 MILOSEVIC TRIAL DISCUSSION ARCHIVE |
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Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic is on trial for war crimes in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at The Hague. This marks the first time a head of state has been personally prosecuted before an international criminal court.
Is Slobodan Milosevic getting a fair trial?
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- discussion archive
- Wednesday July 16, 2003 at 12:13 am
Ivko RigI've thought about it THRICE and... yes, you are indeed a cynic. But rightly so!
If more people were as cynical, we'd all be better off and the bull**** which politicians like Bliar, Clinton, Bush and company spin us wouldn't pass.
No pasaran!
If they get away with convicting Milosevic on the basis of the crap they've presented at the ICTY, we're all in a lot of trouble for they will be a law unto themselves, and even more so than has been the case so far.
David
Australia - Wednesday July 16, 2003 at 12:24 am
Mr JovanovicAs far as history is concerned, the winners write the rules and the story. If Hitler had won WW2, he'd have occupied most of Europe and any resistance would have been labelled as terrorist activity. Similarly, while the "Mujahideen" in Afghanistan were bombing and "terrorising" the Soviets, that was fine. They were "freedom" fighters. Now that they're bombing and terrorising "The West" in Afghanistan, that's not so fine. They're terrorists.
That calls into question a whole lot of history as we know it. For instance, how many people know that the US was running a blockade against Japan prior to the Pearl Harbour bombing? Who says that the attack on Pearl Harbour was not Japan's answer to the blockade which was strangling Japan? Now even the Americans admit that they knew the attack was coming as much as a week before it took place. Yet they assembled virtually their entire Pacific fleet, minus the really valuable aircraft carriers in the one spot. Why would that be?
There are always TWO sides to any coin, except the ones the media and the spin doctors toss us.
David
Australia - Wednesday July 16, 2003 at 10:17 am
"LIKE A BIG DOOR REVOLVING ON A SMALL HINGE..."In a FRONTLINE interview (1)
Hashim Thaqi, a former (?) KLA leader and allegedly a murderer is quoted for saying, that "...we tried maximally to spill as little blood as possible."
Well, - these efforts just may explain why the American "ambassador" William Walker, a former (?) CIA-man responsible for the crucial statement on the incident in Racak in January 1999 (2), when cross-examined by mr. Milosevic in The Hague on 12 June 2002 was reacting as reflected below (quotations from the Trial Transcripts, Page 6861-63 incl.):
The persons are:
- Mr. Milosevic, President (FRY)
- William Walker, Ambassador
- Richard May, Presiding Judge
- Usher
- Mr. Nice, Mr. Tapuskovic and others...
[play starts here]
MR. MILOSEVIC: Now that we are talking about Racak, in your statement, you say the following:
"As I was watching these bodies, I noticed a few things. First of all, judging by the wounds and the blood around them, and also the pools of dried blood on the land around the bodies, it was obvious that...they died where they were lying. The quantity and the location of the blood on the soil in front of them, each and every one of them, was a clear indication of that."
(The usher shows a series of photographs on the ELMO overhead projector...)
JUDGE MAY:... so we can see them.
MR. MILOSEVIC: Where did you see traces of blood there?
WILLIAM WALKER: On that picture?
JUDGE MAY (to the usher): Go on to the next one!
MR. MILOSEVIC: Are there any traces of blood here anywhere?
WILLIAM WALKER: I assume that's blood?
MR. MILOSEVIC: You're talking about "pools" of blood on the soil, - and on the soil there is no blood at all.
WILLIAM WALKER: Not in this picture!
MR: MILOSEVIC: Not on the previous picture either. Please go on. Is there any blood, any traces of blood, any pools of blood here on the soil either?
WILLIAM WALKER: Not on that picture, no!
MR. MILOSEVIC: Please go on. Where is blood here?
WILLIAM WALKER: I see none!
MR. MILOSEVIC (to the usher): Let us go on.
JUDGE MAY (to the usher): Yes. The next one, please. Yes, the next one. Yes, the next one. And the next one. Yes?
MR. MILOSEVIC: Not even here, there is no trace of blood anywhere on the ground, and we see that there are rocks all around. Let's go on. Could you now please show this photograph.
JUDGE MAY: Yes? If the usher would hand back the photographs to the accused and collect the new one.
MR. MILOSEVIC (to the usher): Thank you. The whole photograph, please. Please take a careful look at it. Could you please keep the photograph there, and could you please come, Mr. Usher, so I can give you yet another photograph which you can show after this one. But keep this one on the ELMO. As you can see, there are no traces of blood here. And now, could you please show this photograph on the overhead projector. Bear in mind that it is the same person. There's no doubt about that. There are no traces of blood whatsoever. And now please take a look at the other photograph. Please show the other photograph now. As you can see, the same person, and now all of a sudden by this person there are traces of blood. Now the cap is moved --
JUDGE MAY: Pause there! Can you assist, Mr. Ambassador, as to those photographs at all? Does it look anything like what you saw?
WILLIAM WALKER: It looks very much like what I saw, but these are only a few photographs out of the thousands of photographs that were taken that day. And I can assure the Court that in many of the photographs there is blood, as I described it, on the ground, around the wounds. And I think this latest photograph does attest to the fact that it's an elderly gentleman with the peasant skullcap in the vicinity of his head. All of the bodies, I would note, were in civilian clothes, as earlier described by me.
MR. MILOSEVIC: Please. This particular photograph, just like you have a big door revolving on a small hinge, this photograph shows that the whole scene has been rigged...
[play ends here. Case closed?]
(1) FRONTLINE interview (as of Ian Davis' posting: Tuesday July 15, 2003 at 9:49 pm)
(2) William Walker's Statement: "Massacre of Civilians in Racak". 16 January 1999.
See also other JURIST postings, e.g.:
CONCERNING WALKER'S STATEMENT. July 01, 2003 at 5:45
PLAY IT AGAIN, UNCLE SAM. July 09, 2003 at 9:41 am).
ICTY Proceedings, 11 June 2002. Trial Transcripts, Pages 6789-90.
ICTY Proceedings, 12 June 2002, Trial Transcripts, Page 6811, Lines 16-18 incl.
Godfred Louis-Jensen
Copenhagen
D E N M A R K - Wednesday July 16, 2003 at 11:26 am
Mr. DS of USA,Yes, I have read this interview. In fact it motivated me to buy Hillary’s book and waste $20. I wanted to see what she says about it herself.
The only entry about anything concerning Yugoslavia in her book is on p.169. She says: “In the former Yugoslavia, Bosnian Serbs were besieging the Muslim town of Srebrenica in a frenzy of “ethnic clensing”.Another exaple of misuse of religious differences for the purposes of political power.
She further concludes after about dozen lines commenting on the words of Elie Wiesel that…
"I was convinced that the only way to stop the genocide in Bosnia was through selective airstrikes against Serbian targets.”
These are the “informative" views of a woman whose ambition is to become a president of United States.
D. Jovanovic
USA - Wednesday July 16, 2003 at 5:46 pm
HILLARY FOR PRESIDENT? OR CALIGULA'S HORSE?Mr. Jovanovic! I never read the "interview" with Gail Sheehy until now, - regrettably I haven't seen Michael Savage's Nation Show either. Now I certainly will - unless this Savage is running for president of the United States (which I think he definitely should! Welcome to the Savage World...).
Hillary Clinton's Choice? Maybe I could borrow your copy, but please tell me if you are seriously suggesting that in a book with more than 169 pages there is not one single word about "Kosovo", - which Hillary Clinton "pushed the president into bombing"?
Nothing about the U.S./NATO war on Serbia in 1999?
It's not that I do not believe you; there is something rather surrealistic about the entire matter - also and maybe not least as seen from a little place like Denmark (?). Hillary Clintons conviction that "the only way to stop the genocide in Bosnia" was through selective airstrikes against Serbian targets has got nothing to do with Kosovo of course, - but anyway reminds me of Javier Solana's addition to the NATO statement of 29 January 1999, heralding the "air war":
"It is very difficult to stop internal conflict, if you are not willing to use (armed) force," he said, wringing his hands.
Meaning: NATO will soon strike against targets on FRY territory, - the Danube bridges, telecommunications, buildings in central Belgrade...the decision was certainly made and irreversible - whatever a Hillary Clinton muttered to the president.
Godfred Louis-Jensen
Copenhagen
D E N M A R K - Wednesday July 16, 2003 at 6:16 pm
Michael Savage (real name Michael Weiner)is to be commended for his steady support of Serbia; however, for those who haven't heard him on the radio (his MSNBC TV show, which I never saw, was recently cancelled after a run of only a few weeks)you might want to know that he is a very big supporter of the wars on Iraq, both of them. He seems to be highly intelligent and much better informed that most Americans, but his positions on foreign policy, among other things, sometimes seem contradictory. Still, he is the only radio personality I have EVER heard tell the truth about Kosovo, and that causes me continue to listen to him from time to time.
Anna P
California - Wednesday July 16, 2003 at 7:26 pm
Mr. Godfred Louis-Jensen,
You might have missed this article authored by Michael Savage, The Oily Tracks Running Through Kosovo.
Michael Savage for President!:-)
D S
USA - Wednesday July 16, 2003 at 9:07 pm
Hit loot and get out with one vessel is done by pirates and is called theft . Hit occupy take the wealth and get out with a fleet is done by a compassionate humanitarian superpower and is called "liberation"
Milan Prika
Panama
Rep. of Panama - Thursday July 17, 2003 at 12:07 am
I don't think the issue was primarily about oil. If there was a subtext it was the collapse of Russia as a counter weight to the US, and the geopolitical desire of the US to move NATO borders as rapidly as possible east, so that they better aligned with Russia's borders. Yugoslavia was an annoying salient separating NATO Hungary from NATO Greece, and also greatly complicating the issue of Bulgarian and Rumanian membership in the newly enlarged NATO. Yugoslavia's mistake here was failing to reject communist creeds quickly enough to allow NATO to invite it to join them, and as a long standing member of the unaligned nations, having resisted inclusion in the Warsaw Pact for 50 years, unlikely to want to join anyway. The Serbs also had a long historical friendship with the Russians, and if my enemies enemies are my friends it follows that my enemies friends are my enemies. This made Serbs at least in US eyes part of any problem and not part of any solution.The papers here in Canada did not initially justify the war against Serbia on humanitarian grounds. The initial justification for the war was essentially three fold:
1) Nato wanted to assert its power and to establish a new role for itself, and do something spectacular for its 50th anniversary, so was willing to take on the challenge of solving the crisis in the Balkans. It was encouraged to do so by the UN's earlier approval for delegating responsibility to NATO for running the show in Bosnia.
2) the US wanted a war against the Serbs, and indeed had been trying to drag NATO into such a war for some years. It had aided the Croats in operation storm, encouraged the Bosnian Muslim leadership to tear up the agreed upon Lisbon agreement and later bombed Bosnian Serb ammunition supplies, in the hope of cowering the Serbs. However, the rest of NATO was aghast at the stupidity of US bombing Serb positions, since it imperiled NATO ground troops. Canadian peacekeepers were in revenge captured, held hostage, and chained to antenna masts, which was a frightening and humiliating demonstration of what US air power could accomplish.
At Rambouillet Madelaine Albright told reporters that the US had deliberately set the bar too high for the Serbs to accept, because the US thought the Serbs needed to be taught who was boss. Indeed the US had to beg the KLA to sign, using as the carrot that they could not begin bombing Serbia until the KLA signed on to Rambouillet. It was not that Rambouillet was itself of any relevance, but rather that the US could not morally align itself with the KLA, so it was essential for appearances that the KLA appeared to align itself with the US. It had to be the KLA who was helping the US -- not the US who were helping the KLA. At the time, with the evidence of how readily Milosevic capitulated to the US at Dayton, the US was convinced that any war would be little more than a useful demonstration of US strength, and Serb weakness and all be over within a week.
3) when Serbia predictably refused to bow to NATO ultimatums, the sense was that NATO's credibility was on the line. Indeed Canadian papers at that time reported with a straight face that NATO was faced with the same dilemma as a godfather of the mafia whose demands had been refused by some low life .. back down and loose all credibility, and face trouble from every low life on the street or use force as a warning to others that you won't tolerate defiance.
This was suddenly all forgotten within two weeks of the start of the bombing, in large part because of the Serb response to NATO initiating a war of aggression against them.
All of Canada's grounds for war were horribly flawed. NATO was a strictly defensive military organisation, and should not have been looking for a new role as the UN of Europe. NATO simply is not a credible substitute for the UN, and has always been all but incapable of acting in a coordinated fashion when on the offensive. Too many different political concerns collide. It was clear to me from day 1, that NATO's days were numbered when it departed from a 50 year legacy, in search of the strange and new role for itself. Europe can and will in future do without NATO, as now does the US in waging war in Iraq, but Canada in my opinion can not.
That the US loves wars so much that it will not tolerate any extended period when it is a peace should come as no suprise to anyone. That the US is not well equipped to take on the role of peacekeeper, or nation builder should be equally obvious. But Canada is. Canada should have pushed strongly for greater influence, through greater respect and appreciation from all. We would have made a huge step in that direction if we had taken the position as a nation of being opposed to regime change then, as we did when the US and Britain went to war against Iraq.
The final argument that war was justified because "our credibility was on the line", makes no sense to me at all. As a nation with a long track record of supporting the UN, and believing in and valuing international law, acting counter to the UN's instruction, and violating more international laws than most people can cite, made our credibility as anything other than the "me too - junior USA" just about 0.
A further obvious point [I've been a Canadian long enough to remember two Quebec referendums on separating from Canada] is that it was utter insanity for Canada to be defending the right of an ethnic group to wage armed insurrection against its lawful government, and the right of that ethnic group to unilaterally separate from the nation that they were lawfully citizens of. It leaves us saying to those who wish to do to Canada what the KLA wished to do to Serbia, that they can't because (a) they are not the KLA, (b) they live in Canada not Serbia and (c) it would be wrong of them to persuade Russia to bomb Canada, in order to achieve their goal.
Ian Davis
Waterloo
Ontario, Canada - Thursday July 17, 2003 at 4:11 am
The following story was found on :http://www.inet.co.yu/
{START QUOTE}
22:20 Glavni tuzilac Haskog tribunala Karla del Ponte ocenila je danas da ce narednih nekoliko meseci biti kljucni za dokazivanje optuzbe za genocid protiv bivseg jugoslovenskog predsednika Slobodana Milosevica.
ICTY chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte said today that the next few months will be critical for presenting evidence on genocide charges against former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic.
{END QUOTE}
Does this mean that del Ponte does not believe the "evidence" so far presented?
Michael Thomas
London
UK - Thursday July 17, 2003 at 4:20 am
Ian - just one little thing with reference to one of your sources (Omid Souresrafil, writing for Tehran Times, date?):While it is correct, that on "March 27, (1999) U.S.-NATO Commanding General Wesley Clark declared that it was "entirely predictable" that...violence would intensify after (in consequence of!) the NATO bombing (and that on the same day, (U.S.) State Department spokesman James Rubin "said that The United States is extremely alarmed by reports ofescalating...attacks on Kosovar Albanian civilians," the truth is, that the FRY Government did exactly what any responsible government would (have to) do in such a situation.
It was hardly "the bombing", but the threat of an invasion by an overwhelmingly strong enemy which forced the FRY (or Serbian) Gvt. to decisively strike at the KLA, - which obviously would otherwise present a considerable danger to the ultimate defence of the Serbian province (as a "fifth coloumn", if I may use that expression).
Do I just love these Anglosaxon observations like "enemies often react when shot at"? Indeed - but I would hold that (although Western officials continue to deny it) the threat of a NATO invasion (as heralded by the preparatory bombing campaign!) provided both the need and a legal opportunity for the FRY governments (or: Serbian) military operations against the KLA (which regrettably was causing also civilian lives and more damage than might ever have been envisioned by President Milosevic or his Government).
We all "react when shot at", - why wouldn't "the Serbs"? At least it was never "entirely predictable", that a nation, which had in times past defended itself courageously, would bow to NATO "within a week or so", - as expected maybe by Mad Halfbright (sorry, - I just got that from mr. Savage).
Inspired by Gail Sheehy's uninformed nonsense that "Hillary convinced the president to bomb (by phone on March 21!)" I seem to vaguely remember a rather earlier written appeal to "bomb the Serb positions", - directed to the U.S. Foreign Secretary et al. and signed by mr. Kelmendi in Pristina.
At that time I did relay mr. Kelmendis "message" with a comment to the US. Embassy in Copenhagen, - swiftly receiving a reply from the Ambassador (with whom I was on speaking terms then, I believe since he used to be an architect as well).
PS: With reference to your posting on "Thaqi's confession" (July 15, 2003 at 9:49 pm) I agree that this is indeed very "close to what was requested."
Close enough to satisfy the ICTY Prosecutor, too?
Godfred Louis-Jensen
Copenhagen
D E N M A R K - Thursday July 17, 2003 at 4:45 am
Michael Thomas,Who would know what she believes, other than the ICTY chief prosecutor, Carla del Ponte herself? May we hope for some carlafication on this particular point?
Now, back in late April last year, I think, when the Trial Chamber sort of grudgingly granted the Prosecution "one more year to present its case, the Prosecutions case", Judge May was sensibly suggesting, that "no case should last any longer than that" (I did not bother to check the exact wording, but I am certain of the argument: The very length of this "trial" is unfair to mr. Milosevic, as well as to the judges, who need to follow - and to the entire "international community" in fact).
Even so mr. Nice et al. recently secured another 100 ("trial") days for "their case", remember? Now "time is running out", - hence the next few months will indeed be critical. Whatever del Ponte believes, - I never met anybody having faith in the "success" of her Indictment(s).
Did you?
Godfred Louis-Jensen
Copenhagen
D E N M A R K - Thursday July 17, 2003 at 4:47 am
Sorry, moderator - copy for mrs. del Ponte?
Godfred Louis-Jensen
Copenhagen
D E N M A R K - Thursday July 17, 2003 at 11:59 am
Ian you write that “Canadian peacekeepers were in revenge captured, held hostage, and chained to antenna masts” when NATO threatened to bomb.Ian, I think we need to make it clear that Canadian personnel in Bosnia and Herzegovina consisted of ‘peacekeepers’ and others attached to NATO. These were nationals from the same country that co-operated with each other.
Bosnia is very mountainous and high altitude bombing was very difficult while low altitude planes were in range of shoulder fired missiles. Therefore, it was necessary for NATO to have spotters on the ground to guide in ordnance from planes flying at high altitudes. The military personnel who were chained to lampposts were not “peacekeepers” but targeting specialists that used laser systems to guide incoming ordnance from NATO planes.
The ‘peacekeepers’ that were, as our media reported, held hostage were not imprisoned or deprived of their communication equipment and weapon. The Canadian unit crossed into Serb held territory across a bridge which the Bosnian Muslims mined and guarded depriving the unit return access to their base. The ‘peacekeepers spend several days as GUESTS of the Serbs, fed on lamb and housed in a chalet. How do I know this? One of the Canadian officers that was with the unit told me this while a guest in my home, further stating that his unit was never in danger. He stated that their attempt to return through the Muslim blockade was dangerous and only after negotiations with the Bosnian MUSLIMS they were able to return to base. The media did not see it that way. SHOULD WE BE SURPRISED??????
Walter Trkla
Kamloops BC
Canada - Thursday July 17, 2003 at 12:44 pm
Godfred, I have always maintained that if (as claimed) Serbian forces were contemplating genocide on the scale that occurred in Ruwanda, that the most certain way of precipitating precisely such a second Ruwanda would be to start bombing Serbia in defense of a policy that both aided the KLA on the ground, and was conducted with the specific aim of separation of Kosovo from Serbia. The strongest evidence that the Serbia never had any genocidal plans, was that the most extreme provocation imaginable against the Serbian nation did not immediately result in such a genocide.I also have always believed that the Serb response to NATO aggression, despite being reviled by the West was in fact both tactically and stragegically the correct one. It maximised Serbia's war aims, which were to force the most powerful nations on earth to the negotiation table by none military means, as indeed it did, while minimising civilian deaths.
It had the further benefit of making it possible to target the KLA in areas controlled by the KLA, by eliminating neutrals from these areas. As such one can certainly claim that the intent was to minimise undesired casualties.
In war refugees become a weapon for waging war. The Germans in WWII created refugees in Europe for no better reason than to clog roads, thereby slowing the allied advance.
It is to my mind completely illogical to defend a war of aggression, on the the grounds that such a war once initiated is validated by the fact that it produces refugees, either fleeing or driven from the fighting.
All ethnic groups fled the fighting in Kosovo. I'd have fled the fighting if I had lived there. And the Albanians were not simply deported on mass from the entire province by Serb authorities. Some elected to go to Montenegro, Macedonia, Bosnia, Serbia, Albania, etc. Some were according to reports at the time encouraged to leave by the KLA. Large numbers of others in areas not affected by the fighting elected to stay in Kosovo. Pristina certainly was not devoid of Albanians ready to welcome NATO's arrival there, and ALL the reports out of Pristina during the war suggest that while things were tense, Serb forces were not behaving unreasonably given the circumstances.
Ian Davis
Waterloo
Ontario, Canada - Thursday July 17, 2003 at 1:14 pm
Is Serbia ready to prosecute a Hashim Thaqi?Serbian Justice Minister, Vladan Batic, hopes that a new war crimes prosecutor will take over some cases from the ICTY (1). Most indictees are Serbs, alledgedly reflecting the view that "they were responsible for most of the atrocities during the collapse of the former Yugoslavia."
Batic said however, that Serbian courts may try other people even in their absence, for example "a former Kosovo Albanian guerrilla leader seen as a hero by his people but as a "terrorist" in Belgrade".
That brings to mind that on March 7th, 2000, less than a year after the NATO aggression, SerbiaInfo wrote that "Voice of Russia" quoted "foreign media reports" or "foreign reporters, who were told by KLA leader Hashim Thaqi" about criminal methods employed by the socalled Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA or UCK) in order to provoke armed intervention in the F.R. of Yugoslavia (2).
Hashim Thaqi's confession may be summarized as follows (in my interpretation):
- KLA aimed at provoking the FRY Army and Serbian police forces. The KLA armed attacks on troops and police were calculated to challenge legitimate authorities, - whose response would subsequently be declared "a repressive act and a violation of human rights."
- In these attacks the KLA "used local civilians as human shields", which led to a number of civilian casualties, (incl.) on or about January 15th, 1999.
- KLA members committed the murder of four (4) Serbian policemen in (the area around) Racak in order to provoke a police action (which indeed followed on 15 January 1999 against the KLA stronghold in Racak).
- On that occasion the bodies of KLA members - killed in clashes in the area around Racak - were recovered (to be replaced in Racak).
- Thus the alleged massacre in Racak was "invented" (or: rigged) using some dozen of these bodies.
- Nevertheless NATO and "western countries" were tricked into blaming Belgrade for killing civilians or "Albanian farmers from Racak", - one in a series of false accusations aimed at deceiving the international public, preparing the field for NATO aggression on Yugoslavia.
For confirmation of the above it might be helpful to identify the sources quoted by "Voice of Russia"...
As "time is running out" for the ICTY "trial" against mr. Milosevic here is some further carlafication (3).
(1) http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L17187759.htm
(2)http://www.serbia-info.com/news/2000-03/07/17679.html
(3) http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2003/07/16/137397-ap.html
Godfred Louis-Jensen
Copenhagen
D E N M A R K - Thursday July 17, 2003 at 1:25 pm
More grist to the mill:BELGRADE, 2 April 1999 (AFP) - Some 200 refugees fleeing NATO airstrikes and the activities of the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army arrived in Belgrade early Friday, Tanjug news agency reported. The refugees, ethnic Albanians, Serbs and gypsies, came from Kosovo's main city of Pristina and two of its suburbs, Obilic and Kosovo Polje, the agency said. They would be looked after by the Belgrade city authorities, it added.
: While Nato was killing ethnic Albanians in Kosovo by dropping cluster bombs on them and the KLA murdering those who would not co-operate in their acts of terror the Serbs were looking after them! Also Rugova there pacifist leader, threatened by the KLA, was protected by the Serb police.
What a disgusting travesty of justice it is for this farcical trial to attempt to make out that the reverse is true.
AFP is an acronym for l’Agence France Presse.
Peter Taylor
Herts/UK - Thursday July 17, 2003 at 2:08 pm
Yes, Peter - "just like you have a big door revolving on a small hinge, this...shows that the whole scene has been rigged..."(Mr. Milosevic on 12 June, 2002, - during his cross-examination of "ambassador" William Walker).
Godfred Louis-Jensen
Copenhagen
D E N M A R K - Thursday July 17, 2003 at 5:49 pm
Peter, the Nazi's were somewhat less accomodating. I mention this because of the frequent occasions when Milosevic was compared to Hitler."During the day [December 1938] we had a telephone call from Berenger's of office in Paris. We were told that the matter of refugees had been raised by Bonnet in his conversation with Von Ribbentrop. The result was very bad. Ribbentrop, when pressed, had said to Bonnet that the Jews in Germany, without exception, were pickpockets, murderers, and thieves. The property they possessed had been acquired illegally. The German Government had therefore decided to assimilate them with the criminal elements of the population. The property which they had acquired illegally would be taken from them. They would be forced to live in districts frequented by the criminal classes. They would be under police observation like other criminals. They would be forced to report to the police as other criminals were obliged to do. The German Government could not help it if some of these criminals escaped to other countries which seemed so anxious to have them. It was not, however, willing for them to take the property which had resulted from illegal operations with them. There was in fact nothing that it could or would do.
Wednesday, 9 January 1946,/A>
With regard to the Todt Organization, the laborers who were employed in the West in the construction of the Atlantic Wall totalled 248,000 at the end of March 1943. In the year 1942, 3,300,000 workers from occupied countries worked for Germany in their own country; among others, 300,000 of these were in Norway, 249,000 in Holland, 650,000 in France. The number of workers deported to Germany and coming from the occupied territories in the West increased in 1942 to the figure of 131,000 Belgians, 135,000 Frenchmen, 154,000 Hollanders. On 30 April 1943, 1,293,000 workmen, of whom 269,000 were women, from the occupied territories in the West were working for the German War Economy.
On 7 July 1944, Sauckel stated that the number of workers deported to Germany during these first 6 months of 1944 reached a total of 537,000, of which 33,000 were Frenchmen. On the 1st of March 1944 he acknowledged, during a conference held by the Central Office of the Four Year Plan, that there were in Germany 5 million foreign workers, of whom 200,000 were actually volunteers.
Workers who were transported to Germany had to work under labor conditions and living conditions that were incompatible with the most rudimentary regard for human dignity. The Defendant Sauckel has himself stated that foreign workers, who could achieve substantial production, should be fed so that they could be exploited as completely as possible with the minimum of expense, adding that they should receive less food the moment their production began to decrease and that no concern should be given to the fate of those whose production capacity no longer presented any interest. Special reprisal camps were organized for those who sought to avoid the compulsion imposed on them. An order of 21 December 1942 stipulated that unwilling workers should be sent, without trial, to such camps.
Such refugees could would have considered it their salvation to be shipped of to England, housed in tents, and have to endure English rain for 4 years.
Ian Davis
Waterloo
Ontario, Canada- Thursday July 17, 2003 at 5:50 pm
This an excerpt from the Associated Press article. It seems that Del Ponte woman justifys this trial extension by trying to prove “genocide charges” against Milosevic. These would be Milosevic and Sreberenica and artillery attacks on Sarajevo.
Now I thought that Srebrenica case is over with no material proof and how can the artillery bombardment be called genocide?
UN Prosecutor to Show Milosevic Evidence
By ARTHUR MAX .
The Associated Press
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) -
With time running out to conclude her case, the chief U.N. war crimes prosecutor said Wednesday she will begin focusing on the genocide charges against Slobodan Milosevic, and the next few months will be critical.
The prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, said crucial evidence will soon be presented to the tribunal regarding the former Yugoslav president's involvement with the massacre in Srebrenica and the months-long bombardment of Sarajevo. She said she was confident it would lead to convictions for genocide - the most serious of the 66 charges Milosevic faces.
The prosecution has until the end of the year to complete its case in the trial. Milosevic, 61, who is representing himself, will then have equal time - nearly two years - to present his defense.
Milosevic, who has been on trial since February 2002, has serious heart trouble and illness that has repeatedly delayed hearings.
http://www.serbianna.com/news/story/013.html
D. Jovanovic
USA- Thursday July 17, 2003 at 6:49 pm
Mr. DS of USA,as NATO unleashed its savage air attack on the night of 24-25th March, 1999, Hillary Clinton wasn't leaving the President much of a choice:
HE DID NOT HAVE A BREAK WITH THAT WOMAN!
On March 21st, Hillary Clinton phoned her views to the President:
“I urged him to bomb,” - as comedienne Gail Sheehy were later to write on Hillary’s behalf (1).
Did the Clintons argue the issue - war on Serbia - over the next few days? By phone maybe? Well, - the President may have expressed some 'what-ifs' like: “What if it took apart the NATO Alliance? What if bombing promoted more executions? What if...” - well, we may have to rely on this comedienne for the number of 'executions' taking place before the bombings - even though Gail Sheehy openly admits not to 'know anything about Kosovo' (2).
Anyway, - Hillary Clinton may have been asking: “What do we have NATO for if not to defend our way of life?”
And eventually she may have told her husband, that: “You cannot let this go on at the end of a century that has seen the major holocaust of our time...”
I any case: The next day - Monday, March 22nd - the President declared that the use of armed force was 'necessary', - it wasn't really worth taking arguments further with Hillary, I suppose?
(1) Hillary’s Choice by Gail Sheehy, December 9, 1999. Page 345.
http://www.issues2000.org/Celeb/Hillary_Clinton_War_+_Peace.htm
(2) Said 'Hillary’s Pet Author' on the Michael Savage Show, December 18, 1999: “I don’t know anything about Kosovo. Let me just put that right out there...”
http://www.newsmax.com/articles/print.shtml?a=1999/12/18/63801
Godfred Louis-Jensen
Copenhagen
D E N M A R K- Thursday July 17, 2003 at 6:58 pm
Sorry for this duplication, moderator! Well, - a copy for each of the Clintons...
Godfred Louis-Jensen
Copenhagen
D E N M A R K- Thursday July 17, 2003 at 7:27 pm
Julia Pascal@Sibenik Monday July 14, 2003 The GuardianI take my actors to the Sibenik International Children's Theatre Festival. 0n the idyllic Croatian coast, we pass burned-out Serbian villages. This is a clear message to any Serbs planning return. We are to perform The Golem. This Yiddish Frankenstein story comes from medieval Prague and, in my version, the monster created to defend ghettoised Jews from Catholics, is a metaphor for the conflict between self-defence and violence. Most importantly, it is about minority culture. The contradiction between what we are presenting and what we are seeing soon becomes apparent. U signs are common graffiti. This is the U of the fascist Ustashe, the puppet Nazi state of the second world war which still has underground support.
We give theatre workshops to teenagers. War talk is taboo at home but with us, they feel safe enough to reveal childhood memories of bombings and tanks. Our workshop leader asks, "What is the U painted on the walls here?" The next day I am hauled into the theatre programmer's office and ordered to keep politics out of the festival. "Parents have been complaining," she says. "You mustn't talk about war and certainly never mention Ustashe in the theatre." Another theatre board member proclaims that my troupe are "not English, they're Jews". Before our performance, we give a synopsis of The Golem in Croatian for non-English speakers. The translation is scrupulously checked to ensure it contains no Serbian or international vocabulary. Language, as well as people, must be ethnically cleansed. Minorities have got the message. The few remaining Serbs and Bosnians here are fast changing their names and converting to Catholicism .
I meet a 40-year-old Serb married to a Croatian. He was drafted by the Croatian army to fight Serbs in l99l. His reward was being thrown out of his flat for being a Serb. I meet J, a 76-year-old Croatian who, at 15, ran to the partisans. This war heroine fought Ustashe, Italians and Germans and still has a body full of shrapnel fragments. President Franjo Tudjman withdrew the partisans' pensions for six months during the 199l war and her husband, once Tito's bodyguard, starved to death. 0thers committed suicide at the humiliation of being transformed from heroes to pariahs.
Today, J's pension has been cut in half, the stolen 50% going to the Ustashe fascists who attacked her in the 40s. I tell her joining the EU will rebalance this injustice, but I might as well be talking about flying saucers. All around I find suspicion of European solutions. Croatia is isolated and traumatised. J cries at the death of Tito's dream of a multi-ethnic Yugoslavia. "I am a Yugoslav," she insists. "I spent my whole life fighting nationalism. And it was all for nothing."
Back in the Solaris Hotel I talk to a Croatian waiter, a former gastarbeiter in Germany. We discuss Berlin. "Sheisse," he spits. "Berlin is sheisse. Too many Turks. Just like the Bosnians. I hate Muslims, I want to go to Iraq and fight Muslims." On the last night of the festival, our driver, who is the son of a theatre secretary, is to return us to Solaris. His drinking mate, a six-foot giant, sandwiches me in. I am crushed between the two drunks who scream with laughter and hardly look at the road. "Calm down," I tell the driver who ignores me. When our Croatian actor/translator intervenes, he yells at her, "Fuck off, you. And your Jews."
It is our last day and we chill out. One of the actors starts a jamming session on the beach. The Hotel Solaris Animation Team join us. These local musicians are paid to entertain the mainly German guests. Tonight is a Caribbean evening. The singers are wearing rasta wigs and have blacked up. I tell them, "You know this would be seen as offensive in Britain." "Look," they say in surprise, "we are not racist. We don't even dislike black people. We just hate Serbs."
Julia Pascal's last play Crossing Jerusalem is published by Oberon Books
Dakic Ana
Serbia- Thursday July 17, 2003 at 7:31 pm
I urge you all to read these transcripts. If this is not a clear reason why Tudjman should have been indicted!TRANSCRIPT OF FRANJO TUDJMAN'S MILITARY STAFF MEETING SHORTLY AFTER OPERATION STORM
Dan B
Canada- Thursday July 17, 2003 at 7:49 pm
What's the point?At the beginning of the Clinton presidency, Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, argued against U.S. military involvement in the ethnic conflict in Bosnia.
Albright, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and a strong advocate of using force to end ethnic slaughter, is said to have stared at Powell and asked: "What's the point in having this superb military you are always talking about if we can't use it?"
In his book, Powell said of the incident: "I thought I would have an aneurysm. American GIs were not toy soldiers to be moved around on some sort of global game board."
On a book tour in 1995, Powell said he supported the deployment of 20,000 U.S. troops to Bosnia as part of a NATO peacekeeping force but doubted the long-term prospects for peace there.
Ian Davis
Waterloo
Ontario, Canada- Friday July 18, 2003 at 5:13 am
What's the point?Exactly: Let's have a closer look at the crookery, - and for once beginning anywhere but in Serbia:
Now: Could it really be, that Hillary Clinton (1) "convinced" her husband - who was U.S. President at the time - to "bomb the Serbs" by calling him on the phone suggesting that:
“You cannot let this go on at the end of a century that has seen the major holocaust of our time...”
Did Hillary have any idea of "this"? Any idea at all?
Ref. my last posting (Thursday July 17, 2003 at 6:49 pm)
(1)..."a woman whose ambition is to become a president of United States." (ref. posting on Wednesday July 16, 2003 at 11:26 am).
Godfred Louis-Jensen
Copenhagen
D É N M A R K- Friday July 18, 2003 at 5:16 am
Moderator, - I honestly do not see, why (my) postings are regularly being "dublicated"?
Godfred Louis-Jensen
Copenhagen
D E N M A R K- Friday July 18, 2003 at 6:58 am
Just a little background information about the Zemun gang.These people were around at least in the early 1980s (ie before Milosevic came to power) and were led by someone called Ljuba Zemunac (Ljuba from Zemum).
Everyone in Belgrade knew of them. They were reported to be linked to bank robberies and other major crimes across Europe.
I personally saw a leading member of the gang being arrested in Belgrade. This man put his pistol into the arresting officer’s belly and pulled the trigger. Fortunately the gun jammed. Those officers, and a dozen of his colleagues, then proceed to beat this criminal senseless.
3 days later that criminal was back on the streets; I saw him.
I suspect that the so-called “Zemun gang” was always much more than a simple criminal group.
They remind me of the 16th Century English Privateers who stole from the Spanish and French and shared their booty with Queen Elizabeth I.
Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh were the most famous of these Privateers (State-sponsored Pirates).
Following the death of his patron, Elizabeth I, Raleigh fell out of favour with King James I, and was later beheaded.
Is Legija a modern day Raleigh?
Michael Thomas
London
UK- Friday July 18, 2003 at 8:56 am
Michael Thomas,Well, - what's the point (in your info about "the Zemun gang")?
Sure! Let's have a closer look at real crookery (in investigating the "fairness of the Milosevic "trial"). But are we maybe not close to having carlafied the "Serbian Connection"?
A lot of people suspect that the so-called “Zemun gang” was "more than a simple criminal group", - and that there were (and still are) a lot of these (gangs) around.
Should we not rather ask for some carlafication on, say, the 21st Century English Privateers who steel from the Serbs, Afghanis, Iraqis etc. and maybe do not even "share their booty" with Queen Elizabeth II?
Sir Tony Bliar and...
...and, say, Hillary Clinton as suggested (July 18, 2003 at 5:13 am).
Anyway, - the "Zemun gang". What about them?
Godfred Louis-Jensen
Copenhagen
D E N M A R K- Friday July 18, 2003 at 11:29 am
This just in:LONDON - A body found Friday in central England has been tentatively identified as a missing Ministry of Defense adviser suspected as the source of allegations that the government doctored a report about Iraq (news - web sites)'s nuclear program.
Dan B
Canada- Friday July 18, 2003 at 12:45 pm
This just in what?The body found in a forest near the home of mr. David Kelly, who disappeared yesterday, has not yet been identified (1).
The description reportedly does match that of mr. Kelly. However this may not have anything to do with this ICTY "trial" of course, - except that mr. Blair might contemplate involving the Finnish pathologist, mrs. Helen Ranta to carry out a reliable autopsy? (1)http://politiken.dk/VisArtikel.iasp?PageID=278063
Godfred Louis-Jensen
Copenhagen
D E N M A R K- Friday July 18, 2003 at 7:50 pm
Is Tony Blair A Psychopath?The Scotsman newspaper reports on a question raised by The New Statesman:
The New Statesman article invited psychologists and psychiatrists to give their opinions on Mr Blair’s mental health in the wake of his alleged difficulties of telling the truth about the intelligence dossiers on Iraq.
"One view emerged strongly: there appears to be something worryingly adrift in the mind of Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, a man who doesn’t really know who or what he is," it said.
"More technically, he is diagnosed as a psychopath capable of reinventing himself with remarkable dexterity, like an actor.
"What most people call ‘spin’, the routine lubricant of all political gearboxes, is, in Blair’s case, eloquent self-delusion on a heroic scale.
"He is one of the few politicians who has never told a lie because his belief in whatever he says - about public transport, hospitals, schools, weapons of mass destruction - is total."
If this is not the explanation for - as his former minister Clare Short put it - his “honourable deceptions” - what is? How does one explain the messianic zeal with which Blair believes to be true matters which are evidently not? Perhaps, alternatively, he is the greatest international confidence trickster ever to perform on the world stage?
Like the child in the story of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ may I point out that his behaviour is definitely not normal!
All this reminds me of the story of the pompous politician visiting a nursing home for the elderly. Irritated by the fact that no-one recognised him he collared an elderly lady resident and demanded loudly “Do you know who I am?”. Resting her hand gently on his arm the resident replied “Don’t worry dear, there’s a lot in here like you.”.
Either way now that the question of Blair’s integrity has been raised in the ‘media’ is it too much to hope that saner counsels - such as a reformed BBC - will review Blair’s “honourable deceptions” over Kosovo: His covert support of Islamic terror: His massive lies of Serbian atrocities: His false justification for flying bombs into public buildings: His massacre of innocent civilians with cluster bombs?
The blood still flows on Iraqi sand mixed with sewage from its broken drains. Water and electricity supplies have not been restored but guess what?
Today, a BP tanker is scheduled to load 2 million barrels of Basra Light crude oil at the Gulf port of Mina Bakr. US oil giant ChevronTexaco will lift a further 2m barrels next Sunday, and Shell will take its own tranche the following week. These are the first direct purchases of freshly pumped Iraqi crude since the fall of Saddam. Other exports have been taken from stocks, or last week's cargo to a Swiss-based trading house. At least three-quarters of the new oil will be heading for the US.
The cynic in me observes that at “more than $5 per barrel below standard US crude prices” this represents a handsome ‘steal’ for the Anglo/US alliance’s oil barons: Grand Larceny or the spoils of war. Is this a clue to the source of Blair’s messianic zeal and flashing eyes: His wife’s $10,000 ‘Congressional Medal’ pure silk outfit representing a pensioner couples’ annual income provided by Blair’s ‘socialist’ government?
’Twas ever thus.
PS: The parents of a British journalist shot and killed by Israeli forces were denied a warrant to arrest Sharon, on a recent visit to London, for their son’s murder: A warrant demanded on the basis that Israeli forces clearly had licence to indulge in indiscriminate killings.
The magistrate ruled that he could see no connection between Sharon and the murder and that Heads of state have immunity.
So what is the difference in the case of Milosevic?
Peter Taylor
Herts/UK- Friday July 18, 2003 at 9:04 pm
You think things are bad in England? The burning od the Congresstag next
Gogol Charlemagne
Shangri-La- Friday July 18, 2003 at 9:34 pm
Never to forgetFollowing are some examples of this practice of killing Serbs by decapitation:
1. On May 26, 1992 Zvonko Zovko, from Podorasac near Konjic, a member of Croat-Moslem armed formations, chopped off the head of the Serb Sretko Kuljanin from Bradina near Konjic, who was captured in Bradina, took it to Konjic as a trophy, kicked it around the streets and in the end impaled it on a stake.
When Sretko's wife Branka, seven months pregnant, heard of this on May 28, she went into labour. However, the Moslem gynecologist in Konjic, Dr. Jusufbegovic, refused to attend to her although her waters had broken and he returned her to the Musala camp in Konjic where on June 14 1992 she gave birth to a child which, according to the findings of the Mother and Child Care Institute in Belgrade, was born with brain and optical nerve atrophy (in his second year a pronounced retardation in the development of the motor functions was established manifested as incomplete control of the head, inability to sit, stand on his legs and impaired vision with oculogyration and the inability to fixate the source of light). In the view of the physicians of this renowned child care establishment this is the consequence of premature birth and of adverse influences before birth and the prognosis is that the child will remain severely handicapped for life.
Dakic Ana
Serbia- Friday July 18, 2003 at 9:36 pm
After June 8, 1992, there remained only 13 Serbs, elderly men and women in the village of Ledici, the commune of Trnovo, most of whom met their death at the hands of Moslem-Croat military formations commanded by Ethem Godinjak, Head of the Secretariat of Internal Affairs in Trnovo before the war. In this way was killed Rade Mijovcic (f. Aleksa), 70 years old. His body was found on August 7 with the head severed from the rest of the body.The body of Savka Vasic (f. Nikola), a woman 78 years old, who was butchered on her doorstep, was also found without the head. Members of Godinjak's unit found and arrested the last five remaining Serbs from the village of Ledici on June 18 and 19. They drove them in the direction of Treskavica and killed them on a spot called "Ledicka krivina".
During the in situ inspection carried out after the Serbs liberated this territory the beheaded bodies of all these five Serbs were found: Tankosava Mijovcic (f. Jovica), a woman 70 years old; Ljubica Vasic (f. Djura), a woman 84 years old; Ikonija Vasic (f. Lazar) a 92-year old woman; Zoran Vasic (f. Jovan), 71 years old and Milka Vasic (f. Danilo) a 56-year old woman.
Three of the heads were not found and two heads were found away from the bodies.
Dakic Ana
Serbia- Saturday July 19, 2003 at 1:32 am
Dakic, if you make historical claims you should provide your sources. Otherwise, it is impossible to substantiate your claims.
Ian Davis
Waterloo
Ontario- Saturday July 19, 2003 at 5:09 am
Here are some sources to a historical claim
When The Fish Rots It Smell First From The Head
Gogol Charlemagne
Shangri-La- Saturday July 19, 2003 at 5:53 am
Here you go Ian. Committee for the Collection of Data on Crimes Committed against Humanity and International LawDate: August 23,1995
Belgrade, 10, Vlajkoviceva st.
Telephones: 330-369, 341-107 Fax: 334-133
DECAPITATION AS A MEANS OF GENOCIDE OVER THE SERBS IN THE FORMER BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
http://serbianlinks.freehosting.net/behead.htm
Dakic Ana
Serbia- Saturday July 19, 2003 at 6:31 am
"So what is the difference in the case of Milosevic?"......Peter Taylor says, drawing some kind of parallel (?) to that notorious criminal, the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon (July 18, 2003 at 7:50 pm). Honestly, Peter? Kindly carlafy your point...
Godfred Louis-Jensen
Copenhagen
D E N M A R K- Saturday July 19, 2003 at 7:47 am
Ianmore reports are here
http://www.4cbiz.net/kosta/tar/izvestaji/ I guess if Hague Tribunal ever mandate anybody to research, they would find the same. It is not in their mandate to investigate crimes against Serbs (it is not their mandate to investigate how many Orthodox churches were destroyed in Bosnia by Muslim and Croat Forces). They do investigate if victim is Muslim. Did you know BTW that all mass graves and dead people found in Bosnia are by default Muslims? Because Serbs do not die, they live forever - at least that what Hague claims. Decapitation - its just a flesh wound … walk it of!
Dakic Ana
Serbia- Saturday July 19, 2003 at 7:50 am
DESIGNATION OF CRIME: Wilful killing of civilians.TIME AND PLACE: 7 December 1991; Tresnjevka suburb, Zagreb. BRIEF DESCRIPTION: Mihajlo Zec (38) was murdered outside his home, Paljacka ulica 24, while his wife Marija (36) and daughter Aleksandra (13) were taken out of town and killed there.
INDICATION CONCERNING PERPETRATOR(S): ZNG members of the Republic of Croatia.
EVIDENCE/SOURCES: Records of the District Court in Zagreb; report of the Orthodox Metropolitan of the Zagreb-Ljubljana Eparchy M. No. 324/92 of 2 December 1992.
NOTE: The murderers were acquitted, the Zec family murder and an inefficient investigation and benignant attitude of the judges towards the perpetrators have resulted in mass exodus of Serbs from Zagreb.
Dakic Ana
Serbia- Saturday July 19, 2003 at 7:55 am
I-053 DESIGNATION OF CRIME: Wilful killing of civilians.TIME AND PLACE: 15 or 16 November 1991; Ul. Nikole Demonje 72, Borovo Naselje (UNPA).
BRIEF DESCRIPTION: Those killed included Miroslav Cecavac, his wife Sladjana Cecavac and their three-year old son, Ilinka Milosevic and her son Branimir (11) and Ana Novakovic.
INDICATION CONCERNING PERPETRATOR(S): ZNG members from Vukovar.
EVIDENCE/SOURCES: Documents published "Genocide Agains the Serbs 1941- 1945 and 1991-1992", Museum of Fine Arts edition, Belgrade, editor Bojana Isakovic.
I-054 DESIGNATION OF CRIME: Wilful killing of civilians.
TIME AND PLACE: 15 or 16 November 1991; Ul. Nikole Demonje 74, Borovo Naselje (UNPA).
BRIEF DESCRIPTION: The following persons were must brutally killed: Nada Pavlovic, her son Zoran and daughter Zorica, Milojka Pavlovic (Nada's mother), Teodor Toskovic (Nada's common-law husband), Radoslav Pavic (Zorica Pavlovic's husband), Sava Pavic (Radoslav Pavic's stepmother), Velimir Trajkovic and Milan Travas.
Brother and sister Zoran and Zorica Pavlovic were murdered by hand axe on the head and Zorica's throat was previously cut by glass and her mouth was full of squashed glass. Milojka and Nada Pavlovic were hit by a blunt instrument on the head.
INDICATION CONCERNING PERPETRATOR(S): ZNG members of the Republic of Croatia from Vukovar.
EVIDENCE/SOURCES: Documents published "Genocide Again: Genocid Against the Serbs 1991-1992", Ed. Ministry of Information of the Republic of Serbia.
I-055
Dakic Ana
Serbia- Saturday July 19, 2003 at 8:00 am
The UN Human Rights team found 4 bodies in the village of @agrovic near Knin. Three of the bodies had bullet holes in the head. The right hand fingers of one of the victims had been cut off. The body of the fourth person was mutilated to such and extent that its sex and cause of death could not be established. The bodies of another three civilians were found in the near-by village of Zvjerinac.- The Canadian Brigadier General A. Forrand confirmed to the representatives of the Helsinki International Federation that on the main road leading to the hospital in Knin he had registered 22 bodies of killed people, mostly women and children, with only two bodies being in RSK Army uniforms.
- The bodies of killed and half burnt Desanka and Cvija Matijevic (both about 65 years of age) were identified in the village of Bijeli Klanac. Two more unidentified bodies were found in the same condition, as well as the body of a ten-year old child.
- In a report from September this year, "Amnesty International" state that it has been established that Croatian armed forces were executing Serbs from Krajina without a trial, as well as that Serbs were being maltreated and their houses systematically destroyed, which all amounted to "a form of collective punishment of the Serbs in that area with a view to deterring them from returning". This organization, which has knowledge of the executions of scores of civilians, sent a letter of protest to the Croatian government, adducing, inter alia, the example of the village of Grubori where the bodies of 5 persons had been found, including of an 80-year old man and a 90- year old woman. The report stresses that of the 200 graves recently dug at the Knin cemetery, l20 had no markings at all.
- The Croatian forces deliberately killed 3 and wounded 20 members of the UN peace forces. Major R. Lepage, UN spokesman in Zagreb, stated on August 5, l995, that "their death is the result of a direct artillery attack by the Croatian army on their observer post".
- The British journalist John Scoffield (29 years old) was killed deliberately by Croatian soldiers at close range on August 9, 1995 near Vrginmost, while a BBC crew was filming Serb houses being torched. Two of his colleagues were wounded on that occasion.[7]
Dakic Ana
Serbia- Saturday July 19, 2003 at 9:38 am
Godfred: I presume you are joking but I'll spell it out anyway.When she issued her indictment what more evidence did Louise Arbour, the ICTY prosecutor, have that Milosevic was connected to the hundreds of deaths allegedley caused by Serbian security forces in combating an Islamic insurgency in its sovereign province of Kosovo than that needed for the indictment of Sharon for the hundreds of deaths caused by Israeli forces in the occupied Palestinian territories?
At the time of his indictment Milosevic was head of state of Serbia.
In summary: Both men were heads of state at the time of their being considered for indictment. Both men were responsible for forces combating Islamic insurgencies. Milosevic was indicted and Sharon was not.
According to law one of these decisions must be wrong: I trust my point is now crystal clear.
Peter Taylor
Herts/UK- Saturday July 19, 2003 at 10:49 am
Peter your comments are very logical as usual, however I miss the poetry. What can you tell us about Dr Kelly, a Ministry of Defense consultant on biological weapons and former UN arms inspector in Iraq whose body was found with slit wrists outside of London? The government named him as a possible "mole" and the source for a BBC news report which accused Blair’s government of hyping intelligence about Iraqi weapons to justify war in Iraq. What is your take on this? Suicide or was he silenced?
Walter Trkla
Kamloops BC
Canada- Saturday July 19, 2003 at 11:16 am
MEXICO: DEATH AGAIN RULED A SUICIDE A special prosecutor has determined that the human rights lawyer Digna Ochoa, left, probably took her own life, the second time an official investigation has concluded her death was probably a suicide. Ms. Ochoa, 38, was found dead on Oct. 19, 2001, shot once in the left leg and again in the head. A note threatening other human rights workers was left near her body, and her friends and family have maintained that she was murdered. A former federal judge, Margarita Guerra, led the second investigation and determined that Ms. Ochoa probably shot herself and made it look like a murder, a spokesman said. (AP)
Dr. Kelly was trying new razors. . . .
Gogol Charlemagne
Shangri-La- Saturday July 19, 2003 at 11:49 am
The government will apoint Mr. bean to conduct the investigation and the veredict will be suicide (cut both wrists with an electric shaving machine).
Milan Prika
Panama
Rep. of Panama- Saturday July 19, 2003 at 1:21 pm
A lie too far?It has just been reported that Dr Kelly, the WMD expert hounded to his death in a government attempt to cover Blair’s duplicitous conduct prior to the war with Iraq, bled to death after his wrist was cut.
The trail of blood from Serbia to Iraq now comes home to Briton. In this trail the lives of hundreds of thousands have been destroyed by the unprincipled policies of Blair.
Now at last will the British people see how they were duped over the attack on Serbia: Now will they see that supporting Islamic terror, as Blair did in Kosovo, is not only unprincipled but pure madness: Now will they see that the flying of bombs - cruise missiles - into public buildings in Belgrade was not only a heinous war crime but an example of conduct which al-Qaeda readily copied in New York: Now at last will they recognise that a man who, in an unprovoked attack, launched cluster bombs from three miles high over civilian populations in Serbia - causing deaths and horrific injuries to innocent victims - is not a fit man to govern a civilised country?
Being a man of sliding principles Blair will rationalise his position: we cannot expect him to do the decent thing and resign. But I hope the flood of crocodile tears about to be released in an orgy of self-pity will not dupe yet again the British people. Wake up England.
Peter Taylor
Herts/UK- Saturday July 19, 2003 at 1:53 pm
The unlike scenario:
Tony will be forced to resign and new elections called. The conservatives are no cure to so much illness, so the left wing of the Labour party will be popularly elected.
Gogol Charlemagne
Shangri-La- Saturday July 19, 2003 at 4:42 pm
Sounds good to me. One positive thing about Blairs evangelistic belief in himself as said above is that he really believes it. He just might resign to show how much he believes in his own bulls..tBring back Tony Benn thats what I say
Benny Jones
Wales- Saturday July 19, 2003 at 7:25 pm
On the subject of votes for principled politicians my vote would go (based purely on what I have read) to Adem Demaci.
Ian Davis
Waterloo
Ontario, Canada- Saturday July 19, 2003 at 8:25 pm
Walter: Given Agent Shayler's revelation that MI6 had plans to murder Milosevic one could be forgiven for believing that Dr Kelly was murdered. However if he was this was surely not on Blair’s command for the trouble he is now in is terminal.One of Dr Kelly’s last written comments was: “There are many dark actors playing games”. Having personal experience of dark actors playing games in bureaucratic systems I would guess that he was threatened with imprisonment and the sequestration of his pension.
And Blair’s government claims the moral high ground!
While cheap oil begins to flow steadily westward at a gathering pace I was appalled today at scenes of brutality by the occupying forces in Iraq: Men with bloodied heads trussed up like suckling pigs bundled upside down into military vehicles: Elderly men being manhandled and threatened at gunpoint: Threats of destruction of property if answers weren’t forthcoming.
Remind me: Why is Milosevic on trial?
A few selected verses from Gray’s Elegy …
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings dull the distant folds.Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree’s shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire’s return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Await alike the inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
Peter Taylor
Herts/UK- Saturday July 19, 2003 at 8:40 pm
These words were spoken by US Army men on ABC TV:
"We will come back to this village with tanks, burn your fields, crush your houses . . ." and " . . . we will keep punishing this village you until the shooting stops" meanwhile hands and feet were tied together and men carried like animals.
I did not see the men wearing any swastikas, but it is already in their heart and in the silent journalist not denouncing these crimes. Reports of summary executions are appearing in the Arab press, Arab press not in the Western press.
Gogol Charlemagne
Shangri-La- Saturday July 19, 2003 at 10:35 pm
Peter the poetry touches the heart; Grey’s Elegy is one of my favorites, particularly the last stanza. Thank you for the Web address. Peter, two of my favorite teams are playing in Seattle Washington on July 22nd , Celtic vs Manchester. I am driving eight hours to see them. Hope they don’t disappoint.Gogol I used your last post in a letter to the Vancouver Province and the Vancouver Sun. Hope you don’t mind? I am not holding my breath that they will publish it. They never publish anything of significance or anything that calls their credibility into disrepute
Walter Trkla
Kammloops
Canada - Thursday July 17, 2003 at 5:50 pm