Posted on 06/02/2005 8:54:24 PM PDT by Hoplite
Agencies in Belgrade
Friday June 3, 2005
The Guardian
They are the images that have finally, 10 years later, shocked a nation. A man, several men, are unloaded from a truck, marched to a wooded hillside and shot, one by one, in the back. Two prisoners are ordered to carry the bodies to a barn. They too are then executed. The murder of thousands of Bosnian Muslims from Srebrenica in the summer of 1995 is well documented. But a video that emerged this week during the trial of the former Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, has provoked a bout of soul-searching in Serbia, parts of which are still in denial over the horrors of the Bosnian war.
The footage was the first such graphic material from the massacre in Srebrenica to be shown in the country, where more than half of the population refuses to believe it even took place, according to a poll last month. "Serbia is deeply shocked," President Boris Tadic said. "Those images are proof of a monstrous crime committed against persons of a different religion. And the guilty had walked as free men until now."
Eight alleged former members of a Serb paramilitary group, the Scorpions, filmed actually carrying out the murders, have been arrested on the strength of the footage, officials said yesterday.
The faces of the perpetrators can be seen and their insults to the Muslims heard. The film was shot by a member of the Scorpions.
"The killers had walked freely among us, on our streets, behaving as if they were ordinary, honorable citizens," Mr Tadic said. "All those who committed war crimes must be held accountable; only in this way will we be able to have a future. We must not close our eyes to the cruelty that took place."
He added that the crimes at Srebrenica "were carried out in the name of our nation".
"But crimes are always individual and the perpetrators of these monstrous crimes must be punished."
Srebrenica was overrun by Bosnian Serb forces in July 1995, with UN peacekeepers powerless to stop their advance. Some 8,000 Bosnian men and boys were led away to their deaths, survivors telling of how they were lined up and shot in several batches, then buried in mass graves.
The prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, called the executions a "disgraceful".
UN prosecutors say the killings in the video footage took place on Mount Treskavica near the wartime Bosnian Serb capital, Pale, which is south-west of Srebrenica. The Scorpions were allegedly under orders from Serbian police in Belgrade and the link could directly tie Mr Milosevic with the crimes committed in Bosnia.
On the other hand, to them, the Americans who were hiding in the jungle, were terrorists.
All that I am saying, is that there is a vital reason why people in the military must identify themselves. If you fail to identify yourself as a member of your country's military, then do not cry if civilians are harmed because of your action.
Even if an individual has been performing the described acts in section 74, they are not liable to being executed out of hand without the benefit of a military tribunal - per section 73 they remain "protected persons".
And it's that right to a trial which makes hash of your argument - murder of captives, whatever their status, is simply outright prohibited by the Geneva Conventions. (Convention III, Article 3, 1 a & d.)
BTW, for argument's sake I'll grant you the possibility that the individuals in the video may have been members of the BiH Armed Forces - but that does not alter the case one iota as to the criminal nature of their fate if their executions were extrajudicial.
So if you can find any Serbian military tribunals operating in the aftermath of Krivaja 95, you'll be able to continue your case.
Good luck - nobody else has been able to come up with any, and that includes some fairly senior officers in the Bosnian Serb Army.
The Srebrenica Muslim "defenders" were practicing headhunters.
Is that supposed to be an attempt to justify a war crime, Jim?
Are you saying that executing terrorists is a "war crime"? Or is it only a war crime to execute muslim terrorists?
Are you an Al Qaeda apologist?
No, but what does Al Qaeda have to do with Srebrenica? The AQ folks were in central Bosnia, not in the eastern enclaves, and furthermore started arriving after the Serbs started on their Bosnian killing spree.
Did your Al Qaeda cavalry arrive on white horses?
You might want to read Evan Kohlmann's "Al-Qaida's Jihad in Europe : The Afghan-Bosnian Network" before you attempt to expound upon the subject.
At some point, I think it best to stop reading and start relying on intuition.
I was duped by a lot of what I read in the press during the propaganda war leading up to US involvement in that conflict.
I seem to remember pictures of grieving Croats that were reported to be mourning the death of family members killed by Serbs, only to learn later that the Croats were killed by Muslims.
I remember seeing video of dead bodies reported to be Croats murdered by Serbs only to learn later that the mutilated bodies were actually Serbs.
I remember feeling outraged that Serbs bombed a marketplace only to find out later that the Muslims set off the bomb for the purpose of gaining sympathy from the west, it worked.
I remember being outraged at the news that Christian Serbs were burning down churches but my intuition tells me that it was Muslims that did the burning and blaming it on the Serbs was more disinformation.
And finally, yes, Milosevic's wars. He started them with the express intent of maintaining and furthering his own power, and to hell with the actual consequences to his constituents or Serbia's neighbors. I really don't care what folks are calling Enduring Freedom or Iraqi Freedom - they're nothing like Milosevic's wars, so I don't consider your question being either relevant or altogether informed. You don't know much about Milosevic's wars, do you?
For you people, any action taken for self preservation against Muslim aggression is a crime, the proper thing to do is let them have what they want, right? If you are the leader of the Serbs and Muslims want a united Bosnia to contain territory where Serbs live, the thing to do is just let them have it, right? If you want to "maintain" something that others want to take away, the maintainer is the culprit, right?
By the way, why were the muslims slaughtering Croats?
"Any man who judges by the group is a peawit."
I have a very clear memory of drinking a beer with a Bosnian helicopter pilot at a cafe on the Christian side of the river in Mostar in the summer right before things moved to hot. He couldn't wait to start the game and slaughter (his word) the animals across the bridge. I sometimes wondr if he's still alive and if he is how he feels about what they brought on themselves.
They are all guilty in my book.
First you try to bring Al Qaeda into the discussion, when they were nowhere near Srebrenica, and now you're trying to frame the discussion in terms of "terrorists", when the majority of the Serb's victims in Bosnia were killed simply for not being Serb.
You weren't captain of your school's debate team, were you?
Did your Al Qaeda cavalry arrive on white horses?
Weak, Jim. Just weak.
Bosnia was, and remains a Christian majority state. What it wasn't, and what the Serbs went to war to create, was a monoethnic Serb state. And for that reason they're treated like the moral lepers they are, and are having their little bastard statelet disassembled piece by worthless piece. To put it plainly, the Republika Srpska is anathema to American values, regardless of who's in the White House.
So suck it up, and if your intuition tells you to keep your "I was a sucker before, but I'm a bigger sucker now!" SOB story to yourself, listen to it - for it will have gotten something right.
Soooo, what you are telling me is that the Bosnian Muslims were fighting to maintain a multicultural Bosnian State? My intuition tells me that multicultural societies are not what Muslims fight wars for.
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."
--------------
Like I said: Not our idea of justice but maybe the headhunter jihadis had it coming, eh?
Perhaps in response to a plea to wait, a voice could be heard telling the bound men that "when you were killing Serbs you didn't wait."
Serbs killed by UCK found near Pec, Aug 99
Serbian Princess Catharine visiting a Serb beaten by Albanians in Pec, Kosovo, Aug 1999
Italian soldiers evacuating a Serb woman threatened by Albanians in Pec
Burned down Serb village of Novake near Prizren, summer 1999
Roma refugees.
A Serb house set on fire in front of KFOR tank, Kosovo, summer 1999
September 21, 2002
KOSOVO
The Cruelest Cleansings
The UN police get tougher with Albanian war criminals in Kosovo. New unrest possible, because for many these criminals are still heroes
A strange grave lies in the midst of a large meadow in the village of Crni Luk. There are no names on the four gravestones, and the inhabitants of village of 3,000 react with distrust to questions about the dead. "This is where we buried the charred remains of the Krasniqi clan," says a young Albanian man and adds immediately with a wave of his hand: "But I do not know more than that."
Twenty-four Albanians were shot, among them 13 children, and their houses were burned down. But the victims are not buried in the heroes’ cemetery at the end of the village, where under a sea of Albanian flags rest its former inhabitants killed in clashes with the Serbs. They are not buried there because, according to protected testimony by eyewitnesses, the Krasniqis were apparently executed by their compatriots only after the arrival of KFOR international peacekeeping forces in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo.
The four Krasniqi brothers were considered "loyalists to the Serbian regime" and worked in Serbian companies; one of them was even as a journalist for the Serbian language newspaper "Jedinstvo". Under the Milosevic regime they enjoyed privileges; afterwards, this was their death sentence.
The extermination of this family, like other Albanian crimes, could have been quickly hushed up. For since the United Nations made the Kosovo their protectorate in July 1999, they had proceeded against presumed war criminals from the numbers of the Kosovo Albanians only with velvet gloves. But now, more than three years after the NATO takeover, the international community finally dares to also confront its recent allies. Its investigators have even arrested some leaders of the former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) who are suspected of committing murder.
Bodies of victims killed by KLA (UCK) and thrown into the Radonjic Lake canal
"Everyone in Kosovo knows but none dares to speak about it," says the former prime minister of the exiled Kosovars and current chairman of the New Party for Kosovo, Bujar Bukoshi. "After the war the cruelest cleansings took place among the Albanians. Under the pretext that they were ‘Serbian collaborators’, the leaders of the KLA liquidated their political opponents; old blood feuds were settled, and Albanian civilians were executed by the Albanians themselves."
The number of the victims is estimated to be more than a thousand. The perpetrators or instigators were usually former senior KLA leaders; after the war they were integrated nearly without exception into the KLA successor organization, the civilian Kosovo Protection Corps.
Allegedly a former KLA commander and two of his fellow soldiers, according to their indictment, instigated a war criminal to kill the former KLA commander Ekrem Rexha known as "Drini". This moderate Albanian had announced the publication of a book on war crimes in Kosovo, including those committed by the KLA. A few hours after Drini’s death KLA deputies visited his widow in order to get “the computer with records on the announced book". However the international police responsible for postwar crimes was faster.
Also awaiting trial since not long ago are once legendary KLA commanders Sami Lushtaki and Rustem Mustafa ("Remi"). The latter is accused, along with three other KLA officers, of having raped Albanian women and killed at least five civilians in private prison camps during and after the war.
Daut Haradinaj, the notorious brother of the former KLA commander Ramush Haradinaj (who in the meanwhile became head of the third largest political party, the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo), is accused with five other members of the Kosovo Liberation Army of the murder of four members of the Liberal Party (LDK) of Kosovo president Ibrahim Rugova.
After arresting an influential KLA commander near the town of Dragas, the police stated that at the same time bomb attacks in the region stopped.
Recently another senior KLA member from Prizren was brought before the investigating judge. He is accused not only of having committed criminal activities but also of being the top agent of the Albanian secret service. The hard disk of his computer in the meanwhile has become a treasure trove of information on war crimes, extortion and Albanian secret service plans.
"We are slowly moving forward," says German Christian Lindmeier, a spokesman for the UN administration in Kosovo (UNMIK). Unnoticed by the public the Hague tribunal has also opened an office in Pristina. Rumors according to which the list of the Hague investigators, in addition to Serb war criminals, also includes three former KLA leaders and now influential politicians – Hashim Thaci, Agim Cheku and Ramush Haradinaj – have been neither confirmed nor denied by the spokesmen of the tribunal. According to Hague tribunal chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte, in any case indictments against some Kosovo Albanians will be filed before the end of the year.
Deeply involved in serious KLA crimes and minority attcks, the war-time KLA leader Hashim Thaci, summer 1999, Pristina
Shortly before the end of the war Thaci was sentenced in absentia by a Serbian court in Pristina to ten years’ imprisonment. Belgrade presented the chief prosecutor in The Hague with a disk with 27,000 pages on the alleged war crimes committed by the top KLA triumvirate. The extradition of at least one of the former KLA leaders would be welcome for many Serbs to explain the Serbian war crimes in the Kosovo as defense of the state and population.
“We know a lot,” says UNMIK spokesman Lindmeier, "but our problem is witnesses. They have a gun pointed at their head. Many withdraw their original statements after threats by their former KLA fellow fighters".
The heroic elite which ended up in jail is guarded by about twenty prison wardens from Germany flown in by plane to do the job. Albanian guards received death threats if they attempted to prevent escape attempts.
For many Albanians the imprisoned KLA leaders are still war heroes. Every Friday demonstrators lay flowers in front of the prison in Pristina. They accuse UNMIK of developing "Milosevic tendencies". The chairman of the journalist federation, Milan Zeka, has even called on his colleagues to fight against the "police dictatorship" of UNMIK chief Michael Steiner. The German, they say, is insulting a whole generation of Albanians.
But this will not discourage Steiner from further arrests and extradition of Albanians to the Hague tribunal despite rumors in Kosovo of a huge revolt by the Albanians. He will carry out every warrant for arrest of the Hague tribunal: "During my mandate we will adhere to law and order in Kosovo."
Not likely, like the Old Communists, they are idealogically committed to their illusions
Yep, including my 3 muslim interpreters who used to go out for beer every night.
Hoplite at it again.
You mean the TROP apologists Bosnia/Kosovo chapter?
http://www.11thcavnam.com/main/shedding_some_light_on_another_p.htm
Photographer Adams later said that he talked to Loan and Loan said "They killed many of my men and many of your people."22 Adams continued referring to the executed Vietcong: "They found out that he was the same guy who killed one of his ---uh---Loan’s officers and wiped out his whole family.23 Adams also expressed regret for what the photograph had done to Loan’s life.
I told you so.
Keep it to yourself, Jim. It's embarrassing.
You know what's ironic? The Scorpions were actually on Fikret Abdich's payroll at the time, as were the Serbian Volunteer Guard under Milorad Lukovich - Legija. They fought on the Muslim side...
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