Posted on 10/23/2002 9:16:26 AM PDT by Destro
War crimes investigations facing difficulties with witnesses in Kosovo
Tue Oct 22, 1:46 PM ET
By GARENTINA KRAJA, Associated Press Writer
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia - The U.N. war crimes tribunal is facing difficulty bringing ethnic Albanian suspects in Kosovo to justice because witnesses fear testifying to the court, the chief U.N. prosecutor said Tuesday.
Carla Del Ponte indicated that investigations into war crimes committed during Kosovo's 1998-1999 war were hampered because some witnesses hesitated to confirm their initial testimonies made against the suspects.
"I have some difficulties (with) witnesses who fear to confirm what they have said previously — and particularly to appear in court as witnesses," she told reporters on a brief visit to the province. She did not elaborate.
Del Ponte was on a routine visit to the region aimed at pressing the governments of several Balkan countries to cooperate with the war crimes court in The Hague (news - web sites), which is trying former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic (news - web sites) on genocide and war crimes charges.
During a previous visit to Kosovo earlier this year, Del Ponte said that investigators in the province were hoping to finish their probes later this year into three cases involving suspects from the Kosovo Liberation Army, a rebel group that fought for the independence of the southern Yugoslav province.
On Tuesday, Del Ponte said she still believed that the court would be able to issue its first indictment against an ethnic Albanian later this year.
"If it will go as I think it must ... we will be ready with the first indictment before the end of the year and another two next (year)," Del Ponte said.
The U.N. war crimes tribunal has been criticized for allegedly showing anti-Serb bias. Most of those indicted for crimes in the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo are Serbs. No ethnic Albanians have yet been indicted for their role during the Kosovo conflict.
Kosovo, legally a part of Yugoslavia, has been administered by the United Nations (news - web sites) and NATO (news - web sites) since June 1999, when an alliance air war halted a crackdown by Serb forces on separatist ethnic Albanians. An estimated 10,000 people were killed in the 1998-1999 war, the majority of them ethnic Albanians.
Later in the day, Del Ponte traveled to the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, where she expressed distress that leaders in Yugoslavia, Croatia and Bosnia have failed to fully cooperate with the tribunal.
"It's been now three years that I have been coming down looking for the arrest of fugitives, to get access to witnesses, to have access to documents, to achieve cooperation," she said.
She complained that the three countries are becoming always less willing to cooperate with the court. "I'm astonished that it's going even worse," she said.
This is analogous to many cases that public defenders try where you have perps both as defendants and as accusers. Neither lawyer wants much of anything to come out, since they both figure any information presented will make their client look more despicable.
Wars without "good guys" make extraordinarily bad bases for military tribunals. Even the inclusion Nuremberg Trials were made to look rather silly with the inclusion of Soviet judges, who represented the nation that had perpetrated millions of rapes and, e.g., the Katyn Forest Massacre (not to mention their "jurists" had been at least partly responsible for orchestrating Stalin's 1930s show trials).
PRISTINA -- Tuesday – International peacekeepers in Kosovo today arrested the owner of the largest private company in Kosovo, Ekrem Luka, and the brother of Kosovo Protection Corps commander Agim Ceku.
Luka, Ceku and two other unnamed suspects were arrested in connection with cigarette smuggling. A large quantity of cigarettes was seized in the same raid.
There are fears in Pristina tonight that the arrest of the four relations could cause a conflict between the Albanian population and international troops. [B92]
They arrested Agim Ceku's brother, not Agim himself.
Can the UN afford the cost of relocation and new identities.
Um, no, actually, it's the "sponsoring country" (read USA) who "can't afford it". I had a case where there were 140-odd iron-clad witnesses (of varying ethnicities) against a war criminal, they all wanted to go after this person... but I said, please be sure... they all met together finally, no help for them and their famililies (of course)... so the criminal in question still holds politcal office and the victims are still deprived of thier homes.
Anyway, thanks Wraith for saying in a para what it would take me many pages to say. I wish i were more like you.
1) Clinton's public support of the destruction of the UN protected areas in which some 500,000 civilians were expelled and upwards of 5-10,000 murdered. General Ceku was in charge of that one in August 1995 after having been trained by Clinton approved mercs MPRI.
2) The nasty little destruction of some UN protected villages in which then Colonel Ceku personnally led his unit in the murder of as many as 300 villagers
3)After all this, Clinton and his liberal HumWarriors then 'advised' the KLA to chose Agim Ceku as their military commander in Jan 1999.
4) And finally, Clinton effectively paying Ceku's salary as a Major General by appointing him head of the KPC in occupied Kosovo.
I read Dragonfly's post #4 wrong -- it looked at first to me as though they were saying that Ekrem Luka is the brother of Agim Ceku and they were both arrested. They didn't give the brother's first name, so it was confusing the way it was worded.
BTW, they didn't call them UNPAs anymore by the time of Storm, they were called "Sectors" by that time. I don't recall now if they changed the designation from UNPA to Sector when the mission name changed to UNCRO or whether it was after "Flash" that it was changed.
Anyway, it was explained to me that the "protected" was never meant to mean protection of those inside the UNPA from those outside the UNPA, but rather that the UN was protecting minorities within the UNPAs. And indeed the Mission was set up that way. There was no way the few UN troops could have protected the people in the Sectors from an invading army. They could and did, however, offer some protection to the minorities (Croats, Roma, Hungarians, etc.) living within the Sectors. At least I know Sector North was set up that way.
Do you have more info on Ceku, the name of his unit, exactly where they operated? I'd be very interested to learn!
Yeah, it looks like the UN was there to protect anyone but the Serbs. Meanwhile, the Croatian government, working with U.S. and Germany, was preparing to ethnically cleanse the Serbs. But what happened to these minorities within the Sectors during Operations like Flash and Storm - were they evacuated and/or helped to safety in greater proportion than the Serbs?
The Croats were pretty hard on Croats who stayed in the Sectors during the RSK years. Hardline Croats considered them traitors for not leaving or getting killed. None were harmed by departing Serbs. In fact, Serbs gave livestock to their Croat neighbours before fleeing in Sector North. Some left the Sector along with Serbs, especially those married to Serbs.
were they evacuated and/or helped to safety in greater proportion than the Serbs?
No.
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a38a9d76f6146.htm
The KLA star Ceku was also very heavily involved - nice company the 'international community' keeps nowadays.
Did any of the Croats who were staying ever succumb to this pressure from other Croats and leave? I just wonder if any of these Croats who might have left because of this "peer pressure" were counted in statistics as being ethnically cleansed by Serbs.
This reminds me of attacks by returning Albanians in Kosovo on those Albanians (and Roma) who had stayed in Kosovo throughout the war - they blamed them for not leaving with the rest.
What about the non-Serb, non-Croat minorities during the war - what were they saying and did they tend to take sides or did they try their best to stay out of it? Did any Hungarians go to Hungary? What happened to the Roma? Voronin says there were some attacks on Croatian gypsies before the war began:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/769679/posts#10:
The gypsies were the first to be persecuted when the SFRY started to fall apart. Months before any fighting started, I received direct word that Croatian blackshirts attacked a gypsy encampment that was close to the Croatian/Hungarian border, and went to all the effort of going over the border to attack from the other side.
Not at all. I had simply stated that the railway and highway that was cut off by the Serbs in Okucani was a contributing factor to Operation Storm i.e. why the Croats made that area an objective. It was not just the Serbs who suffered from "ethnic cleansing". All sides practiced it. You had no comment about the Serbs that had returned to southern Croatia?
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