Free Republic

Federal authorities on Wednesday began legal proceedings to strip U.S. citizenship from two Bosnians, including one living in Oregon, for war crimes including executing civilians during that country’s civil war in the 1990s. The move by the U.S. Justice Department comes years after Rasema Handanovic and Edin Dzeko were extradited and later convicted by courts in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2011. After serving her sentence, Handanovic returned to Beaverton, Oregon, according to a statement from the Justice department, while Dzeko has not yet been released by Bosnian authorities. The department filed denaturalization lawsuits against the pair in federal courts in...

Victims of Croatia's pro-Nazi World War II regime and their relatives are seeking $3.5 billion in damages in a suit filed in the US.Visitor walks past display at US Holocaust Memorial Museum (Reuters) Victims of Croatia's pro-Nazi World War II regime and their relatives are seeking $3.5 billion in damages in a suit filed in the United States, local media and officials said Monday. The group wants compensation from the Croatian government for property seized from ethnic Serbs, Roma and Jews, as well as for their suffering during the war, state-run HRT television reported. The suit was filed in a...

ZAGREB - Alen Budaj, an associate of the Jerusalem-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, has said that the coutries that are legal successors to the former Yugoslavia, Serbia in particular, must send a strong diplomatic protest to the Vatican over its intention declare Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac a saint. The Vatican has officially confirmed that Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac will soon be declared a saint. Immediately upon the entering of the Germans in Zagreb, on April 10, 1941, Stepinac supported the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia (ISC), which was declared a state by the Ustasha (Croatian fascist movement), and in 1945, he...

<p>Bob Dylan is getting sued in France by Croatians over a quote he gave to a magazine.</p> <p>He may have been a prominent Civil Rights movement supporter, but Bob Dylan is being sued for racism.</p>

ZAGREB, Croatia -- Croatia's World Cup qualification celebrations have been marred by apparent pro-Nazi chants by fans and defender Joe Simunic. Croatia qualified for the World Cup with a 2-0 win over Iceland on Tuesday. Video footage appears to show Simunic taking a microphone to the field after the match and shouting"For the homeland!" ["Za dom spremni!"] to the fans. The fans respond: "Ready!" That was the war call used by Ustashas, the Croatian pro-Nazi puppet regime that ruled the state during World War II when tens of thousands Jews, Serbs and others perished in concentration camps. The Australian-born Simunic...

<p>Looking back in hindsight, one can always find things that perfectly portended the future. Note the date of this article - 1988 - BEFORE any of the republics seceded from Yugoslavia and the wars of the 1990s began.</p> <p>A group of American-Croatians called a small but decorous press conference in the Bismarck Hotel last week to speak from the American heartland about strife in their homeland thousands of miles away.</p>

Bishop Franjo Komarica believes "tens of thousands" of Catholics would return to Bosnia-Herzegovina if they could. Photo by Peter J. Thompson, National Post When Bishop Franjo Komarica looks out at his congregation in the northwestern region of Bosnia-Herzegovina, he feels a sense of dread. In Banja Luka, the largest city in the region, only about 200 of the Roman Catholic faithful show up for Sunday morning Mass at the cathedral, instead of the 800 that used to be the norm before a three-year war that ended in 1996. It was a war of brutal ethnic cleansing that saw hundreds of...

TENNIS fans told today of Croatian and Serbian supporters punching and kicking each other during a clash at the Australian Open, but also accused police of targeting ethnic groups. Up to 150 people were ejected from the showpiece tournament in Melbourne today after clashes between Croatian and Serbian fans wearing national colours. Dozens of police moved into the concourse area to break up the fight. Five Croatian fans later slammed the violence as "disgusting''. Marina, 19, Danijela, 19, Ivana, 17, Kristina, 16 and Marija, 20, all from Melbourne, who did not wish to use their last names, said they were...