Ex-Bosnian officials arrested for terrorisim and espionage walk free

serbianunity.net ^ | October 1st, 2002 | AFP

[Destro]

Ex-Bosnian officials arrested for terrorisim and espionage walk free, AFP, October1st, 2002.

SARAJEVO, Sept 30 (AFP) - Five former Bosnian Muslim officials arrested on suspicion of terrorism and espionage were released Monday but they remain under investigation, a lawyer said.

The five, arrested in May, include Bakir Alispahic, a former interior minister and former head of the Muslim-led intelligence service (AID), two other former AID officials and two senior police officers.

Alispahic's lawyer, Namik Silajdzic, told AFP all five had been released Monday by the supreme court of Bosnia's Muslim-Croat part.

Silajdzic added that they remained under investigation and that there was no legal deadline for the proceedings to end.

Court officials, who could not produce an indictment after five months of investigation, were not available for comment.

Investigators came under public pressure as Muslim civic associations requested the five to be released, claiming the accusations against them were unfounded.

The Muslim nationalist Party of Democratic Action (SDA) also called for their release and accused the ruling moderate alliance led by the Social democrats of reprisals against former officials.

The court ruling comes as the elections campaign in Bosnia intensifies, less than a week before the vote.

The five former Muslim officials, close to SDA, were suspected of setting up a camp that may have trained and armed terrorists.

The Pogorelica camp, near Fojnica, some 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of Sarajevo, offered military training by Iranian secret service instructors for Bosnian Muslim students.

The NATO-led force deployed in Bosnia since the end of the 1992-95 war, raided the camp in 1996, on suspicion that it was being used as a terrorist training base.

Eight Muslim intelligence officers and three Iranian instructors were arrested during the raid and stocks of arms and booby-trapped children's toys were seized.

[vooch]

The Croatians are Catholics, do you really think that they wouldn't be the first ones on the chopping block in the event such groups succeeded? Don't you think that this would have at least crossed their minds?

The Croats and Dalmatians who led their people in the war of succession did not think very deeply at all about many things. As is evidenced by their posts on these threads, Croat & Dalmatian nationalists have a obession with Serbia and all other considerations take a back seat.

Tro would tell us that Zagreb was forced into tacitly supporting Bosnian and KLA Jihadists. But truth is that the HDZ made a devil's bargain in order to 'get back at the serbs'..........now that bargain comes back to haunt the HDZ.

same for Clinton and his HumWarriors who spent the 1990's arming, training, funding, promoting, and supplying Bosnian & KLA Jihadists. At every fork in the road, the HumWarriors chose to support the most extremist Muslims in the former SFRY thinking the Muslim extremists coulod be "managed"..........it was a consistent piece of utter foolishness on the part of the liberal HumWarriors

To this day, there are a couple of Freepers who still try to defend Clinton's policy of supporting Bosnian and KLA Jihadists.

[Angelus Errare]

Two things. The first is that I'm not defending, justifying, denying, or excusing the actions of the Bosnian, Kosovo, or Macedonian al-Qaeda groups. I simply asserted that the Serbs were responsible for a number of atrocities on their own right, that the Croatian government was not in cahoots with al-Qaeda, and that al-Qaeda essentially hijacked the Bosnian struggle for independence to serve its own ends.

And regarding tacit support for al-Qaeda, I might point out that Ronald Reagan did much the same in the 1980s to the Afghan mujahideen who included both Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri among them.

[vooch]

Croatian government was not in cahoots with al-Qaeda, and that al-Qaeda essentially hijacked the Bosnian struggle for independence to serve its own ends

Look, I don't really care too much about the internal politics of Balkanites.........what I do care about is the simple fact that Clinton spent BBBBillions of US tax dollars funding Bosnian and KLA Jihadists.......Clinton and his Humwarriors continued to spend money on these crazed killers long after the truth about them became known..........

[Angelus Errare]

I agree. Clinton provided US funds to help train and arm the KLA and by 1999 it was quite clear that the group had links to both Osama bin Laden and to Iran. He should be held accountable for this along with a great money other things when the historical record is drawn up.

However, the same does not apply to the Croatian government.

[vooch]

Clinton and his Humwarriors simply used the Croat and Dalmatians..........the HDZ was more than happy to funnel US tax dollars to Bosnian Jihadists, because the HDZ was naive enough to think Clinton was their friend.....Once the Croats and Dalmatians did the dirty work, the HumWarriors cast 'em to the dogs

Hence, Croats and Dalmatians suffer under a $13 BBBBillion foreign debt....Croats and Dalmatians need to toe the HumWarrior line otherwise they get packed off to the ICTY Star Chamber.......Croats and Dalmatians get to provide cannon fodder for the latest HumWarrior 'peacekeeping' adventure........Croats and Dalmatians are forced to allow the HumWarriors to use their land as a military exercise zone............the list goes on and on.............

[Destro]

This is not meant as a flame to you, but I am sorry to say you offer excuses rather than explanations.

I am not a Yugoslav nor do I think Milosevic belongs anywhere but behind bars (Serbian ones).

Saying that, the Serbs I feel were justified in both seeking to keep Yugoslavia whole and once that failed then to trying to join their Serbian enclaves to Serbia when it came to some parts of Croatia and Bosnia. At least those areas should have been made autonomous zones with Croatia and Bosnia as a way to ease the fear that animated the Serbs.

[Destro]

Offers made conditional and unworkable.

I do think that inter-power rivalries also nixed all those early deals between Bosina/Yugoslavia/Croatia.

[chemainus]

No one is listening but I will say it again for the thousandth time. The United States CIA and Army Intelligence chiefs in central Europe detailed the Muslim insurgency, murders of civilians and Serbian kids, digging up bodies and planting them as "massacres" , killing their own people and screaming "Serbs", firing on the UN and screaming "Serbs" , drug dealing, and bringing in Muslim ( Hamas, jihad, Hezebollah, AlQuaeda) invading armies into Yugoslavia and all the while screaming " We're persecuted, we're victims". Read it for yourselves in the Leavenworth Archives. Hell, read it in the Washington Post the week after Christmas around page 58 before it was politically correct to tell leftist lies, the winter before the bombing and after the invasion of Yugoslavia by terrorists. All this was written before Hitlary ordered Slick to bomb the Serbs and NBC/CNN/ABC/CBS all crawled over each other to spread the lies every single night. The Serbs were the best friends we had in Europe, and we murdered them to protect Slick and Hitlery's "reputation and legacy" while we let the murdering Muslim scum slide away and into power. Watch " Shot Through The Heart"; a movie made before it was popular to lie about the Serbs; a movie made before Hollywood reconstructed the lies to support Slick; witness the Muslim brutality before Hollywood could rewrite history. Watch this , read Leavenworth and know you were lied to and the Serbs who brought your fathers, Jew and Gentile, through German lines were murdered and bombed and defamed as cover for the socialist sociopath Slick William the Impeached and his greaseball Hitlery. Where were the Muslims? They were butchering, gassing and cremating your fathers and sisters and mothers for Hitler and presenting Hitler with SS Divisions as gifts. They gleefully machine-gunned whole villages of Greeks and Serbs. Damned nice and peaceful people! I ask the Serbs for their forgiveness. Some of us opposed Slick's lying brutality.

[chemainus]

Lying bastard! Propagandizing lying BASTARD! Kick me off FR. I'll say it again...lying propagandizing scumbag bastard!

[chemainus]

You know damned little authoritative history. The history you are spouting is properly called "deterministic history" or picking pieces to support your incorrect premises.

[kosta50]

Bojinka is a Serbo-Croat word that means "explosion."

I am not familiar with that word. Maybe it means something in the Croation "neospeak." I have never encountered such a word in Serbian.

Chetniks -- Tropoljac gives correct information, but out of context and with a small twist to it. Some chetniks collaborated initially, others only under extreme duress. Reasons for collaboration are numerous -- personal vendettas, warlord mentality, usury, bribery, "pragmatism," exchange of prisoners, bartering, you name it.

But there is an essential difference between chetnik collaboration ustasha cooperation. The chetniks were driven either by greed, opportunism or dire need; ustasha were Nazi allies.

The chetniks of Ravna Gora, were the official Yugoslav Royal Army in fatherland; their commander, Gen. Drazha Mihailovich was Yugoslavia's Defense Minister in office. Yugoslavia's official policy was to resist German occupation but not to cause excesisve civilian causalities. The official policy called for uneasy truce -- Germans controlling cities; chetniks the countryside. German reprisals policy was harsh: 100 executed hostages for each German soldier killed, and 50 executed hostages for each wounded solider. It was a price in Serbian lives, chetniks were not willing to pay. They were ordered to wait for Allies to push Germans back and then go on an offensive, helping the Allies along, just as the French resistance did.

The communists, who didn't annoucne their "uprising" until Soviet Union was attacked, joined chetniks initially but insisted on attacking Germans despite the reprisals policy. The reason for that were Wehrmacht sccesses against the red Army in USSR. Stalin wanted his apparatchiks in Yugoslavia to tie down Germans with fierce resistance -- regardless of causlities, and they did. This was one of the main reasons chetniks broke up with communists -- they weren't fighting a war of liberation for the good of the people, but a revolutionary communist war for the good of Stalin. Their reckless and murderous "heroism" resulted in massacres like the one in Kraguyevats.

Germans had a warrant on Drazha's head. Croatia's Ante Pavelic was Germany's darling. Chetniks were never German allies. The Croats were. There is the essential difference, inspite of some collaboration. But there is NEVER aparallel, comparable, equitable comparison between chetniks and ustashas.

After Yalta, the Allies threw their support to Communists. This drove more and more chetniks to seek any means of survival -- including open collaboration as the only means of fighting the communists. They knew that Germans will be defeated sooner or later and the main Yugoslav enemies were pro-Soviet communists the Allies were supporting whole heartedly.

Evidence of communist collaboration with Germans was also revealed by a one time top Yugoslav communist official -- Kocha Popovich, one of rare Serb communists who came from a wealthy family. He admitted in his memoirs that, for the sake of pragmatism, negotiationgs were heald with the Nazis over bartering for supplies in exchange for prisoners, etc. And, contrary to the fairtale that Germans were their main enemy, it is clear that Tito made defeating the chetniks his primary goal. Most of the war, the communists were dodging Germans and their allies, and more often than not, running for their lives after being encircled -- eight times, and barely pulling out alaive. They were no match for the Wehrmacht; but they could and did engage chetniks on every possible occasion -- and vice versa.

[Angelus Errare]

"This is not meant as a flame to you, but I am sorry to say you offer excuses rather than explanations."

I don't take this as a flame at all. This is debate after all and it's only natural that some people are going to have differences of opinions based on how they judge the facts. It is the process of debate and discussion (the real kind, not the media sound bytes style) that we can examine our facts and discover who is actually correct.

"I am not a Yugoslav nor do I think Milosevic belongs anywhere but behind bars (Serbian ones)."

I myself dislike the way Milosevic's trial is being conducted at the Hague for a number of reasons (it's a show trial, his defense in court forms the basis for the later defense of his regime, questions over what can be accomplished in the Hague versus what can be accomplished in Serbia, ect.), but I don't feel much pity for Milosevic given the fact that the man was a threat to Eastern European security while he was in power. In a way, I almost long for the old days when the rebels killed the evil king after driving him from power. So much simpler back then.

"Saying that, the Serbs I feel were justified in both seeking to keep Yugoslavia whole"

Under a strict Serb hegemony, presumably. Yugoslavia was never a "real" nation (rather like Iraq) but rather product of post-World War 1 desires to dismember Austria-Hungary. The only reason it stayed together so long was that it was under a communist regime that frightened all of the major ethnic and religious groups so much that they for the most part refrained from fighting each other. After the fall of the Soviet Bloc, the ethnic and religious tensions that had been so rudely interrupted by several generations of communist rule simply came to the fore and the nation imploded.

I wouldn't shed any tears today if we took Afghanistan and gave the Pashtun areas to Pakistan, the Shi'ite (Hazara) areas to Iran, the Tajik areas to Tajikistan, and the Uzbek areas to Uzbekistan. If a state like Yugoslavia is so hard to maintain, one has to ask if it's really worth the time of keeping it all together.

"once that failed then to trying to join their Serbian enclaves to Serbia when it came to some parts of Croatia and Bosnia."

In other words they were looking out for their own at the expense of others. This is an all-too-common human trait (one that is no more apparent than that the unwillingness of the African leadership to condemn Robert Mugabe) and one that the Serbs under Milosevic seem to have utilized. The Serbians in Bosnia and Croatia were their brothers, it was only natural to want to protect them. Of course, this "protection" looked an awful lot like invasion to the rest of the Balkans and they responded accordingly.

"At least those areas should have been made autonomous zones with Croatia and Bosnia as a way to ease the fear that animated the Serbs."

As you yourself state later:

"...Inter-power rivalries also nixed all those early deals between Bosina/Yugoslavia/Croatia."

I concur entirely. But then again the Balkans have never been Europe's most stable of regions.

Now, as for chemainus's statement:

"You know damned little authoritative history. The history you are spouting is properly called 'deterministic history' or picking pieces to support your incorrect premises."

I tend to dispute this. I'm not defending the KLA or saying that the al-Qaeda infiltration in the Bosnian paramilitaries never occurred (as Clinton and Co told the American people in 1999) or anything of the sort. I dispute, however, the notion that the Bosnian War began as any type of a Dagestan-style jihad or this absurd assumption that the Croatian government was in active cahoots with al-Qaeda. If you want to dispute these facts or question my interpretation of history, feel free to do so. Out of curiousity, what exactly is "authoritative history?"

[Voronin]

...but I don't feel much pity for Milosevic given the fact that the man was a threat to Eastern European security while he was in power.

Pure myth.

VRN

[kosta50]

Thank you Tropoljac. Excellent post, very detailed, very thorough, very informative for our Freepers.

I would only like to point out that just because someone took a snapshot of a Chetnik voyvoda next to a German or Italian officer does not prove he was collaborating; he could have been negotiating. But evidence of collaboration of some Chetnik commanders is well documented.

One more detail: Drazha Miha i lovich is spelled with an "i."