Free Republic

SARAJEVO, May 18 (Reuters) - The Bosnian war crimes court indicted on Friday a Muslim wartime police commander of torturing Croat prisoners in a Roman Catholic church in southern Bosnia during the brief Croat-Muslim war in 1993. The court charged Zijad Kurtovic, the ex-commander of the military police platoon of the 4th Corps of the Bosnian Muslim-led army, with war crimes against Croat civilians, prisoners of war and violating the laws and practices of warfare. Bosnian Muslims and Croats entered the 1992-95 war as allies against Bosnian Serbs but then fought their own war in 1993-94, which was ended by...

I recently attended an advance screening of ABC’s outstanding, epic miniseries “The Path to 9/11″ (airing this September 10-11), and I came away enormously impressed. Writer/producer Cyrus Nowrasteh (”Into the West”), director David Cunningham (”To End All Wars”), and the whole production team have done a magnificent job in presenting the complex events leading up to 9/11 with accuracy, fairness, and artistry. The writing, acting, directing, editing, cinematography, and overall story-telling are first-rate. “The Path to 9/11″ is fast-paced and thoroughly gripping the entire way. The five-hour miniseries (aired over two nights) is based on the 9/11 Commission report, and...

Although Kosovo set a terrifying precedent for Israel, at least two Jews are happy about it. In a recent Wall St. Journal-Europe piece titled “Balkan Choice,” Morton Abramowitz and Mark Schneider write that Serbian President Vojislav Kostunica’s opposition to Kosovo independence risks making his country an “international pariah.” Have these two been asleep for 15 years? Serbia has been a pariah since it began fighting Islamo-nationalist terror without the West’s permission. Serbs were the first ones fingered in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the ones bombed by Bill Clinton in 1995 for a Sarajevo marketplace massacre — despite...

An indication of what lies ahead for the Balkans occurred recently in Novi Pazar, when Wahhabi fanatics successfully destroyed a concert held by a renowned Balkan ethno-music orchestra that appeals to people from many countries and ethnicities. The violence was brazen and highly alarming, according to Belgrade’s B-92 which described the occurrence thus: “…ten young men donning long beards, short pants and white hats broke up a concert of the Balkanika orchestra. The hooligans were dressed like members of the vehabit [sic] movement. They climbed up onto the stage and threw around the instruments that were set up for the...

BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro, March 24 (UPI) -- A Serbian government official has accused the U.N. civilian mission in Kosovo of supporting ethnic Albanian separatists in the southern Serbian province. Sanda Raskovic-Ivic, president of the Serbian government coordinating committee for Kosovo, in a letter to Soren Jessen-Petersen, the chief of the U.N. mission in Kosovo, charged that Jessen-Petersen was one of the "most influential promoters of the goals of Albanian separatists." Raskovic-Ivic's letter was in reaction to Jessen-Petersen's call that Western countries ignore Serbia's arrest warrant on Agim Ceku, Kosovo's prime minister, for alleged war crimes in Kosovo in 1999. In March...

Ten years after the Bosnian war, a leading political expert tells swissinfo how Switzerland's Carla del Ponte is doing as UN war crimes prosecutor. Andre Liebich, professor of history and politics at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, says Del Ponte's mandate is difficult to reconcile with the demands of realpolitik in Bosnia. Since her appointment in August 1999, Del Ponte has been trying to bring the Bosnian Serb wartime leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic before the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Her patience appeared to have snapped last month, when she bluntly told...

MITROVICA, Serbia and Montenegro (Reuters) - NATO troops in Kosovo secured the fire-gutted Serbian church in the flashpoint town of Mitrovica on Saturday as dozens of Serbs crossed the bridge into the Albanian-dominated south to mark Orthodox Christmas. Split into Albanian and Serb halves, Mitrovica in northern Kosovo has seen some of the worst clashes since the end of the 1998-99 war and the town's division by French troops at the Ibar River. Serbs holding candles attend a service for Orthodox Christmas in the fire-gutted Serbian church in Mitrovica, 40 kilometres north of the Kosovo capital Pristina, January 7, 2006....

Belgrade, 6 Jan. (AKI) - Serb leaders in Bosnia and Belgrade on Friday sharply protested the killing of the wife of a Serb war crimes suspect in Bosnia by soldiers of the international peacekeeping contingent (Eufor). Rada Abazovic's husband, Dragomir, and her 12-year-old son Dragan were badly injured when the soldiers stormed the family's house in the village og Kozoci, some 60 kilometres east of Sarajevo. The incident took place Thursday when Eufor soldiers, came to arrest Dragomir Abazovic, who is wanted for war crimes he allegedly committed during the 1992-1995 Balkans war. It is still not exactly clear what...

Man fighting for closed borders loses battle 08:55 PM Mountain Standard Time on Wednesday, November 30, 2005 By Mike Watkiss / 3TV reporter Casey Nethercott, 38, founded the anti-immigration group, Ranch Rescue. "If I had my way, I’d put a concrete wall down the border, put gun powder on it and say, 'America is closed,'" Nethercott said. Some people call Nethercott an American hero, a patriot wronged by the country that he loves. "He’s a hero. My son is a good man," said Nethercott's mother, Margaret. "He would never, ever hurt anyone." "I can’t help that I’m 250 pounds," Nethercott...

Serbian Factory Bombed By NATO To Make Arms For US Company Agence France-Presse Wed, 19 Oct 2005, 08:12 RSS Printer Friendly E-Mail This Page Discussions Belgrade: A Serbian factory bombed by NATO in 1999 is to make arms for US weapons manufacturer Remington in a contract worth 3.2 million dollars (2.6 million euros), a report said Tuesday. Zastava Arms of Serbia and Remington signed the agreement in Kragujevac, 120 kilometers (72 miles) west of Belgrade, for the supply of the weapons in 2006, the private Beta news agency reported. The arms would be sold under the joint brand name "Remington-Zastava"...

MOSCOW, October 25 (RIA Novosti) - Russia has urged the UN Security Council to continue monitoring the situation in Kosovo, a senior Russian diplomat said Tuesday. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Yakovenko said, "Moscow has always advocated the key role of the UN in every stage of the Kosovo settlement. Monitoring of the situation in Kosovo should be continued." Yakovenko told a news conference in the Russian capital that Monday's UN Security Council session on Kosovo had adopted a recommendation by the UN Secretary General to begin negotiations on the status of Kosovo, designed to provide fair standards, equal rights,...

Elian interview sparks Miami row Relatives in Florida of the shipwrecked Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez have criticised an interview with him to be shown on US television on Sunday. Cubans celebrated when Elian was returned to his father In excerpts from the CBS network's 60 Minutes show Elian, now 11, calls Cuban leader Fidel Castro his friend. He also accuses his family in Miami of trying to turn him against his father during a custody battle in 2000 which culminated in his return to Cuba. A spokesman for the Florida relatives said Elian had been brainwashed. Elian turned six soon...

Confessions of a Liberal Democrat Betsy Gibson October 15, 1998 Partisanship is blinding us to the deeper truths we need to understand about Bill Clinton, ourselves and our country. I know about partisanship. I’m a liberal Democrat from a family so committed to those ideas that in 1968 my single-parent mother quit her job to volunteer for Senator Eugene McCarthy. During that long, hot summer in Chicago our already cramped apartment housed other volunteers who come to the convention to fight the good fight for the soul of the Democratic party. Our enemy was Hubert Humphrey and the establishment wing...

SANTA ANA — An Orange County woman said in an expose that aired last night that her ex-husband is a Muslim extremist who helped set up an al Qaeda sleeper cell in their Anaheim apartment complex in the 1990s. Saraah Olson told ABC-TV's "Primetime Live" that her ex-husband, Hisham Diab, beat her, turned a local teenager into a terrorist fanatic, and brought other terrorists into their home. Authorities say the couple's former neighbor, Khalil Deek, is considered a major al Qaeda figure, and is believed to have run the Orange County cell -- one of the first al Qaeda sleeper...

WASHINGTON (AP) - North Korea told the United States on Thursday that it would test a nuclear weapon unless Washington accepted Pyongyang's proposal for a freeze on its atomic program, a senior administration official said. Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye Gwan spoke with Assistant Secretary of State James A. Kelly in a 2 1/2-hour private discussion in China, where a six-nation conference is being held on the long-running impasse over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions.

"Hillary Clinton’s book Living History has captivated much of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, former Clinton intimate Dick Morris has recently published a book that describes Bill Clinton’s disastrous management of national security and the grave foreign policy challenges he bequeathed to President George Bush. Morris describes Clinton’s failures to confront North Korea and Iraq in detail and writes that, in both cases, Clinton was willing to settle for vague or misleading promises. But nowhere is Clinton’s "sorry record of weakness" clearer than on terrorism...

Bill, they hardly knew ye. Oh, they knew what they liked and didn't like about you. But they didn't know that some of your top advisers were so picky about recognition or that Joycelyn Elders isn't mad at you for firing her. Or that your presidency would affect them so much as Democrats, Republicans, Arkansans and students. Since January, 35 students of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and others who attended online have heard from Clinton's closest advisers and a few of his opponents about the inner workings of his presidency and its legacy. On May 23, the...

<p>WASHINGTON - The only Library of Congress branch in the U.S. Capitol - which has helped lawmakers for generations - is shutting down to provide the new House Democratic leader with space for her interns, officials said yesterday.</p> <p>The abrupt closing of the congressional reading room and branch library has caught lawmakers and other patrons off guard, and even the two librarians who staff the small reading room are still getting used to the news.</p>

Headline says it all. Developing...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) --Former Vice President Al Gore has decided not to run for president in 2004, a senior Gore adviser said Sunday.</p> <p>Gore would have been the likely front-runner in the Democratic field, even though many party activists have said privately they hoped he wouldn't run.</p>