Posted on 06/05/2005 7:07:03 PM PDT by Hoplite
Srebrenica massacre tape has at last forced Belgrade to face up to its war atrocities
For 10 years they have not slept easy. The casual killers of the six cowed and beaten prisoners from Srebrenica were happy to play to the camera that day in July 1995, high on victory and heroes in the eyes of many fellow Serbs. But, as the years have worn on, that sheen has dimmed and the fear has grown. Did the tape still exist? Who had it? Where was it? For the first time since the execution video was shown at the UN's war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague on Wednesday, The Observer can reveal the full story of the tape that has rocked not just Serbia and Bosnia, but the whole world.
It is the extraordinary story of how the tape was hidden for more than nine years but then, as its existence was revealed in a trial in Serbia, how a race began between the frightened killers and Serbia's leading human rights activist to find it - to destroy it or get it out to the world.
The tape is also the 'smoking gun', for it is the final, incontrovertible proof of Serbia's part in the Srebrenica massacres in which more than 7,500 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were murdered. Until last week Serbian officials, both from the wartime regime of Slobodan Milosevic and since his fall in 2000, have argued that Serbia was not involved with the massacres. Now, the tape proves that to have been a lie.
It will prove valuable ammunition, not just in trials like that of Milosevic but also in Bosnia's action at the UN's International Court of Justice in which it has charged Serbia with complicity in genocide. The gruesome tape shows the execution of six Bosnian Muslim prisoners, four of whom were under 18 and the other two under 30. The beaten prisoners, hands bound, are shown lying face down in a lorry. A guard kicks one in the head. They are ordered off the truck, told to lie down and, in a later clip, shot in the back while standing.
The first four to die are ordered to walk forward, one by one, and then shot. Then the hands of the last two are unbound and they are told to carry the bodies to another spot, where they are also shot.
The cameraman, known by his nickname, Bugar, is impatient. He wants his fellow Skorpions, a unit belonging to Serbia's Ministry of the Interior, to hurry because his camera battery is running low.
The murders took place close to the village of Trnovo, which lies 30 minutes' drive east of Sarajevo, which was then still a city besieged by Serbian forces. From the beginning of the war in 1992, Trnovo was in Serbian hands.
In the summer of 1995 General Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb army commander, is determined to win the war. He needs to concentrate all his men around the east Bosnian Muslim enclave of Srebrenica, declared a UN safe haven. He plots a strategy. His own men will deal with the enclave, but men from Serbia will attack Sarajevo to create a diversion and to tie down Bosnian government troops. Enter the Skorpions. Since 1991 this unit has played a key role, especially in eastern Slavonia, that part of Serbian-held eastern Croatia abutting Serbia. It is headquartered in Sid, an unremarkable little town, 80km north-west of Belgrade, but which during the Croatian war became the jumping-off point for the Serbian attack on eastern Croatia.
Their job is special - 'black operations' - and they are also used by the Milosevic regime to make sure the local Serb authorities, especially in occupied eastern Slavonia, do as they are instructed. To keep them happy, Belgrade allows them a free hand in smuggling and looting.
It is now 26 June, 1995. The Skorpions are about to set off for Bosnia and, while dogs nose around, an Orthodox priest blesses the men who are wearing red berets and black jumpsuits. Next clip: they are in Pale, by the coaches which have brought them to the Bosnian Serb wartime capital. They pose for the camera in front of Pale's roadside name sign. Next clip: the executions.
What has been shown on Serbian and Bosnian TV is four minutes of a two-hour tape. As the Skorpions went into action this was, in effect, their Bosnian 95 tour video. Says Natasa Kandic, Serbia's leading rights campaigner, who gave the tape to Serbia's war crimes court and the one in The Hague, 'they filmed everything'.
Soon after arriving in Pale, the men were sent to Trnovo and from there they fanned out to launch their feint on Sarajevo. The plan worked, and on 11 July the defences of Srebrenica had collapsed. Now thousands of prisoners were falling into the hands of Mladic. Up on Mount Jahorina, overlooking Sarajevo, says Kandic, the Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, and his Vice-President, Nikola Koljevic, needed to work on distributing the prisoners. In Trnovo the Skorpions were ordered to send some of their vehicles to Srebrenica to collect their share of the Muslim captives. According to Kandic, who heads Belgrade's Humanitarian Law Centre and who has the story from the man who gave her the tape, a coach packed with more than 50 prisoners arrived in Trnovo.
At that point the only people in Trnovo were the Skorpion's commander, Slobodan Medic, then 28, and a few of his men. Medic, says Kandic, now got orders 'to take some people from the bus and kill them. He told his men to take six'. The six seem to have been taken by truck, up to a secluded spot close by called Godevinske Bare, where the killings took place. The coach with the other prisoners then continued to other locations and 'all the other prisoners were killed', says Kandic.
Bugar, the man filming, was a close friend of Medic. The day after the killings, which took place between 15 and 19 July, he gave the camera to someone else. When the unit came home to Sid that person made 20 copies, distributed among the then acclaimed Skorpion 'heroes'.
When he discovered this, Medic was furious. He knew the tape could be used as evidence if it fell into the wrong hands. He ordered everyone to return the tapes and 20 were destroyed. But one man, who had rowed with his colleagues and had left Trnovo the day before the executions, made one more copy for himself. Fearful and uncertain what to do, the man, whom Kandic cannot name but who will testify at The Hague, hid the tape outside Serbia. For years nothing happened.
That is, until 2003. As war broke out in Kosovo, the Skorpions were reactivated. In March 1999 they lived up to their reputation, killing 19 ethnic Albanian civilians in Podujevo. Two Skorpions were put on trial and in 2003, one of them, who agreed to testify against the others, mentioned that a tape of their Bosnia 95 tour existed. Kandic contacted the man, who said he did not have it but knew the man who did. She went to Sid and found him. He gave it to Kandic who agreed not to use it until he was out of the country.
In Sid, tension began to rise. Kandic had been spotted there with the man who had the tape and the other Skorpions guessed he had told her about the Srebrenica prisoners. A desperate hunt began. Kandic began to get reports that the Skorpions were attacking and harassing people in Sid as they searched for the cassette.
On 9 December, the Hague tribunal released on bail Frenki Simatovic, former head of the Red Berets, another Interior Ministry unit which had worked with the Skorpions, and Jovica Stanisic, former head of the Serbian secret police. The orders went out to find the tape.
In Serbia, with the tenth anniversary of the massacre coming up, Kandic, angry at claims in public by various personalities that Srebrenica had been 'liberated' and that there had been no genocide, said she had seen the tape.
On 23 May she gave it to Serbia's own war crimes prosecutor. He promised to investigate, but no arrests were made. She also gave it to The Hague's prosecution team, who showed it on Wednesday. Immediately afterwards she gave it to Serbian TV.
Within 24 hours four men had been arrested in Serbia, including Slobodan Medic. Six more were brought in for questioning but were later released. Three are on the run. Serbia's police dossier on the case contains 136 names.
For the Serbian authorities, a psychological barrier has been smashed. Pressure is now mounting on them to arrest at least Mladic, who is believed to be in Serbia. Svetozar Marovic, the President of Serbia and Montenegro, has said he will be arrested within a month. Boris Tadic, the President of Serbia, wants to attend the commemoration of the massacre at Srebrenica on 10 July.
Now, says Kandic, Serbia must arrest Mladic. 'After this,' she says, 'there is no choice. Serbs have been forced to see what happened and they have to stop denying that Serbia's forces were there.'
Because he was winning. One Canadian judges career has already been ruined by this. Must get the correct verdict to have "justice".
I think a good thing to point out is that psych ops are just as much a part of a war as field ops. The Serbs were horrible in the PR department during the Kosovo situation. The horrible PR the Serbians suffered was tantamount to a gargantuan strategic defeat. The Serbian gov't should have been out in the forefront "spinning" things in a more Serbian-friendly light.
On This Week, hosted by Mike Wallace, some nut from Amnesty International was comparing Gitmo with the Gulag.
He went on to say that Rummy better stay in the US to avoid being brought to justice in Brussels for crimes against captured insurgents.
I'm disappointed that the US didn't disassociate its self from the persecution of Milosevic by a IMO totally corrupt Tribunal. Collin Powell was inept and cowling to the EU and the UN.
Let's see how Condi and Bolton handles this EU created fiasco.
Hoplite...what a stupid post. This phony tape proves nothing. It was probably taped by you muslims during one of your many cowardly terrorist attacks on innocent Serb civilians. Those that got whacked at Srebrenica were muslim terrorist who fled to Srebrenica thinking they could evade justice by reaching a UN protected sanctuary. I guess they didn't figure on the UN troops being Dutchmen who had no more use for islamic terrorists than did the Serbs. Why should Dutchmen fight Serbs to protect a pack of cowardly islamic terrorists? You always have been a muslim lap dog hopelite.
Does Clinton pay you by the task or the stroke when you wear your kneepads, rooster?
Of course it's a fake, but that's all the Muhammedans have to offer, isn't it?
Video stops because the batteries went dead in the most critical moment when the bullets should pierce the flesh. In another video provided by Natasa Kandic, of freezer trucks, batteries also die second before the doors of the freezer are opened. Must be the batteries are from the same rotten batch provided by Soros skunk network.
Please not that the trial to one of the scorpions, Cvjetan opens in Belgrade Monday for the alleged Podujevo case. This thing stinks to the high heaven, accusations against Cjetan are based on doctored evidence provided by Natasha Kandic and the witness Stoparic who comitted perjury under Kandic supervision.
This is Podujevo case, and I have analysed it in extenso on several ocasions. Please check FR keyword BOGUJEVCI. It is all fraud, falls apart on careful examination.
_______________________________________
Ma Bell,
Let's leave Ms. Bogujevci aside. I have seen her on TV and she is not telling the truth. But I do not know what she is hiding.
I am talking about Serbian "witnesses" groomed by Natasa Kandic. Key point to verify:
1. Was Bogujevci family KLA supporter before March 1999? 2. Did they support KLA during the war? 3. Did they started to support KLA after the war? 4. Why they are still in exile in U.K? Whom they are afraid of?
Here is why this is important:
1. Ms. Bogujevci was transpoerted to hospital by Serbian Police doctor.
2. She was treated in the same hospital wing as Serb Police wounded
3. Her father visited her in hospital, without fear for his own life.
This point to the possibility that Bogujevci were killed by KLA and that only after the war.
Second thing, when did the alleged massacre occur? In the morning or during the night? "Witnesses" have mixed script badly.
This is all hoax. Supported by Milosevic regime. DOS regime and ICTY. The question is WHY? 6 posted on 09/18/2004 1:05:49 PM EDT by DTA
Brussels would cease to exist if they captured Rummy. On the other hand, our Balkins policy is Clinton Lite at best.
You missed all the Serb websites that got the truth out, like the dead Christian women and children from the heroic 20,000 ft bombs.
It can be argued they did a good job, especially Milosevic in defending himself at the Hague. So good in fact, that coverage of the 'Tribunal' was almost immediately muted. But when you're up against a corrupted world order media, you do your best.
They don't have the money to pay the likes of Hoplite, but on this open venue, the Hoplites are getting creamed.
Likewise, Serbia under Milosovic, defended their country against the EU, NATO, and the Islamists. They did not surrender or meet the demands of overwhelming force. They still have their sovereignty and Kosovo. Quite an achievement.
http://rs-icty.org/glavna_galerija_video.htm
and tell us as well, why do you think, we don't see'em on TV...????
Natasha Kandich is a well-known con artist when it comes to war-crimes evidence. The freezer truck incident is a good example.
I mean, out of thousands of atrocities allegedly commited by Serbian paramilitary units, how many have been confirmed as facts? While it is a FACT that certain Serbian paramilitaries have commited atrocities, it is also a FACT that the majority of Srebrenitsa victims were enemy combatants. But that FACT is never mentioned.
While we have known for a very long time that the tape of Orich's war crimes exists, that tape could only dream of the media exposure the Scorpions' one has received so far. Why? Because the victims were Serbs?
Orich is at the Hague as we speak. Let's see if the tape showing him and his Muslim killers beheading and burning Serbian civilians is admitted as evidence.
Have you seen the tape?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1241034/posts
You muslims terrorize your civilized neighbors and then expect the UN and klintoons to provide you with "privileged sanctuary" from retribution. Your immunity was CANCELLED at Srebrenica. Sadly, your terrorist commander Oric managed to sneak away and escape his just deserts.
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