 50 people have been questioned "and extensive material evidence has been collected". It said that four members of the former Yugoslav Army, civilians and members of a paramilitary group “Dusan Silni” were suspected of “torturing, inhumane treatment and killing 70 civilians” in...

The problem of Croats in Bosnia is that, dissatisfied with their position, they emigrated, which could happen to Serbs, says Dodik. After returning from the United States, where, together with the Bosniak member of the Bosnian Presidency, Haris Silajdzic, he held talks with American officials, the Serb Presidency member, Milorad Dodik, clearly stated that entity voting could not be annulled and the name of Republika Srpska could not be changed. -Entity voting cannot be put in question in BH because that would mean the disruption of a balance that was set up by the Dayton Agreement and would lead to...

Croat replaces nationalist as Serb parliament speaker May 23, 2007 9:46 AM BELGRADE, Serbia-Serbian lawmakers elected a pro-Western parliament speaker on Wednesday to replace an ultranationalist whose appointment earlier this month triggered outrage at home and abroad. Oliver Dulic, a 32-year-old doctor from the reformist Democratic Party, was elected by a vote of 136-98 in the 250-member assembly. Dulic's election sidelines the Radical Party's Tomislav Nikolic, who briefly served as parliament speaker two weeks ago as a deadline neared for the formation of a government following January's elections. Nikolic's election to the country's No. 2 post sparked fears that the...

By Vivien Schweitzer and Matthew Westphal 21 May 2007 A member of the Dubrovnik city council broke into a concert by the city's symphony orchestra earlier this month, threatened the guest conductor, and attempted to strangle and then head-butted the orchestra's chief executive, reports the website Javno.hr. The incident happened on May 11 outside the Knezev Dvor, the 15th-century Rector's Palace whose atrium is often used for performances. The Dubrovnik Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Kristijan Rista Savic of Wiesbaden, Germany, was playing for about 235 guests, when Marko Vuletic, a city councilor for the HSP (Croatian Party of Rights, a...

The SNSD suggested that Bosnia-Herzegovina be divided into three federal units, with one of the constitutive people dominant in each. The Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD), a Bosnian party with Milorad Dodik at the helm, has suggested the following: Bosnia should be organised as a federal state, divided into three federal units, they being Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzeg-Bosnia. The proposal was presented by Rajko Vasic, member of the SNSD main committee, at yesterday’s news conference. Ethnically cleansed regions The Bosnian federal unit would encompass the Una-Sana, Central Bosnian, Zenica-Doboj, Bosnia-Podrinje, Tuzla and Sarajevo cantons. Herzeg-Bosnia would get the...

NewsweekBosnia: Digging Up the Secrets of the Dead By Ginanne Brownell Web Exclusive May 11, 2007 The genocidal massacres of Srebrenica took place more than a decade ago, but Kathryne Bomberger relives them every day. As the director general of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), Bomberger spends a good portion of her days visiting mass graves. Another grim stop: the Podrinje Identification Project (PIP) in Tuzla, Bosnia. Specially built to house recovered remains of Srebrenica victims, it is filled from floor to ceiling with body bags and thousands of bones. There are also poignant personal items like clothing,...

I didn't find a great picture of these on the Web. The couple below are a start. The link describes them a bit. Apparently the waters are charged with calcium and carbonate, so that the mineral is precipitating and forming dams while at the same time the water flow is eroding the dams. Very interesting! Historically, this is where the first shots of the Yugoslavian splintering war were fired. Plitvice Lakes are a UNESCO World Heritage site. This last one is reduced size (and the left side is clearly taken from the same vantage point as the one above). Click...

Canberra/Zagreb, 12 April (AKI) - An Australian Court has decided to extradite Dragan Vasiljkovic, also known as Captain Dragan, accused of having committed war crimes in Croatia during the 1990s. Vasiljkovic, a Serb, has 15 days to appeal the decision in Australia's Federal Court, where his lawyer Bradley Slowgrove said proceedings were already under way. "There’s more litigation to come. There’s already other litigation afoot in the federal court which embraces essential issues in this case”, Slowgrove told reporters in Sydney. Croatia holds Vasiljkovic, 52, responsible for torturing and killing Croat soldiers and civilians, as well as killing a foreign...

Bosnia arrests two Muslims over war crimes Reuters AlertNet, UK The two men are the first Muslims arrested in connection with crimes against Croats in wartime detention camps in Bugojno, where dozens of Croat civilians ...

Veljko Kadijevic, became an advisor to the military coalition in Iraq, for which he allegedly gained immunity from the Hague Kadijevic does not have a permanent function in Pentagon, Blitz's source close to BIA (Military Security Agency) said. - The information that he offers is not of a crucial importance. But still, such kind of service can bring profit of up to million and half euro – Blitz writes. The daily claims that Kadijevic has since 2003 been living on Florida and that he was supposed to help the coalition forces to find secret, military bunkers of the former Iraqi...

March 05, 2007 9:44 AM ZAGREB, Croatia AP -Croatia's Supreme Court on Monday upheld a lower court decision convicting eight former soldiers for torturing ethnic Serbs in a wartime prison. The high court said in rejecting the appeal that the defense's demands, that the men be liberated, shown leniency or granted a retrial, had no grounds. Last year, a southern district court sentenced the men to six to eight years in prison for war crimes, including the torture and killings of ethnic Serbs and Yugoslav army officers at Split's Lora military prison during the Serbo-Croat war here in 1991. That...

ZAGREB -- Legal representative Ivan Šimonović says Croatia should swap charges against FRY for settlement. “My personal opinion is that if the key claims in the lawsuit can be obtained with an out-of-court settlement, we should not press further with the trial�, said Šimonović, Croatian representative before the International Court of Justice in the Hague. He said these claims primarily pertained to clearly defining responsibilities for the plight and suffering in Croatia, punishing all who are guilty of committing war crimes, determining the truth about the fate of missing persons and returning Croatia’s cultural treasures. Croatia filed charges against the...

Zlatan Ibrahimovic, one of the most spectacular soccer players ever, comes from the infamous, Muslim dominated area of Rosengård in Malmö, Sweden's third biggest city. He presently plays for the major European club of Inter Milan and has formerly been contracted by Juventus, Ajax and Malmö FF among others. Zlatan Ibrahimovic, known as "Ibra" to Italian soccer fans, is one of the very few Muslim immigrants from the Malmö region who've made major success in any area of life (another exception is Hip hop artist Timbuktu - not especially well known in the US though). Many Rosengård Muslims strive to...

UN judge reaffirms 3 Croat generals to go on trialFebruary 11, 2007 1:53 PM THE HAGUE, Netherlands-A judge at the U.N. war crimes tribunal reaffirmed at a hearing Friday that three Croatian generals will go on trial on May 7, unless requests for the dismissal of the cases are granted before then. The suspects are Gen. Ante Gotovina, formerly the top officer in the Croatian army, and generals Ivan Cermak and Mladen Markac. Prosecutors accuse them of involvement in a "joint criminal enterprise" to drive Serbs from the Krajina region of southern Croatia in a campaign of murder and persecution....

Released : Friday, February 02, 2007 2:47 PM LONG-simmering tensions over the maritime border between Croatia and Slovenia have resurfaced over the last week, writes John McLaughlin. Slovenia has lodged a formal diplomatic protest over Croatia's extension of an offshore drilling contract for state-controlled oil company INA, and Croatia has sharply rejected Slovenia's position. In its diplomatic note, Slovenia protested strongly against the award on January 5 of a five-year extension to INA's existing oil and gas drilling contract in the northern Adriatic. Slovenia argued that the move amounted to a unilateral grab by Croatia of a sea area that...

Jan. 26 events will commemorate attack by Croatian nationalists By Jeff White Staff Writer, The Prague Post January 24th, 2007 When Zdenko Kubík thinks about the day of the crash, what he remembers most is the sound the bodies made as they fell to the earth — a rustling overhead, like wind snapping at canvas. "I was outside, and it was just after 5 p.m.," he recalls. "I heard the engine of the plane, and then some banging. Then the sounds got louder." Today, in a grove of birch trees outside the small village of Srbská Kamenice, north Bohemia, a...

A Nazi hunter criticized Serbian authorities on Wednesday for failing to seek the extradition of three men suspected of responsibility in atrocities committed against Jews, Serbs and Gypsies during World War II. Efraim Zuroff, director of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center's office in Israel, said Serbian authorities have done little to bring to justice Croats Ivo Rojnica and Milivoj Asner, and Hungarian Sandor Kepiro. "Sadly, we have heard a lot of nice words, but there was no concrete action" by Serb authorities to start the extradition procedure, Zuroff said after attending a commemoration for some 1,400 victims of the...

LAS VEGAS // President Bush recently echoed Vice President Dick Cheney's support for Croatia to join the European Union, a bid that has been stalled because of the former Yugoslav republic's slowness to own up to and prosecute its 1990s war crimes and its failure to ensure protections and rights for minorities, including returning Serb refugees. Croatia also faces the possibility of being excluded from the 2008 European soccer championship because when an Italian team's fans taunted the Croatian team's fans at a match in August by waving Yugoslavia's old communist flag, the other side took great offense and showed...

MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Police and Australian Open organizers were on high alert on Tuesday amid fears ethnic clashes between Serbs and Croats that marred the opening day of the grand slam could erupt again. Serbia's Ilia Bozoljac and Croatian Marin Cilic are scheduled to play a first-round match later on day two and there are fears it could set the scene for a repeat of the soccer-style brawls that stained Melbourne Park on Monday. It was the first time such violence had flared in more than 100 years of grand slam tennis history. Heavy security is expected around the outside...

Poland, Croatia to send fresh troops to Afghanistan KABUL: Poland and Croatia will send fresh troops to Afghanistan in the current year as part of the decisions made in Riga conference. Brig Gen Richard Nugee, a spokesman for the NATO troops, told a press conference in Kabul the other day whether extra forces were sent to Afghanistan or not, the alliance would continue its activities with the existing military presence. He said the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) would continue to support the Afghanistan government. In the Riga conference in late November, the NATO secretary general Jaap Hoop de...

9 January 2007 | 11:56 | Source: FoNet WASHINGTON, ZAGREB -- A recently declassified CIA document says the Croatian governments protected paramilitary unit leader Tomislav Merèep. The Croatian government avoided investigating accusations against Merèep in fear of the influence exerted by some right-wing political leaders, the document reads. “Former Croatian paramilitary leader Tomislav Merèep is responsible for numerous abuses of human rights and other illegal acts during the 1991 war in Croatia. These accusations are known in the Croatian government circles, some have been confirmed by international organizations and witnesses, yet despite this the government avoids investigating the allegations”, the...

More than 40,000 Christian youths from various religious denominations gathered in the Croatian capital of Zagreb on Friday for worship aimed at bringing Christian youngsters from Europe and many world countries closer. The participants, Catholics, Baptists, Protestants, Orthodox and other Christians, will hold prayers in the next five days at the Zagreb Fair grounds and will attend a joint New Year’s party, according to the French-based Taize Community, which is organising the five-day event. All participants at the gathering have been placed in the homes of their young Croatian peers and many new friendships are expected to be cemented, said...

Portal.Index.hr quoted on Saturday afternoon a recording in which President Stjepan Mesic said that the declaration and recognition of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH - an Axis ally state in Croatia during the World War II) was – Croatian victory. The recording of Mesic's address, which allegedly took place in Austria, or Australia in the 1990's was sent by a secret source and was published on the portal in its entirety. Among other things, Mesic says that during the World War II the Croats gained two victories – once when the Axis allies recognized the NDH, and at the...

The head of the Holocaust memorial group the Simon Wiesenthal Center criticized Croatia over a newly opened museum at the site of a fascist World War II concentration camp, in written comments. "I saw an exhibition which was a big disappointment," Efraim Zuroff wrote in an article published in the weekly Globus. "To my disbelief, there was not a single photograph of the commanders of Jasenovac," he said of the camp at which his organization estimates some 600,000 mostly Serbs and Jews were killed during World War II. Zuroff said that any young visitors to the museum would "leave probably...

Summary The United States said it will push for Croatia to be admitted to NATO in 2008. Meanwhile, the United Nations signaled it will delay a decision on independence from Kosovo until after Serbian elections, to allow Belgrade the stability needed to join the European Union. These events, which are part of a move by the West to offer Balkan countries incentives to democratize, highlight problems with encouraging longtime rivals Croatia and Serbia both to join NATO and the European Union. If Croatia joins NATO, it can dictate the terms of any attempt by Serbia to secure membership itself via...

A man convicted of atrocities in the Balkans has been living peacefully in Carshalton for years ::nobreak::TO HIS neighbours, Milan Spanovic was an unassuming father of three. Though he had lived among them for 15 years, the best description they could come up with was that he was “remarkably quiet”. Equally, the officers who arrested him for shoplifting found nothing untoward about him. After he protested his innocence, they set about completing the paperwork and prepared to release him with no more than a formal caution. So when a desk officer typed his name into a database as a matter...