Free Republic

Immobilized with fear, a 4-year-old British girl huddled for eight hours beneath the legs of her slain mother in the back of a car filled with corpses on a remote Alpine road — all while French investigators stood nearby, unaware the girl was there.

The wartime spokesman of late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic was asked on Thursday to form a coalition government with a nationalist party, raising concerns among diplomats and investors about Belgrade's bid for European Union membership. Ivica Dacic, head of the Socialist party once led by Milosevic, said after being given the mandate to govern: "There will be no return to the 1990s," the decade when the former Yugoslavia was ripped apart by war. "As prime minister, I will never make a decision that will be an injustice to Serbia and its citizens," Dacic said after meeting President Tomislav Nikolic, head...

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...

BELGRADE -- The proceedings for rehabilitation of WWII General Dragoljub Mihailović resumed on Friday [May 11, 2012] before the Higher Court in Belgrade. Mihailović was a commander of the Chetnik movement during World War II who was sentenced to death in 1946. The court listened to audio recordings from the trial against Mihailović, provided by historian Slobodan Marković, specifically one part of his closing argument given on July 10, 1946. “By comparing stenographer's notes and transcripts of the audio recording, it is evident the former were cut short by 27 percent and the meaning of sentences was often changed,” Marković...

Aleksandra's Note: While this excellent analysis by Srdja Trifkovic focuses on the "internal" history of Croatia, it is important to note that four days after Nazi Germany declared war on the United States, Hitler's staunch ally the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) declared war on both the United Kingdom and on the United States on December 14, 1941. What makes this especially significant is that less than three years later, on April 16, 1944, which was Easter Sunday for the Serbian Orthodox, the Anglo-American forces bombed Belgrade, the capital of their loyal and devoted ally Serbia, even though there was...

BELGRADE, Serbia — At least 11,000 villagers have been trapped by heavy snow and blizzards in Serbia’s mountains, authorities said Thursday, as the death toll from Eastern Europe’s weeklong deep freeze rose to 123, many of them homeless people. The harshest winter in decades has seen temperatures in some regions dropping to minus 30 C (minus 22 F) and below, and has caused power outages, traffic chaos and the widespread closure of schools, nurseries and airports. The stranded in Serbia are stuck in some 6,500 homes in remote areas that cannot be reached due to icy, snow-clogged roads with banks...

Belgrade may hold the pulse, but the soul throbs well beyond the capital cityAs peace has returned to most of the Balkans, countries in the region, including those that broke off from the former Yugoslavia, are opening their doors to tourists. And Serbia, despite the unsettled conflict with Kosovo to its south, is no exception. To the Serbs, religion is a crucial part of life. And the most important spiritual sanctity in Belgrade is this grand cathedral dedicated to Saint Sava, the first archbishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church and the founder of Serbian law and literature. Saint Sava was...

Catholics in Bosnia-Herzegovina should be treated equally. This was the demand expressed by Vinko Cardinal Puljic, the Archbishop of Sarajevo, during a visit to the international headquarters of the Catholic pastoral charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN). In the employment market, in schools and in other spheres of social life, Catholics are systematically disadvantaged, he reported. The aim is to persuade them to leave the country. Church lands and buildings that were confiscated during the period of Communism have not been returned, and building approvals for churches are subjected to years of delay. The government “has no interest...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 24, 2009 PRESS RELEASE BROOKLYN RESIDENT INDICTED FOR CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT MURDER OVERSEAS AND CONSPIRACY TO PROVIDE MATERIAL SUPPORT TO TERRORISTS An indictment was unsealed in federal court this morning charging Betim Kaziu, a U.S. citizen and resident of Brooklyn, with conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country and conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists.1 Kaziu is scheduled to be arraigned later today before United States Magistrate Judge Joan M. Azrack, at the U.S. Courthouse, 225 Cadman Plaza East, Brooklyn, New York. The charges were announced by Benton J. Campbell, United States Attorney for...

SARAJEVO -- The Islamic Community in Bosnia-Herzegovina has called on Muslims in that country to boycott the upcoming New Year celebrations.By taking part, said the organization, they would "violate Allah's boundaries, and do something their master hates and despises". The Islamic Community statement on Wednesday quoted from a book by Almir Dumica, entitled, "Pearls of the Sunnah in the Mosaic of Time": "On that night, turn off the lights early and let everyone see you're boycotting everything happening on that night. Do not fear anyone's objections. Don't you have a right to choose? Do not say, 'how can I do...

In Sofia, Croatian ambassador to Bulgaria Danijela Barišić and Leszek Hensel, ambassador of Poland – current holder of the EU Presidency – hosted a celebration on December 9 of Croatia’s EU accession treaty signing. Ambassadors and guests from EU and other countries turned out in force to offer congratulations. Photo: Clive Leviev-Sawyer Croatia signed on December 9 2011 its accession treaty with the European Union and if all goes according to plan, will join the bloc in July 2013. Before the process progresses further, the country must within 30 days from December 9 approve in a referendum accession to the...

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...

BELGRADE -- Oliver Ivanović says he does not rule out the possibility that Serbs from northern Kosovo may "declare independence" of that part of the province. Oliver Ivanović (Beta, file) This could happen if the West continues to insist on the implementation of the agreement on customs stamps and other issues in Priština's favor, the Ministry for Kosovo state secretary said in Belgrade on Friday, after a meeting of the Parliamentary Committee on Kosovo and Metohija. Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo unilaterally declared independence in early 2008, but Serbia rejected it as an illegal act of secession. Serb north of the...

Thank goodness for those among us who remain vigilant against the lies... Review: “Tito’s War” by John Brown, World War II History Magazine, November, 2011, Volume 10, No. 7, pp. 54-61. Review by Carl Savich In the November, 2011 issue of the military history magazine "World War II History", published in Herndon, Virginia, an article entitled “Tito’s War” by Australian author John Brown purports to chronicle the conflict in Yugoslavia between Draza Mihailovich’s Chetnik guerrillas and Josip Broz Tito’s Communist Partisans during World War II. This account is fake. It is a phony history of World War II. John Brown...

BELGRADE -- More than 1,000 Serbs have been murdered in Kosovo since June 1999 - when the war ended and international forces were deployed in the province. This is according to Assistant Minister for Kosovo Kruna Kaličanin, who spoke in Belgrade on Thursday. She also noted that "almost nobody" was charged and put on trial for those crimes. The international community, in the meanwhile, showed a tendency to "minimize" the importance of Serb victims, Kaličanin added. These statements came a day after a Serb man was shot and killed, while two others were wounded in Kosovska Mitrovica. Kaličanin also accused...

The conflicts that engulfed the former Yugoslavia still remain unresolved in the political arena and open to Western political shenanigans and covert meddling from Turkey and Saudi Arabia in Bosnia and Kosovo. Orthodox Christianity faces many attacks and only a naïve individual would claim that America and the hands of Turkey and Saudi Arabia are clean. America and other Western nations did little to stop Turkey invading Cyprus in 1974 and creating a de-facto nation and altering the demographics of northern Cyprus and using this area for military purposes. Irrespective of the rights and wrongs of Cyprus you have no...

Kragujevac Memorial Park Introduction by Nebojsa MalicIn March 1941, the Yugoslav government signed a cooperation treaty with Nazi Germany, under threat of invasion. Two days later, it was toppled in a coup. Outraged, Hitler swore to "wipe Yugoslavia off the map," and delayed the planned invasion of the USSR for a stopover in the Balkans. By all military criteria, "Operation Punishment" was a cakewalk, wiping out resistance in seven days. Many willing collaborators eagerly helped the Nazis dismember the dysfunctional state. But within two months, not one but two resistance movements had sprung up, challenging the occupation, albeit in different...

Since World War Two you have had three major conflicts in the Balkans involving Orthodox Christian communities and Islamic communities; this applies to Cyprus, Bosnia and Kosovo respectively. On all three occasions the United States supported the followers of Islam and maybe one day the same will happen to Orthodox Christians in Macedonia? Yet unlike the large Christian communities of Bosnia and Cyprus, it is the land of Kosovo which is being Islamized and Albanianized under NATO, the UN, and other international institutions who are meant to be neutral. The media in the West is once more turning a 'blind...

Recently, as I was bicycling to work, I became the victim of random, unprovoked violence as I was hit by a nearly full bottle of flavored water thrown by a passenger from a car that passed me. Due to my superior reflexes and conditioning I managed to stabilize my bike (and myself rom the initial shock) as the bottle bounced off of me. Nevertheless, why someone would waste a perfectly good, chilled bottle of sugared drink on a 40 degree Celsius day trying to injure someone they didn't even know was very perplexing to me. On another occasion, two speeding...

(Reuters) - A witness in a war crimes case against a member of Kosovo's parliament has been found dead in Germany, an EU police and justice mission (EULEX) spokesman said on Wednesday. Ruling party parliamentarian Fatmir Limaj, who was put under house arrest last week, and nine other people arrested in March are accused of committing murder, torture and violations of the human rights of ethnic Albanians, Serbs and prisoners during Kosovo's 1998-99 war with Serbia. Agim Zogaj, known as witness X in the war crimes case, was found dead in a German park, said EULEX spokesman Blerim Krasniqi, adding:...