Posted on 04/30/2004 9:38:59 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -
Bosnian Serb authorities offered details of six previously undisclosed mass graves in the town of Srebrenica on Friday, their first step in cooperating with a commission investigating the worst civilian massacre in Europe since World War II.
Bosnian Serb military and police officials submitted details of the graves to the chairman of the commission studying the massacre of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys in 1995.
The Muslims were massacred when Serbs overran the eastern Bosnian enclave during the 3 1/2-year war in the former Yugoslav province.
"The mass graves are located in the wider Srebrenica region and we have already been to the sites," commission chair Milan Bogdanic told The Associated Press.
He refused to disclose the exact location of the mass graves or give an estimate of the number of victims buried in each one.
The disclosure came after Bosnia's international administrator, Paddy Ashdown, ordered Bosnian Serb authorities to cooperate or lose their jobs.
When authorities at first failed to act, Ashdown used powers granted under the peace plan that ended Bosnia's 1992-1995 war to fire Gen. Cvjetko Savic, the chief of staff of the Bosnian Serb army, and Dejan Miletic, a Bosnian Serb official responsible for cooperation with the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague (news - web sites), Netherlands.
Ashdown also told the president and the prime minister of the Serb republic that they would be held personally responsible if they failed to make it possible for the commission to complete its work by June.
With the deadline looming, the Bosnian Serb authorities began to act.
Under the peace accord that ended the war, Ashdown has the power to impose laws and fire officials who fail to comply with the peace process. The same agreement also divided postwar Bosnia into two mini-states, a Serb republic and a Muslim-Croat federation.
The new information "is a clear sign that Bosnian Serb officials are starting to cooperate with the commission," said Vedran Persic, Ashdown's spokesman.
The information on the graves is significant because thousands of Muslims are still missing.
Bosnian Muslim officials claim that up to 20 mass graves are still undisclosed, and the failure to address the question has stalled Bosnia's efforts to move past the war and toward the West.
The Bosnian Serbs have also been under pressure to acknowledge that their forces committed atrocities in Srebrenica and to name the perpetrators.
The Srebrenica investigation commission includes Bosnian Serb judges and lawyers, a representative of the victims' families and an international expert.
For a good read about Kofi and the messes he has been involved in around the globe the last 30 years and his upbringing and influences, check out..
THE OPTIMIST -- Kofi Annan's U.N. has never been more important and more imperilled
It's a long read but very enlightening as to the mindset of Kofi and his supporters, the globalist elite, and how they could care less about the peoples they "protect" in the name of peace.
16,500 bodies have been recovered in Bosnia so far. But there is no way to tell how many were civilians and how many combatants, or which nationality they were, or which side killed them.
Well, it's not so much a beef as it is an attempt to transform the statement into a larger sin than actually murdering thousands of individuals - over 6,000 victims have been recovered from inside Kosovo and Serbia proper, where Milosevic's forces attempted, yet ultimately failed, to hide them (including 3 Americans murdered after the war, but they don't count, 'cause they had Albanian ancestry).
As far as Srebrenica, it's pretty much the same script - Serbs commit mass murder, and then try to lie and deny their way out of culpability for their actions - they're not alone in this behavior, mind you, but their activities have left them with the larger pile of corpses to sweep under the carpet through whatever means they think will work, and the "I hate Clinton" solidarity between conservatives and Serb nationalists has left us with a surfeit of disillusioned hard cases here on FR who haven't quite figured out that their efforts are somewhat counterproductive to their cause.
Link?
Ethnic/gender/age of the victims? Combatants/noncombatants?
including 3 Americans murdered after the war, but they don't count, 'cause they had Albanian ancestry.
Ahhh, the famous "Atlantic Brigade". And? Your point being...? What about that American who fought together with Talibans, you feel sorry for him too? BTW:
Article 47 -- Mercenaries
1. A mercenary shall not have the right to be a combatant or a prisoner of war.
So it appears there really are no details, much less any identification even if it is true. They made this claim after they were threatened by Paddy Ashdown with losing their jobs. Could be something they made up to please Paddy Ashdown.
Stella Jatras knows a California cop (she named by FR mail to me) who went to investigate mass graves of Muslims but each and every instance turned out to be Serb soldiers shot in the head.
In 2002, the OMPF, which is not specifically concentrating upon Albanian victims as the ICTY's teams were performed 274 exhumations in Kosovo, and a further 706 in 2003.
ICMP Activity Update September-December 2002 (.pdf) Page 4
OMPF Statistics Table, 4/27/04 (.pdf)
I had made a mistake in adding these numbers in toto, rather than multiplying them by a ratio of .85 (423/[423+75]), which corresponds to the identification ratio of Albanian vs. non Albanian as reported in the latest OMPF statistics release. This lowers the number from 980 to 833.
Lastly, 836 bodies of Kosovo Albanians were recovered in Serbia proper, where they were moved in order to hide them from the ICTY's investigators.
Serbian Government press release, 3/13/04
Add them all up and you get 5,880, rather than the 6,027 I had first cited, which I guess invalidates my point about Milosevic's forces murdering thousands of individuals.
Damn.
My point about the Bytyqui brothers is that they were arrested after the war, invalidating your POW argument, and furthermore they served their prison sentences, and then were simply executed on a whim by an individual who decided for whatever reason that the Laws of his land didn't apply to him and he could do whatever he wanted without fear of reprisal - a common theme in Serbian government and military circles through the 1990's.
Or perhaps you can direct me to the trial and subsequent death sentence handed out in this case?
As I said, they're Albanian Americans, don't matter to our Serb American contingent, and merely offer yet another example of the base level our Serb friends will lower themselves to as they succumb to placing ethnicity above values or morality as a means of identifying with a larger group.
See Joan's comment on Stella Jatras for further reinforcement of that last point.
It would appear perhaps that Albanian Americans do count.
Lucky you.
On the off chance you were hoping to imply that I had accused Milosevic of Genocide in Kosovo, you're out of luck, and just another sad example of the sloppy thinking that ails these Balkan threads.
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