Free Republic

...The “Genocide of Srebrenica” in July 1995 is regarded as the sad climax of the Bosnian war. According to Western accounts originally based on a report by the US government, more than 8000 Bosnian civilians may have been killed. But according to Phillip Corwin, the highest-ranking UN civilian official in Bosnia during the war, the actual evidence points to a more complex situation ...Corwin called the official Western account of events in Srebrenica a “distortion”. The late political scientist Edward S. Herman and the former CIA officer Robert Baer, who was operating in Yugoslavia during the war, even spoke of...

Bosnian police arrested a wartime Muslim army commander on Tuesday on charges of failing to prevent crimes committed by foreign Islamic fighters against captive Bosnian Serb soldiers during a 1992-1995 war. The arrest of 63-year-old retiree Sakib Mahmuljin was carried out on orders of the state war crimes prosecutor, the prosecutor's office said in a statement. "The suspect is under investigation for acting in contravention of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions while serving as a commander of the 3rd Corps of the Army of BiH," it said. Mahmuljin has denied the charges during earlier proceedings. Many Islamic fighters,...

President Obama’s half-brother has sold a handwritten letter the president sent him 20 years ago – revealing he planned to venture into politics to tackle ‘some serious issues blacks face here’. It is the third personal note Malik Abongo ‘Roy’ Obama has auctioned in recent years. But this, dated 23 July 1995, is perhaps the most revealing about the president-to-be’s political ambitions. ‘Some colleagues of mine here have talked me into running for the Illinois State Senate (like being an MP for a province),’ Obama, then a 33-year-old lawyer in Chicago, wrote to his paternal brother in Kenya. ‘I have...

On 9 November, a 38-year old Belgian named Muriel, blew herself to pieces in Baghdad near a group of Iraqi policemen, killing five other people. The woman had converted to Islam after marrying a Belgian of Moroccon origin. Her husband was shot down by American troops. The American authorities informed the Belgian authorities of the woman’s identity a few weeks ago, but Brussels kept it secret. Yesterday evening the Franco-Luxemburgian network RTL announced the news. Last night, the Belgian police arrested 14 people. Nine of them are Belgians, mostly of foreign origin, three are Moroccans and two are Tunisians. They...

Recent reports outlining what Time magazine has called the "untold story" of a cancelled al Qaeda plot against the New York subway system have excited considerable media hype and public consternation. The account is part of Ron Suskind's new book, The One Percent Doctrine, that was excerpted in the June 26 edition of Time. According to Suskind, al Qaeda developed a "revolutionary new WMD device" that would generate cyanide gas, and these weapons -- which he refers to as "mubtakkar" devices -- were to have been planted on subways by operatives who were in place and preparing to act in...