Posted on 11/01/2005 10:48:37 AM PST by joan
(The Hague, DTT-NET.COM)- The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on Tuesday has transferred two trial cases to Croatia, the first such move by the UN court in The Hague, Netherlands.
Two retired Croatian generals, Rahim Ademi and Mirko Norac charged for war crimes against Serbs civilians during 1991-1995 war will be trialled in Croatia, representing the only case, out of 10, that the court’s prosecution has requested be transferred to Croatia and approved by the Referral Bench.
The indictment charges Rahim Ademi and Mirko Norac with two counts of crimes against humanity and three counts of violations of the laws or customs of war for crimes allegedly committed against the ethnic Serb population during the Croatian attack on the so-called Medak Pocket from 9 September to on or about 17 September 1993.
The Medak Pocket was situated within the self-proclaimed "Republika Srpska Krajina" and prior to the attack approximately 400 Serb civilians inhabited the area. The indictment states that as a result of the Croatian military operation, "…the Medak Pocket became uninhabitable. The villages of the Pocket were completely destroyed, thereby depriving the Serbian civilian population of their homes and livelihood."
During the operation, the indictment alleges "cruel and inhumane treatment of Serb civilians and captured and/or wounded soldiers from the Medak Pocket, by inter alia, causing serious injuries by means of shooting, stabbing, cutting of fingers, severe beatings with rifle butts, burning with cigarettes, jumping on bodies, tying bodies to a car and dragging them along the road, mutilation and other forms of mistreatment."
The indictment further alleges that the terrorizing included "the mutilation and desecration of the body of Boja Pjevaæ, the public killing of Boja Vujnoviæ by burning her alive whilst mocking her, expressing an intention to kill all civilians, placing racist graffiti on buildings, and leaving sinister and menacing messages on a destroyed building. All of which resulted in the civilian population being forced to abandon their homes and property and to leave the area permanently."
At the time of the operation, Rahim Ademi served in the Croatian Ministry of Interior as Acting Commander of the Gospiæ Military District, a position he held throughout the operation. Mirko Norac also served in the Ministry of Interior as Commander of the 9th Motorized Guards Brigade and during the operation he was appointed Commander of Sector 1, a combat group formed for the purposes of conducting the operation.
Both accused are charged on the basis of their individual criminal responsibility and their criminal responsibility as a superior for the acts of their subordinates.
Only 16 Serb bodies were found, all in hidden locations while in the open, the ground was littered with rubber surgical gloves. Calvin and his men believe the gloves indicate that most Serb bodies in the open had been transported elsewhere and only the ones hidden in basements or in the woods had been left behind in haste. The bodies that were recovered included those of two young ladies found in a basement. They had apparently been tied up, shot and then doused with gasoline and burned. When found, the bodies were still hot enough to melt plastic body bags. At another location, an elderly Serb woman had been found shot four times in the head, execution style.http://www.cda-cdai.ca/library/medakpocket.htm
Let's get out our stopwatches so that we can tell how long it takes for them to be cleared of all charges and paraded through Zagreb as heroes.
Some folks just don't think killing Serbs is a crime.
Some of them even post here, usually cut-and-paste from some Soros-owned website.
These times we live certainly will not go down in history as a generation when Christians were loved by the world, or even tolerated. Heck, in America we're even persecuted by own government, and it grows worse every year. The forces against Christianity today are legion, (to borrow a term from Satan himself - Luke 8 v. 30).
Christians well understand the fact that our Church and our faith have been under perpetual attack, (from without and within), ever since Jesus Christ founded it on Peter; and today it is no different. Many of us today realize that what was once the "news media" has been supplanted by enemies of Christ and the Truth, posing as 'journalists'. We know that organizations like the U.N. are working tirelessly to oppress and repress Christianity.
But apart from Church oppression there is another historical fact, and that is the Truth is always uncovered in the end, and it always prevails over evil. Christianity will be here long after islam and the U.N. are gone.
The dialogue was flat, almost disembodied. But the young soldiers were trying to speak to the camera. They had been asked what happened in the Medac pocket in 1993 when Croat forces attacked the Krajina, then held by Serbs.
The horrors they witnessed were close to unspeakable. The young soldier looked at the camera lens, and beyond. He remembered what he had seen: "They (the Croats) were using people from the villages to carry the belongings they had stolen. We trailed them towards the mountains, and as we got close, they started to kill people - a warning for us to stop the chase."
It appears that evidence of war crimes against Croats in the Krajina has been lost. So now, Croatian general staff officers are giving themselves up to the tribunal. Something very strange is under way here.
…The NFB ordered me to give my footage to the War Crimes Tribunal people who I met in Toronto. I was against this, believing that film-makers should never give unedited footage to any court without being legally obligated to do so.
They wanted it to destroy it, most probably. He said other evidence was “lost” and we know the Hague doesn’t present most of the evidence of crimes against Serbs, despite many who are eyewitnesses wanting to testify. Since the Hague won’t allow this evidence, they should put more of it on the web with details of what exactly happened – so people don’t try to use the pictures of dead Serbs and claim them as Croats are Muslims – which has been done by those in the mainstream media numerous times. They should also publish a book about this or having it as one of the topics.
Gen. Forand and his small contingent of Canadians in Knin saved and protected 780 refugees for two months while the UN called them "displaced persons" and wanted them released to the street and the Croats.
The UN wanting them to be released "to the street and the Croats" who were in full-killing mode then was wanting them tortured and killed by those Croats. This would have resulted in ever less Serbs left to try and come back to their homes, which does seem to be the main agenda in the Balkans all the time they whine for the others whose populations are equal or greater (percentage-wise if not in real numbers) than before the war in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo.
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