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CRIME & WAR CRIMES | OCTOBER 4, 2012 | 16:44 Radical Islamist leader threatens Serbia SOURCE: BETA BUCHAREST -- Radical Islamist leader Omar Bakri has warned that terrorist attacks would be launched against Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, and other countries in the region. The reason for this, the Syria-born extremist told Bulgaria's newspaper 24 Chasa, is that those were "territories that belong to Islam". Bakri further explained: "When Islam enters a territory, it becomes Islamic, therefore Islam is under obligation to eventually liberate it." The Mediafax news agency is also reporting that he listed all "Muslim territories" as follows: "Spain, Bulgaria,...

A historic baptistery structure has been unearthed at one of the most important ancient sites in Kosovo by Turkish archaeologists. It is the first such excavation to be carried out by Turkish archaeologists in Europe Since the beginning of excavations in July in Kosovo’s ancient city of Ulpiana, a baptistery dating from the Byzantine period have been unearthed by Turkish archaeologists of the Mimar Sinan University. At an excavation site in Kosovo’s ancient city of Ulpiana, a team of Turkish archaeologists have discovered a baptistery dating from the Byzantine period. The archaeological team, consisting of archaeology students from Istanbul’s Mimar...

GAZIMESTAN, PRIŠTINA -- 16 Serb children were injured when Molotov cocktails were thrown at them as they were returning from the Vidovdan ceremonies in Gazimestan on Thursday.A man carries the Serbian flag surrounded by KPS members at Gračanica on Thursday (Tanjug) The attack happened in Priština. B92 has learned that two Serbs received serious injuries and were treated in the nearby enclave on Gračanica. Gračanica Health Care Center Radmila Trajković told Tanjug that they treated 16 Serb children - between eight and 16 years of age - and that they were injured when their buses returning from Gazimestan came under...

The European Parliament on Wednesday (13 June) approved draft laws that would strongly increase Brussels' power over eurozone countries' budgets. But they tempered the previously austere proposals with measures for growth, debt redemption and democratic scrutiny. "This is the core of a fiscal union," said Austrian MEP and socialist leader Hannes Swoboda. "This is the first time that there is a structural solution [to the eurozone crisis] on the table," said Liberal leader Guy Verhofstadt. His Green counterpart Daniel Cohn-Bendit called it a "milestone" for the strength of agreement among MEPs. The pair of laws—also known as the two-pack—is among...

(Reuters) - At least three Kosovo Serbs and a NATO soldier were wounded in a gunfight on Friday, as peacekeepers tried to dismantle Serb barricades blocking traffic, a Reuters witness said. NATO troops in the Kosovo Force (KFOR) fired tear gas and small arms and some protesters fired back with handguns. The troops, in armored personnel carriers, were confronted by hundreds of Serbs who pelted them with stones near roadblocks in the villages of Rudare and Dudin Krs outside the town of Zvecan in a Serb-dominated northern area of Kosovo. The roadblocks are among the last on major roads yet...

Who could not despise the tottering Bashar al-Assad dictatorship in Syria? The Syrian strongman has killed some 10,000 protestors over the last year; thousands of Syrians are now refugees. The autocracy arms and aids the terrorist organization Hezbollah. It targets democratic Israel with thousands of missiles, and still does its best to ruin neighboring Lebanon. Theocratic and terrorist-sponsoring Iran has few allies -- but Syria remains its staunchest. Almost no country over the last half-century has proved more hostile to the United States than has Syria. With sanctions not working, and with the Chinese, Iranians and Russians not eager to...

PRISTINA, Kosovo – A Syrian dissident said Thursday his country's opposition is turning to Kosovo's former rebels-turned-politicians for advice on how to topple Bashar Assad's regime in Damascus. Ammar Abdulhamid, an exiled anti-Assad activist, said that seeing a new country "emerging out of the nightmare and emerging as a state" could be inspiring for Syrian dissidents. Assad's government has cracked down on a 13-month-old popular uprising in Syria, leading to an estimated 9,000-plus deaths. "We are here to learn," Abdulhamid said during an interview with The Associated Press in Pristina. "Kosovo has gone through an experience that I think will...

The great majority of Kosovar Albanians take pride in their reputation as the most pro-American Muslims in the world. Their Sunni Islam is conventional and moderate, and spiritual Sufism is a powerful force among the believers. Since 2009, however, a serious effort has been visible in the Balkan republic to turn Kosovar Islam in the direction of Wahhabism, the ultrafundamentalist sect that inspires al Qaeda. The meddling is coming mainly from neighboring Macedonia, where Albanians and Muslims are recognized officially as minorities, and the Islamic clerical apparatus has come under Arab control. Kosovo defines itself constitutionally as a secular state,...

A report Saturday said that the United States was planning to intervene militarily in Syria, with or without United Nations authorization, if the killing in the country continued. A senior American official quoted in the London-based Al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper said that the action would be based on the UN intervention in Kosovo several years ago: Establishment of a beachhead and carving out an area that was off-limits to forces controlled by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, where refugees could come to flee Assad's troops, and which could be used as aforward base to reduce Assad's hold on the country, and eventually...

Israel’s position on Kosovo is a matter of vital national interest on which no government should ever compromise.Photo by Reuters February 17 marks the fourth anniversary of Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia. The UDI has been recognized since by the United States and its key NATO partners, as well as 80-odd other countries. The majority of the world’s sovereign states have refused to do so, however, including two permanent Security Council powers (Russia and China), two budding giants (Brasil and India), five European Union members (including Spain) – and Israel. Successive Israeli governments have come under pressure from...

By FOUAD AJAMI The bloodshed and the brutality of the dictatorship in Syria are at long last beginning to challenge the passivity of the Obama administration. The word is out that the Pentagon has launched a "scoping exercise" to determine what could be done should the president want to respond to the Syrian catastrophe. For months, the administration pursued the mirage of a United Nations Security Council condemnation of Damascus, when there was no chance that Russia and China would go for it. The administration persisted even though a similar effort last October ended in failure. There was no need...

The mainstream media will spend ten days losing their ever-loving minds blaming a Sarah Palin campaign map a killer never saw for that killer’s actions, but this news about a confessed terrorist admitting that a clip from Brian De Palma’s “Redacted” “prompted” him to murder two American airmen gets buried at the bottom of a Salt Lake City newspaper article: [Arid] Uka gave a teary confession as his Frankfurt state court trial opened in August, saying that the night before the attack he had seen a video on Facebook that purported to show American soldiers raping a teenage Muslim girl....

<p>BERLIN (AP) — Germany's Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich is honoring two Americans for helping apprehend an Islamic extremist who attacked a U.S. Air Force bus last year and killed two airmen.</p> <p>Friedrich was to present the Federal Cross of Merit on Monday to Staff Sgt. Trevor Brewer and a civilian airport employee, both of whom chased the suspect after the March 2nd shooting, helping police arrest him at the scene.</p>

(TIRANA) - Albania on Thursday slammed calls from a Kosovo hardline opposition leader to temporarily block the border with Serbia as a way of barring Serb products from entering the breakaway territory. Albania's foreign ministry said in a statement that the attempt to block the border was contrary to constructive efforts to make Kosovo a democratic state and multi-ethnic society. "The use of nationalist and pseudo-patriotic rhetoric" will not help key goals of the Albanians in both Kosovo and Albania to progress towards integration into the European Union, or new recognitions of Kosovo's independence, the ministry warned. Albin Kurti, a...

Four years on from its independence, Kosovo is attempting to reaffirm its native traditions and is calling on the West for help to avoid being swallowed by the slow advance of radical Islam, which is taking advantage of tolerant traditions. Four years on from its independence, Kosovo is attempting to reaffirm its native traditions and is calling on the West for help to avoid being swallowed by the slow advance of radical Islam, which is taking advantage of tolerant traditions. The scenario is one of inter-religious dialogue that is progressing at its own slow pace, without making any fuss and...

A Kosovo-born man was charged with plotting to attack Tampa-area nightclubs and a sheriff’s office with bombs and an assault rifle to avenge wrongs done to Muslims, federal authorities said Monday. According to a federal complaint, 25-year-old Sami Osmakac recorded an eight-minute video shortly before his arrest explaining why he wanted to bring terror to his “victims’ hearts” in the Tampa Bay area. Osmakac is a naturalized American citizen born in Kosovo, then part of the former Yugoslavia in eastern Europe. In the video, Osmakac is seen cross-legged on the floor with a pistol in his hand and an AK-47...

ORLANDO, Fla. - A 25-year-old Muslim man born in Kosovo was charged on Monday with trying to obtain explosives and firearms to attack Florida businesses and a police station, authorities said. Sami Osmakac, a naturalized US citizen who was born in Kosovo - a disputed Balkan state once a part of the former Yugoslavia that declared its independence from Serbia in 2008 - was charged with one count of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction. He was arrested Saturday night after taking possession from an undercover FBI agent of what he believed to be explosives and firearms, according...

DJAKOVICA -- An 82-year-old woman - one of only five remaining Serbs in the town of Djakovica in Kosovo - has died, it has been reported. Jela Mijovich and four other elderly women were the only Serbs left in the town after the March 2004 pogrom perpetrated by ethnic Albanians. They all lived in a rebuilt structure located in the yard of a Serbian Orthodox monastery in the town. Prior to 1999, several thousand Serbs lived in Djakovica. The four elderly women who still remain there live under 24-hour protection of the Kosovo police (KPS). One of them, 64-year-old Vasiljka...

The world court ruled Monday that Greece was wrong to block a bid by the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) to join NATO in 2008 because of a long-running dispute over the fledgling country's use of the name “Macedonia.” In a 15-1 ruling, the court found that Greece's veto breached a provisional 1995 deal under which Greece had agreed not to block membership of the country in international organizations if it used the name FYROM, while the matter was submitted to further negotiations. More than 15 years later, mediation over the name is still ongoing. The victory is partly...

"Police in Kosovo are investigating who sprayed swastikas on dozens of tombstones in a Jewish cemetery recently restored by American and Kosovan students, a spokesman said Thursday. Brahim Sadrija said police had sealed off the cemetery in the capital, Kosovo, and are looking for clues. The vandalism is believed to have happened Tuesday. … In June, a group of students from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and their peers from the American University in Kosovo restored the neglected cemetery by clearing debris from around the graves and cutting overgrown grass. Rabbi Edward S. Boraz of the college’s Roth Center for...