Soldier traumatized in Bosnia found not guilty of sex assault

A former Canadian soldier was so badly traumatized by a six-month tour in Bosnia that he cannot be held criminally responsible for sexually assaulting a teenage girl 10 years later, a Manitoba Court of Queen's Bench judge ruled yesterday.

Justice Nathan Nurgitz found Roger Borsch, 34, not guilty by reason of mental disorder.

Borsch never denied breaking into the home of a co-worker in The Pas, Man., in 2004 and assaulting her 13-year-old daughter at knifepoint. But his lawyer, Jason Miller, said Borsch suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and does not even remember the attack.

Prosecutor Don Knight was considering whether to appeal, and worried that the ruling may prompt other people to use a similar defence.

Borsch's fate is now in the hands of a psychiatric review panel, which must decide whether to hospitalize him for treatment or to set him free. A hearing was tentatively set for next week to decide whether he should be released while the panel considers the matter.

Borsch told the court he had witnessed atrocities while serving in Bosnia in 1994, such as a young girl being killed by a landmine. He also testified he had killed several people, including a Bosnian soldier who was sexually assaulting a young girl.

The Washington Times

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May 10, 1998, Sunday, Final Edition

SECTION: Part B; COMMENTARY; FORUM; Pg. B5

LENGTH: 977 words

HEADLINE: Croatian slaughter goes unremarked

by Stella L. Jatras

BODY:

In 1991, Yugoslavia, our ally in World War II and one of the original founders of the United Nations, was denied its seat in the U.N. because it refused to give up its sovereignty. Yet Croatia was recognized as a sovereign state, admitted into the U.N., and is being considered for future membership in NATO (The Washington Times, May 1).

This is the same Croatia about which columnist A. M. Rosenthal, in the New York Times of April 15, wrote: "In World War II, Hitler had no executioners more willing, no ally more passionate, than the fascists of Croatia. They are returning, 50 years later, from what should have been their eternal grave, the defeat of Nazi Germany. The Western Allies who dug that grave with the bodies of their servicemen have the power to stop them, but do not." This is the same Croatia about which The Washington Times reported ("Pro-Nazi extremism lingers in Croatia, June 15, 1997): "A German tank rolls through a small village, and the peasants rush out, lining the road with their right arms raised in a Nazi salute as they chant "Heil Hitler." Mobs chase minorities from their homes, kicking them and pelting them with eggs as they flee into the woods. Europe in the 1940s? No. Croatia in the 1990s."

It appears, however, that one of the Western allies is beginning to wake up. In Canada, the ship has hit the sand, so to speak. From the April 28, 1998 issue of the Ottawa Citizen: "Almost five years after it happened, a House of Commons committee has heard details of Canada's finest hour during its peacekeeping mission to the former Yugoslavia. Col. Jim Calvin told politicians yesterday the story of the operation at the Medak Pocket, where Canadian soldiers were involved in a 15-hour firefight, and, later, a tense standoff with heavily-armed Croatian troops."

From the Calgary Herald: "MPs listened in silence Monday as a colonel recounted the story of the Canadian army's biggest firefight since Korea, the 1993 Battle of the Medak pocket, that left troops picking up 16 corpses of murdered civilians and nursing their own wounds."

"Sgt. Rod Dearing couldn't see the Croatian soldiers who were trying to kill him but he could hear the rattle of their AK-47s and see their bullets kick up earth just centimetres away. The Croats wanted to delay the Canadians to enable their ethnic cleansing units to finish their killing and looting [of Serbs]. A Croatian general stood in the middle of the road, glaring and yelling at the Patricians [Princess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry]. The Canadians knew what was going on behind the barricade, but they were in the open and the Croats were in fortified positions.

The soldiers came on the remains of two teen-age girls who had been held captive by the Croats. They had been shot and set on fire. What was left of their bodies were still smouldering when the Canadians found them. A few of the men started pouring water on the corpses because they were too hot to be put into body bags. Scattered on the ground were hundreds of pairs of surgical gloves. It appeared that more people had been murdered and the Croats wore the gloves when piling bodies into transport trucks for removal out of the area.

Days later the Croats turned over 50 bodies. (The Ottawa Citizen, Oct. 7, 1996). A color photo which accompanied the article showed the leader of the Canadian peacekeepers, with the caption, "Lt. Col Jim Calvin, left, had to calm his outraged soldiers after they discovered the carnage."

Only now are the Canadian people being told of the Croatian refugee who went from being a small-time Ottawa pizza peddler to become Croatia's defense minister and his role in the attack on the Princess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry in 1993. This was Gojko Susak's thanks to the country that welcomed him as a refugee and gave him the opportunity to enjoy the benefits that only a democracy can offer. It is time that the Canadian people demand to know the truth from their ministers and ask why they have been allied with the resurgent neo-Nazi state of Croatia.

Although Canadian media in 1998, five years after the fact, covered in detail the events of the battles and of the victims, nowhere did they mention that the victims were Serbian men, women and children, as though it were irrelevant. The Battle of the Medak Pocket, as it is known, was never identified in the Canadian media as being a Serbian town where the slaughter by Croatian troops had taken place.

While Americans sleep, Canadians are beginning to wake up to the true character of Franjo Tudjman's Croatian regime.

Although the Canadian minister of foreign affairs was very vocal when it came to sanctioning Serbs in Bosnia, and now in Kosovo, where was his outrage and demands for sanctions when forces of the "friendly" government of Croatia engaged Canadian troops in mortal battle? Perhaps this is why Canadian Serbs have been holding demonstrations in front of Canadian Parliament asking for fairness in Kosovo that they didn't receive in Bosnia.

In 1941, the Serbs said "No" to Adolf Hitler, and by resisting Nazi occupation kept 37 Nazi divisions tied up in the Balkans. In 1948, the Serbs said "No" to Josef Stalin by refusing to join the Soviet Bloc, although they still suffered under the communist dictator, Josip Broz Tito. Today, the West is rewarding the very fascists and communists to whom the Serbian people said "No" in 1941 and in 1948.

Toronto Sun, August 12, 2001

Truth lies buried in Balkan hell holes

By GARTH PRITCHARD, Special To The Sun

It was the classic case of the 100-foot stare in a 10-foot room.

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.

´We tried our best´

"We radioed what was happening and were told not to go any further. I´m sorry, sir. We really didn´t know whether or not we got the right body parts in the right body bags. We tried our best, sir."

The horrors of the Medac pocket were obvious the day I arrived in the battle zone. Maybe it was the child´s bicycle lying in the mud at the crossroads - run over by tanks. Or the gutted buildings. But for sure there´d been horror there. Everything was destroyed. Everything gone. All animals, even chickens, had been slaughtered. And, of course, the smell.

A Balkan hell hole. Unreported. It would be two years before the Canadian media picked up the story and explained that this was the biggest battle Canadians had been involved in since the Korean War.

Canadians, under the United Nations, had put a stop to the slaughter of Serbs by the Croats reputedly under the command of Croat Maj. Gen. Rahim Ademi who on July 26, 2001, gave himself up to the Hague War Crimes Tribunal to face charges of murder, plunder, wanton destruction and crimes against humanity.

The general is quoted as saying that his conscience is clear. As a film-maker following the Canadian involvement, I have covered the Balkans extensively for years and have always tried to remain impartial. But what happened in the Medac pocket is beyond most atrocities that I´ve tried to record, including the killing fields in Kosovo.

My conscience is not clear. I covered the Medac pocket and allowed the National Film Board and other so-called Canadian national news agencies to turn a blind eye to what happened there.

The common thread in the Medac pocket and Krajina, is what happened to Serb civilians. For a reason I can´t comprehend, the same yardstick is not being used by the Canadian media and now The Hague to judge Croats as is used in judging Serbs and Muslims in other parts of the Balkans.

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.

There is one absolute in all this: Canadians were involved, and Canadians know what happened. In 1995, Gen. Alain Forand was in charge of the UN contingent in the Krajina when the Croats swept through in a five-day blitzkrieg that displaced 185,000 Serbs. Canadians under his command know the truth and have tried to speak out. But their voices haven´t been heard.

The same holds true for the Canadian soldiers at Medac, 1993.

Shelling of Knin

Canadian Capt. Phil Berkhoff, now retired, explained to my camera what happened in the 1995 shelling of Knin. An old lady, holding her dead husband in her arms, her eye blown out, refused to leave her husband´s side as the captain pleaded with her to go before another mortar attack.

"We did the best we could," said Capt. Berkhoff. "It was horrible. These were civilians. We lifted one man to put him in a body bag, and his brain spilled on my foot.

"We moved body bags across some grass near a fence, and when we came back Croat tanks had crossed the grass deliberately and run over the body bags. We didn´t know if these dead were Serb, Croat or Muslim. Neither did the people in the Croat tanks."

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. Forland refused. Not on his watch. Not Rwanda all over again. Not this time.

Knin was smashed. Civilians were slaughtered. Animals were castrated and shot. Farms were burned. The Krajina was ethnically cleansed of more than 185,000 human beings whose roots were there for the ages.

What occurred on the highway that led to Serbia has not been told: An old woman told me that when her farm was shelled, her son was hit and died in her arms. She turned to tell her husband that their son was dead, but he was also dead. Thousands of vehicles littered the landscape, overturned, burned, shot full of holes.

Bullet-riddled body

Tens of thousands of little piles of personal belongings lay in the open, some neatly stacked, others scattered - an old woman sprawled in an ancient car, her body riddled by a machine-gun; the bodies of a family of farmers, thrown down the farm´s well, probably while they were still alive.

I documented much of this. The National Film Board and CBC refused any part of it.

The Canadian media? To them, the main story at the time was two trailers that caught fire at a barbecue Canadian military personnel had. Where were the stories of Canadian soldiers in flak jackets lying on top of people who had none, to protect them from bombardments going on?

What happened at Knin´s main hospital? I was told the sick were thrown out of windows, the basement piled high with bodies. Were the Croats given permission by the UN and United States to attack the Krajina? Where the hell did all their tanks come from? Who trained the crews?

There are many Canadians who know the truth. One Canadian, who worked for the UN, tells of staggering amounts of money paid by him to Croats - in cash. If a UN contingent needed the Polish tanks for mine clearance, the UN received an invoice for damage to Croatian roads - again to be paid in cash.

Unbelievable amounts of money, always in cash, were paid out to billet UN soldiers in blown-out buildings. There were monthly meetings, parties, cash paid out. When UN helicopters landed at Croat airports, cash was handed over for landing rights.

Were the Croats told to clean up the evidence of war as soon as possible? For sure, they were painting the lines back on Krajina´s roads within days of the five-day blitzkrieg. For sure, the UN was saying the Krajina hadn´t been seriously damaged.

In fact, the main street was destroyed and most of the buildings in town had been hit by mortar artillery fire. As for the hospital that had bodies lying around it, thrown from windows - quickly cleaned up. A few days later it was actually functioning.

In Knin, as in the Medac pocket, there were unspeakable atrocities. The Canadian media chose to ignore both events, although thousands of Canadian soldiers were there. Canadian peacekeepers did not pick sides and saved thousands of lives. It now appears that all evidence of war crimes has disappeared - except in the minds of young Canadians who served there.

The National Film Board of Canada, which sent me there, did not do a documentary on the Krajina, although I was there with my camera. Instead, they chose to do a one-hour documentary on ballroom dancing in Germany.

Jeopardize lives

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. Otherwise, I believe we jeopardize the lives of directors and cameramen who go to the world´s war zones.

To give unedited footage to the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague without legal paperwork demanding it is wrong, especially if there´s been a decision not to make it into a documentary for the public consumption.

Today, evidence of war crimes in the Krajina appears to be missing. Canadians know the truth, even if there´s no documentary showing the results of the Medac pocket and Krajina. And for this I am truly angry.

Maj. Gen. Rahim Ademi, the reputed commander of the Croat troops at Medac, may claim to have a clear conscience.

I do not.

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