WE'VE GOT THE Hoplites Srebrenica Screamer!!
Posted on 09/03/2004 5:37:50 AM PDT by Doctor13
Massacres in Kosovo never happened, say Canadians who investigated mass graves.
The war crimes tribunal in The Hague is "beginning to panic" over its case against former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic according to a Vancouver detective sent to unearth mass graves in Kosovo and a Canadian filmmaker who documented the exhumations.
"I would think they'll have a tough time with the charge of genocide with only 5,000 bodies," said retired Vancouver detective sergeant Brian Honeybourn. "It seems as though The Hague is beginning to panic."
Mr. Milosevic's trial is to resume next week with the former Serbian dictator defending himself against charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. Former Canadian Supreme Court justice Louise Arbour made history when she laid the charges -- the first against a head of state -- as the tribunal's special prosecutor.
Calgary filmmaker Garth Pritchard and Sgt. Honeybourn are critical of Ms. Arbour, now UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and her claims that the Serbs, directed by Mr. Milosevic, murdered as many as 200,000 civilians during its ethnic cleansing of Kosovo.
The alleged massacres were used by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Western leaders as justification for their bombing campaign and intervention in Kosovo, and were regularly and routinely reported as fact on television networks such as the CBC and CNN, as the West backed the Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) against the Serbs.
"This was a massacre that never happened," Mr. Pritchard maintains.
"I was standing there when the forensic teams were telling Louise Arbour there were no 200,000 bodies and she didn't want to know."
Mr. Pritchard, who has produced more than a dozen documentaries on the Balkan and Afghan wars, said yesterday he has been approached by Hague prosecutors to testify in their case against Mr. Milosevic after turning down a request to appear as a defence witness for the former president.
"I was telephoned by an RCMP officer seconded to the Hague tribunal's investigative unit, a corporal named Tom Steenvoorden, who told me the total number of bodies they have recovered amounts to 5,080, which is a far cry from 200,000," he told the Citizen.
"I want someone like Peter Mansbridge or Ms. Arbour to tell me where the other 195,000 bodies are. This is a massacre that never happened."
Mr. Pritchard said he refused to co-operate with the Hague prosecutors, just as he had with representatives of Mr. Milosevic.
Other Canadians who have been named as potential defence witnesses include Citizen reporter David Pugliese and retired Maj.-Gen Lewis MacKenzie, who have both said they will refuse, and war correspondent and magazine publisher Scott Taylor, who has agreed to defend articles he wrote for the Citizen from Kosovo.
Sgt. Honeybourn and forensic team leader Brian Strongman echoed Mr. Pritchard's doubts that the genocidal massacre by the Serbs ever took place.
"I can't say that there weren't 200,000 bodies because I wasn't covering the entire country," said Sgt. Honeybourn.
"But I never saw any sign of anything like 200,000. If there were that many, then why did they have us exhuming single graves? The biggest mass grave we examined contained about 20 and there was another one of 11. But mostly our nine-member team worked on single graves."
Mr. Strongman said he recalls that exhumations by the Canadian group and 11 other international teams never matched the "rumours" of mass graves holding the bodies of many thousands.
"We only spent 45 days there," he said, "but I believe the largest mass grave we investigated held 20 bodies. I was in Bosnia and remember one mass grave that held 200 -- certainly we never saw anything like that in Kosovo. Of course, Louise Arbour and people had to talk about figures like 200,000 to justify bringing in NATO."
Sgt. Honeybourn, a veteran of more than 30 years of police work, was a member of the first Canadian forensic specialist team that joined units from several western countries in the search for the alleged 200,000 buried victims.
Now he maintains that the Hague staff under Ms. Arbour was confused and incompetent.
"Our resources were not maximized, simple as that," he said. "There seemed to be a pronounced lack of co-ordination, which was extremely frustrating. I don't think we were deployed properly."
In the six weeks Sgt. Honeybourn spent digging up fetid graves in Kosovo during the sweltering summer of 1999, the Canadian team exhumed 86 bodies.
Outside of being able to give information to family members of bodies they exhumed and identified, he regarded the mission, which cost Canada more than $1.2 million, as an investigative failure and "a waste of time."
Bosnian Muslims in general are not bad people and I personally like them, Joan. It is the radicals that do not get along with me.
Giving his statements any weight would be like paying attention to Serb nationalists, like Nikolic, who advocate "Greater Serbia".
Well, it would be like paying attention to Nikolic if he won less than 5%, rather than the 45% he garnered in the last election.
Understand?
Of course not! You're a Serb Nationalist yourself and are affected by all the symptoms of that particular brand of idiocy.
Enjoy.
I can't tell whether it is a minority or majority who are violent of very unfair to Serbs. But I do know the number of those threatening to Serbs is significant - at least around 1/4 to 1/3 of the population. There's been too many times where Muslim neighbors have done violence to Serbs or refused to speak out against it. There would be more Serbs able to live in Sarajevo - where 150,000 lived before the war - if the vast majority of Muslims were serious about stopping crimes and severe discrimination against Serbs.
BTTP
So, the 5% you state does create significant differances. They make people take black and white sides to show who they know is their good and bad guys are. What you have are people who are sheep and go along for the ride.
Does the Bosnian Civil War sound familiar to you? You ever talk to the young men why they were fighting that civil war?
Which, since you're someone who's swallowed the Serbian version of this nationalist BS hook, line, and sinker, makes you just another sheep, doesn't it?
Baa.
When was the last time you spoke to any of the Bosnian Serb and/or Bosnian Muslim participants of the war as to why they did fight?
Racak was a pure rubbish and a complete set-up, much like the "Breadline Massacre" and the Tuzla Marketsquare 'mortar strike'. By the way, I saw where the "mortar" struck while in Tuzla. That is a nearly impossible trajectory shot and at that distance too! If that was a mortar, all infranty and arty men should salute this mortar crew for the finest accuracy shot. A new MOS has been born... Mortar Sniper!
WE'VE GOT THE Hoplites Srebrenica Screamer!!
It's formulated for simpletons, Zoran. So keep it to yourself.
Hoplite - parroting Clinton's lies no longer works
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