Posted on 10/10/2004 3:06:04 PM PDT by Destro
Tuesday, 05 October 2004
Bosnia: Muslim Commander Charged In Pre-Srebrenica Atrocities
By Don Hill
When Bosnian Serb militias massacred more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys in 1995, they imprinted the name of the town of their crime -- Srebrenica -- on the world's consciousness. The tragedy came to be known, in the words of U.S. writer George Will, as "Europe's worst atrocity since the Second World War." Less known, however, was an earlier campaign by Bosnian Muslims against their Serb neighbors. This week, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia starts the war crimes trial of Naser Oric. The former Bosnian Muslim commander is charged with leading a three-year fury of murder and plunder prior to the Srebrenica massacre.
Prague, 5 October 2004 (RFE/RL) -- Naser Oric is the first Bosnian Muslim to be tried in connection with the tragic events surrounding the fall of the so-called "UN safe haven" in the town of Srebrenica.
Although it was supposed to be protected by Dutch-led UN troops, the town is remembered around the world as the place where Serb forces slaughtered thousands of Bosnian Muslims.
Marko Klarn, a journalist with long experience covering the tribunal's proceedings for the local SENSE news agency, told RFE/RL that it is routine for Serb defendants to defend their behavior at Srebrinica by saying that they were responding to earlier brutal provocations by Bosnian Muslims. That was an argument used, for example, by former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
"One of the defense theses [of Serb defendants] was always that the events in 1992 and, 1993, you know, the incursions, killings, destruction of the [Serb] villages [by Muslims] and so on had accumulated hatred -- some kind of need for revenge," Klarn said.
Klarn said there is some truth to this claim.
"Of course, I mean, you cannot deny that all those events were...feeding each other -- from one side there had been either a siege, then they tried to break the siege, they tried to... to... you know, it was just the usual vicious circle [of violence]," Klarn said.Oric faces charges that as a military policeman in 1992 and later as a top commander of Srebrenica's Muslim forces, he bore responsibility for the murders of Serb civilians and prisoners as well as attacks on Serb villages.
Oric faces charges that as a military policeman in 1992 and later as a top commander of Srebrenica's Muslim forces, he bore responsibility for the murders of Serb civilians and prisoners as well as attacks on Serb villages and widespread destruction and plunder of private and public properties.
Now aged 37, Oric was only 28 when he was brigadier, his highest rank. He denies all charges against him.
Much of the Muslim population of Bosnia was outraged last year when troops of SFOR, the international peace force in Bosnia, captured Oric and delivered him to the tribunal in The Hague. There had for some time been an indictment prepared against him, but the tribunal had not made it public. Many Muslims considered him a hero for his defense of Muslims at Srebrenica.
When the weak Dutch-led UN military unit protecting the Srebrenica enclave collapsed in the face of a Serb onslaught, the Serb forces rounded up 7,000 to 8,000 Muslim men and boys and executed them.
Oric, however, had already abandoned the enclave sometime before. A key question that remains open is whether the Dutch had forewarned him of the coming disaster or whether he had left of his own volition.
Massood Shadjareh, chairman of the London-based Muslim Human Rights Commission, said he believes it wrong to excuse any part of the Serb massacre on early predations by Muslims. He argues that Muslims were the less numerous and weaker group -- the natural victims.
Instead, he said that all evidence points not to a sudden, impulsive rush to revenge, but rather to a cold-blooded, deliberate, and planned attack consistent with what the Serbs undertook elsewhere in Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia.
"I don't really believe that the situation in the massacre at Srebrenica was anything other than a preplanned and a cool and calculated sort of genocide," Shadjareh said.
But Shadjareh said he doesn't believe the tribunal's charges against Olic are misguided.
"I think that at the time of war there are things happening that are totally and absolutely unacceptable and we as a civilized community internationally -- we need to hold everyone to account," Shadjareh said.
That said, Shadjareh argues that circumstances mitigated any guilt that Olic might carry.
"But we also need to understand that there comes a time that the whole survival of a group or a nation is in question," Shadjareh said. "Then we need to understand that standards actually change, ...and when genocide is taking place we have to sort of also understand that people have to take some extreme measures just to defend themselves."
As for the trial, the prosecution and defense each has four months to present its case before the tribunal in the Netherlands
Don Hill has been a Prague-based RFE/RL editor and correspondent since the radios moved their operations to Prague in 1995.
By: John Pomfret, Washington Post Foreign Service,The Washington Post, February 16, 1994
SREBRENICA, Bosnia: Nasir Oric's war trophies don't line the wall of his comfortable apartment-- one of the few with electricity in this besieged Muslim enclave stuck in the forbidding mountains of eastern Bosnia. They're on a videocassette tape: burned Serb houses and headless Serb men, their bodies crumpled in a pathetic heap.
"We had to use cold weapons that night," Oric explains as scenes of dead men sliced by knives roll over his 21-inch Sony. "This is the house of a Serb named Ratso," he offers as the camera cuts to a burned-out ruin. "He killed two of my men, so we torched it. Tough luck."
Reclining on an overstuffed couch, clothed head to toe in camouflage fatigues, a U.S. Army patch proudly displayed over his heart (provided by Clinton?), Oric gives the impression of a lion in his den. For sure, the Muslim commander is the toughest guy in this town, which the U.N. Security Council has declared a protected "safe area."
bump
Naser Oric's forces killed over a thousand Bosnian Serb civilians and troops in the Srebrenica area and burned and destroyed at least 50 Serbian villages. It was these Bosnian Muslim attacks that caused a Bosnian Serb reaction and ultimately culminated in the Bosnian Serb takeover of Srebrenica on July 11, 1995. In Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica, Europe's Worst Massacre since World War II, Christian Science Monitor reporter-turned-historian David Rohde conceded that "Serbs estimated that 2,000 Serbs---mostly soldiers but also several hundred civilians---had died around Srebrenica since the outbreak of the war. Over 50 Serb villages were burned, according to Serbs, and dozens of Serb graves desecrated…."
thanks for posting this
Clinton chose the wrong side to fight for.
The side that makes videos of beheadings for trophies is usually the bad side to take - unless you are a member of teh Clinton administration.
Clinton fooled some of the people some of the time over siding with the Bosnian Muslims but not all of them for long.
This is the way of Islam throughout the world. They commit aggression until the infidels respond then the Islamics try to portray the infidels as cruel and intolerant.
Unfortunately the infidels often reach a point where they think the only solution is to start slaughtering muslims indiscriminately.
The solution is here:
"...It is our belief that Islamic terrorism will not be eliminated unless and until the ideology behind it is not exposed and eradicated. This is what we intend to do. "
http://www.apostatesofislam.com/main.htm
AMEN to that website!!!
"A Grave Breach" due out in early 2005 is set in Yugoslavia - past (WWII) and present (90's). Below is part of a conversation that takes place about the point of this thread:
“And it never ends? What was it about 'one man's revenge is the next man’s atrocity?' ”
“Absolutely. Do you think we are unaware of that? We’re brutal, John. Not stupid. Ultimately, it comes down to why should I be the one to forgive or forget? Let the next guy turn the other cheek, hmm?”
Naser Oric didn't come to prominence until after the Serbs had ethnically cleansed the Drina Valley back in the Spring of 1992.
His activities post-date the Serbian massacres of Bosnian Muslim civilians at Bijeljina, Zvornik, and Bratunac.
So what do you hope to accomplish by amending article titles with your obviously false take on the history of the Balkans wars?
Is it really worthwhile to mislead others down the same path of ignorance and Orthodox inspired prejudice and bigotry that you yourself have chosen? What will you gain in the end except having made the world a more confused place for all your efforts?
I would not want to live next to head hunters either.
Balkan Analysis had an interesting analysis of the Albanian idea of victimology in Kosovo and Macedonia in January 2003. You may be interested in reading it. Here's a small excerpt from the analysis:
"The 2001 war in Macedonia simply could not have happened without the leadership, weapons and manpower supplied from Kosovo. That it was sustained until Macedonia was forced to make humiliating concessions owes partially to the fact that the Albanians won the PR war – by convincing the world that they – as a race – were the perennial victims of "Slav" oppression, whether it come from the Serbs or the hapless Macedonians. However, that was not the end of it: for with the latest poisoning scandal, they appear to have convinced themselves also of their unending victimization.
Symptoms of the Disease
The most striking feature here is that Macedonian Albanians really do seem to believe this. They believe themselves to have suffered as much as have their Kosovar kin, who, according to the mythology, are the province's only victims. Indeed, the mass expulsion of Serbs, Roma, Turks and Muslim Macedonians from Kosovo since 1999, and the destruction of over 100 Orthodox churches there – a still-continuing phenomenon – simply must have been the work of other people.
Never mind that Macedonia was a desperately sought-after ally for the West in 1999. Never mind that its human rights record was lauded as being far better than any of its neighbors: its Albanians were and are victims. Even now, they are still being oppressed – by themselves. Theirs has become a paranoid siege mentality. It states that Albanians are never to blame for their problems – both real and imagined.
Luckily for them (and not so coincidentally), the Western media complied in 2001 by labeling them as victims and Macedonians as "Slavs." But by joining up in the cult of victimology, Albanians have only degraded themselves."
You can find the rest here: http://www.balkanalysis.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=425
btt
This is the way of Islam throughout the world. They commit aggression until the infidels respond then the Islamics try to portray the infidels as cruel and intolerant.
A-yup, even back to that lamer "but the crusades" arguement from the watery lefties. Is-slime was on the offensive then too.
Invariably they ask their Imam why Muslims are always the victims, and why Allah does not punish the tyrannical and unjust kuffur. Then a recipe for Jihad like this gets pumped into their brains:
"There will come a time when all the nations will be over you, surrounding you as animals surround the meat’, O prophet, is this because we will be small in number? They asked. ‘No, you will be many, but you will be like the spray or foam on water. Allah will take your courage and place it in the heart of your enemy, and take from your enemy their cowardliness and put it in your heart, and you will love this Dunyah (material world) and hate death"
Why would anyone give any relevance to a cult that has been inter-breeding for 2000 years or so? How tough is it for the least brainwashed of us to realize that indeed.. they are mostly crazed, it's biologically impossible to ignore!... they being Muslims. I don't even Care what they "think" (an allegation at best)
Best Day... they maim each other.
We are already seeing that happen in Egypt, the foreplay with Kenneth Bigley, and today is the annivesary of the Palestinians throwing poor Leon off of the Achille Lauro in 76
bttt
"of SFOR, the international peace force in Bosnia, captured Oric and delivered him to the tribunal in The Hague. There had for some time been an indictment prepared against him, but the tribunal had not made it public. "
Surprise, surprise.
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