U.S. troops hand over terrorist suspect to Bosnian authorities

TUZLA, Bosnia-Herzegovina - NATO (news - web sites)-led troops on Thursday transferred a Bosnian Muslim, who had been held at their base since October as a terrorist suspect, to the local authorities in Bosnia.

Sabahudin Fijuljanin, 41, was detained by U.S. troops based in Tuzla first for allegedly spying on their base and possession of weapons, which is illegal in Bosnia. After more than a month, they said they also had information Fijuljanin had links to the al-Qaida terrorist network.

Fijuljanin never admitted he had those links, and the troops serving in the NATO-led peacekeeping force never presented any evidence and never laid charges against him.

His extended detention prompted human rights groups, including Amnesty International, to accuse the force of violating Fijuljanin's rights by keeping him in custody without charge.

Earlier this month, the Human Rights Chamber — Bosnia's top court in charge of human rights — ordered the Bosnian presidency to request Fijuljanin's handover to local authorities.

Early Thursday, Fijuljanin was seen on the back seat of a local police car driving out of Eagle Base in Tuzla. Followed by a number of other police vehicles, he was driven to a police station in nearby Srebrenik, some 30 kilometers (20 miles) north of Tuzla.

Maj. Shawn Mell, a spokesman for peacekeepers, said they had reached a point in their investigation "that can accommodate a transfer of Fijuljanin to the (Bosnian Muslim-Croat) federation Ministry of the Interior."

Fijuljanin's lawyer, Osman Mulahalilovic told The Associated Press the handover was "a triumph of the rule of law" and protection of human rights in Bosnia.

"I expect a hearing in the police station and an eventual charge for illegal possession of weapons or his immediate release," the lawyer said. Fijuljanin voluntarily handed over his anti-tank weapon a few days prior to his arrest.

Fijuljanin has been a member of a closed community near Srebrenik, which lives fairly isolated and practices a strict Islamic life style, unusual for the liberal Bosnian Muslim society.

Fijuljanin who hails from the Yugoslav region of Sandzak, has lived for years in Bosnia where he is married and has four children. His Bosnian citizenship is being investigated, since other passports, including his Yugoslav one, were found in his home during the investigation.

At present, about 12,000 international troops are serving in the peacekeeping mission in Bosnia. NATO deployed its troops here to keep the peace that ended the 1992-1995 Bosnian war.

I do know that all those Bosnian cases were done during an active shooting war.

Destroying someone else's cultural monuments is not something you do when there is shooting going on in your immediate vicinity - it is a surreptitious activity mostly done when nobody is looking.

The best example of this is the destruction of Banja Luka's non-Orthodox sites:

NAME OF SITE - DATE OF DESTRUCTION:

ISLAMIC SACRED SITES

Sefer-Beg Mosque - 09.04.93
Ferhadija Mosque - 07.05.93
Arnaudija Mosque - 07.05.93
Mosque in Vrbanja - 11.05.93
Zulfikarova Mosque - 15.05.93
Behram-Efendija Mosque - 26.05.93
Mehdibeg Mosque - 04.06.93
Sofi Mehmed-Pasa Mosque - 04.06.93
Hadzi-Begzade Mosque - 04.06.93
Gazanferija Mosque - 04.06.93
Hadzi-Sabanova Mosque - 14.06.93
Hadzi-Kurt Mosque - 14.06.93
Hadzi-Perviz Mosque - 06.09.93
Hadzi-Osmanija Mosque - 08.09.93
Hadzi-Omer Mosque - 09.09.93
Hadzi-Salihija Mosque - 09.09.93

ROMAN CATHOLIC SACRED SITES

Church of St. Joseph at Trno - 24.10.91
Parish Church - 00.12.91
St. Bonaventura Cathedral - 31.12.91
St. Vincent Monastery - 00.12.92
St. Anthony of Padua Church and Franciscan Monastery - 07.05.95

There was no fighting of note in Banja Luka - it was a rear area in the Republika Srpska throughout the war, so the ethnic cleansing and concurrent destruction of non-Orthodox cultural institutions was not caused by armed confrontation between warring parties.

You can verify this pattern with the two following sources (homepages of the source material from my earlier post)
Source material for Orthodox churches in Croatia & Bosnia.
Source material for Catholic Churches in Croatia.

You will find the same is true whether you are looking at either party in the conflicts in Croatia or Kosovo - hell, you can even ask our own resident idiot, Zoran Smaic, about the destruction of religious buildings - he occasionally goes off about "minaret missiles" and the like.

Christ forgive me, I care not a lick for one demolished Mosque.

Nor for demolished Catholic Churches.

And that is your undoing - you have inflated your concern for a narrowly defined religious affiliation to the point where it eclipses concerns for basic human rights of those not part of your religious grouping.

And instead of dealing with the inherent underlying moral inconsistency of your position, you choose to deny that which brings attention to said inconsistency while trumpeting that which reinforces it, whether through honest means or through lies, clamoring for the top rung on the victimhood ladder.

It's a sad spectacle.

As to NATO allowing something to happen, that assumes a willing complicity that simply isn't there - 60,000 troops were not enough to perform all the required tasks, but they're all the troops that were available, so tasks were prioritized, with the protection of lives being placed above protection of property.

As to NATO and Bosnia and detainment of suspected Al Quaeda personnel, from the Bosnian Constitution, Article II:

3. Enumeration of Rights. All persons within the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina shall enjoy the human rights and fundamental freedoms referred to in paragraph 2 above; these include:

(e) The right to a fair hearing in civil and criminal matters, and other rights relating to criminal proceedings.

And it is from this section that the issue with this prisoner arises, from what I can gather.

We've had to deal with the same issue when it came to American nationals captured in the War on Terror. As seen with the Algerians, the Bosnians are willing to work with us on these matters.

Wow, we've gone from the supected terrorist in BiH to destruction of churches and mosques.

Well, here's my two cents. I can only speak for Croatia, as that's all I've seen. What I saw were some churches were damaged or destroyed during actual fighting when both sides were shelling each other. Some were wantonly damaged or destroyed just for, I don't know, spite? What makes people want to destroy a church or a mosque? I realise that religious symbols often act as substitutes for national symbols in the Balkans, and the idea was to destroy a national symbol, but still, it's beyond me. Then again, I'm a foreigner, so of course I don't get it.

Along the border areas (and also along former lines of confrontation such as the Glina-Petrinja road) churches were damaged and destroyed by shelling and gunfire. Judging from the visible damage to other buildings near the churches, it did not appear to me that the churches were singled out for destruction. Neither did it appear there was any effort to spare them. (There may have been such cases; I just didn't happen to see them.)

In some cases, churches were shelled by BOTH sides during heavy fighting, such as the Catholic Churches in Moscenica and Sunya. There were also some cases where churches were shelled by their "own side" if those churches were situated on the "other" side of the CFL during fighting, such as the Catholic Church in Bilje.

Likewise, bell towers were sometimes taken off to deny them to snipers. I've already told the story about how the Croats blew off the bell tower of that picturesque country Catholic Church in the CFL near Osijek to deny it to Serb snipers. The footage was shown over and over on CNN to show how how horrible the Serbs were. The Croatian Army guys who were present at the time and later told me about it thought CNN's "stupidity" was hilarious, but, hey, it worked for them! I doubt this was an isolated case in border areas or any area where serious fighting took place.

Many churches were destroyed, defaced, looted, etc., in the complete absence of any fighting. I won't bore everyone with all the destroyed and damaged churches I saw, but only give a few examples. In the autumn of 1991, a bunch of Serb paramilitaries blew up and (later?) mined the ruins of the Catholic Church in Topusko. So far as I could see, there was absolutely no military justification for doing so.

Mr. Akashi's successor, Mr. Minh, had a thing about destruction of religious buildings, and we were tasked to monitor them. "Oh, great" I thought, "I've got this huge area of humanitarian basket cases scattered all over it, and you want me to babysit churches when it's all I can do to try to save lives?" But I did stop by and inspect churches when it was convenient (meaning I had to pass right by them while on humanitarian missions). I didn't see a one which was not damaged or defaced to one extent or another in the aftermath of Op Storm, some more than others. Perhaps Mr. Minh's directive helped somewhat, though, as predations on the Orthodox Churches abated some time after he issued it.

Particularly sad to me was the 18th century wooden Orthodox Church which was burned to the ground after Storm. It was in an extremely isolated area not too far from Glina. According to a book on history and culture loaned to me by a Croat intellectual, this church was a unique example of that particular period and style of architecture and had been amazingly preserved through the centuries. All I got to see of it was ashes. The Croats claimed 5th Corps (Muslims) burned it down, and I wouldn't be surprised at 5th Corps doing such a thing, but there was no evidence that 5th Corps ever entered that area. I can't say for sure who did it, just leave it as a question mark.

Anyway, all I know is that some folks in the Balkans have a thing for destroying each others' religious monuments, and it's been that way for a long, long time. Sad, but true.

There also seems to be a thing for desecrating grave yards. I saw little desecration of Catholic cemeteries, although they did fall into serious neglect in the Sectors during the RSK years. But there was not a single Orthodox cemetery left untouched in Sector North after Op Storm. The Croats managed to get them all, some being more damaged than others.

I hope I didn't make it sound like Croats and Serbs went around destroying every church. Not at all. I remember several Catholic Churches in Sector North which were in fine condition. A number of the Orthodox Churches weren't damaged very much, mostly just graffiti and smashing things up a bit.

My inspection of one Orthodox Church was quite moving, though. It had been mostly destroyed in WWII and there had been some renovation to it since, but as Ichabod Walrus said, rebuilding of Orthodox Churches was made difficult, so it still had no roof but did have very high stone walls. It stood on the eastern side of the Glina-Dvor road where the refugee column was being strafed. Some of the refugees had sought shelter in the church during that time and one, a child or short person, had scrawled a small and humble "God please save us" on the wall facing the road. Croat soldiers later came and spray-painted an arrogant "God is with US!" in huge letters all over the interior of the church, along with their Ustasa symbol, the horseshoe-looking letter "U". (They spray-painted their stupid U all over everything in some villages of Sector North, sometimes adding swastikas for good measure.) I don't know how to describe how that affected me, seeing the humble plea of the refugee overwritten by the hubris of nationalists, but it affected me deeply.

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