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...

Prosecuting Terror No Choice but Guilty Lackawanna Case Highlights Legal Tilt By Michael Powell Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, July 29, 2003; Page A01 First of two articles LACKAWANNA, N.Y. -- Even now, after the arrests and the anger and the world media spotlight, the mystery for neighbors in this old steel town remains this: Why would six of their young men so readily agree to plead guilty to terror charges, accepting long prison terms far from home? The reality appears to fall between such disbelief and talk of sleeper cells. Two men who were veterans of the war in...

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,...

War On Terror: The death of skilled diplomat Richard Holbrooke is said to be a devastating blow to our Afghan war effort. But diplomats don't win wars; they do, unfortunately, often lose them. 'A huge vacuum." "A major void." "A towering, one-of-a-kind presence." These are some of the extravagant descriptions bandied about after the unexpected death Monday of the 69-year-old Obama administration envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, "AfPak czar" Richard Holbrooke. The media love personalities, so it's no surprise to see this foreign policy adviser to four Democratic presidents rendered larger than life, especially since he'd been expected to become...

The supposed “responsibility to protect” has taken America into a war on the side of the ultimate killers of innocents. (See also "Rebel Libya: ‘Brothers who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, now is the time to defend your land!" on the Tatler.) In the absence of any evident national interest justification for bombing Libya, the Obama administration is said to have been motivated by the so-called responsibility to protect — or “R2P” per the wonkish English acronym. In American discussions, “R2P” has quickly come to be associated with Obama advisor Samantha Power. But “R2P” did not emerge full-grown from the...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Warren Zimmerman, the last U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia, died Tuesday of pancreatic cancer. He was 69. Zimmerman, a career Foreign Service officer, was named ambassador to Yugoslavia in 1989 by the first President Bush. At the time, the former communist country was breaking up into warring factions, and Zimmerman led the administration's efforts to keep the state together. Bush recalled Zimmerman in 1992 to protest the outbreak of civil war. The war lasted until 1995 and pitted the country's Muslims, Orthodox Christian Serbs and Catholic Croats against each other. The war killed 260,000 and forced 1.8 million...

THE HAGUE, 21.09.2007. General Sead Delic, former commander of the BH Army 2nd Corps, testifies at the trial of Rasim Delic. In September 1995, Sead Delic was in charge of carrying out a part of an operation, code-named Hurricane, on the Ozren-Vozuca front. The prosecution tenders a video recording of Alija Izetbegovic visiting that part of the front General Sead Delic, former commander of the 2nd Corps, is testifying at the trial of Rasim Delic, former commander of the BH Army Main Staff. He is testifying about an operation the BH Army launched on the Ozren-Vozuca front in September 1995....

CANNON IN HOSPITAL YARD, BOYS WITH GRENADES AND PITS FULL OF DEAD BODIES (Muslim controlled Sarajevo) General Milosevic’s defense witness testifies about his wartime experience in Sarajevo. He claims he was subjected to daily mental and physical torture, that he was forced to witness an execution at Pofalici and saw a BH Army cannon fire shells from the Sarajevo State Hospital compound. The cannon was “set in a highly visible spot as a taunt” to the Serb forces, who were thus forced to target it, the witness says General Dragomir Milosevic’s defense witness, testifying under the pseudonym T60 and with...

Former American ambassador testifies on the United States’ role in reining in Croat paramilitaries in war-torn Bosnia. By Caroline Tosh in The Hague (TU No 468, 15-Sep-06) A former United States ambassador to Croatia revealed this week that it was American pressure that led to the removal of two senior Bosnian Croats during the 1992-94 Muslim-Croat conflict that was part of the wider Bosnian war. Speaking at the war crimes trial of six Bosnian Croat officials, former ambassador Peter Galbraith testified that his government pressured the authorities in Croatia to secure the dismissal of Slobodan Praljak, the military commander of...

October 27, 2005 BIH, HR Text of report in English by Croatian news agency HINA The Hague, 27 October: A Bosnian Croat wartime commander, who pleaded guilty at the Hague war crimes tribunal on Wednesday [26 October] to grave breaches of the Geneva conventions committed during the Croat-Muslim war in 1993, confirmed in a plea agreement with the prosecution that Croatia had been involved in the international armed conflict in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Ivica Rajic, who commanded Croatian Defence Council (HVO) troops in Kiseljak, 20 kilometres west of Sarajevo, agreed under the plea agreement that the prosecution evidence would prove beyond a...