Posted : Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:21:05 GMT
Sarajevo - The War Crimes Chamber of Bosnia-Herzegovina's state Court in Sarajevo on Wednesday sentenced Bosnian Muslim Zijad Kurtovic to 11 years jail for war crimes against Bosnian Croats during the 1992-1995 war. Kurtovic, 41, was found guilty of having acted against Croat civilians and prisoners of war as a member of Bosnia's Muslim- dominated army. The court found his crimes in the vicinity of the southern city of Mostar in 1993 to have directly violated the provisions of the Geneva Conventions.
As commander of military police of the 4th Corps of the army in October 1993, during the 1992-1994 Muslim - Croat conflict within the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kurtovic tortured a number of Bosnian Croat civilians and war prisoners in the village of Donja Dreznica near Mostar, according to the indictment.
The indictment also said he detained them in a local Roman Catholic Church, where he beat the detainees with bats, crosses and statues of saints. He had also forced detainees, according to the indictment, to eat pages from the Bible and other religious books.
Kurtovic also used Croats as human shields on the frontlines in fighting between the Bosnian Army and the Bosnian Croat Militia (HVO). The indictment also listed sexual abuse and various forms of torture among his crimes.
30 April 2008
Irish party says U.S. 'opposed to EU integration'
April 30, 2008
By Simon Roughneen - DUBLIN — The party once led by the current European Union ambassador to Washington is claiming that the U.S. is actively opposing European integration, posing a potential embarrassment as Prime Minister Bertie Ahern prepares to address a joint session of Congress today.
Lucinda Creighton, a spokeswoman for Ireland's largest opposition party, Fine Gael, says in a Web posting that "U.S. foreign policy has traditionally been opposed to EU integration."
"The U.S. supports the EU as an economic bloc but nothing more. The idea of a politically strong EU, acting as a check or counterbalance on the U.S. does not sit well with our trans-Atlantic friends," says the spokeswoman, a member of Ireland's Parliament.
She also claims in the posting that the U.S. consistently opposes NATO expansion.
Fine Gael last held power from 1994 to 1997, under the current EU ambassador to Washington, John Bruton. Contacted yesterday by The Washington Times, Mr. Bruton declined to comment on Irish political affairs.
A State Department official noted yesterday that President Bush has strongly supported EU and NATO expansion into Eastern Europe in recent years, and has pushed strongly for a NATO invitation for former Soviet states Georgia and Ukraine at the alliance's Bucharest summit earlier this month.
"I will encourage our European partners to increase their defense investments to support both NATO and EU operations," Mr. Bush said prior to the summit.
U.S. Ambassador to NATO Victoria Nuland, in a widely discussed February speech in Paris, said:
"Europe needs a place where it can act independently, and we need a Europe that is able and willing to do so in defense of our common interests," she said.
A spokesman for Mr. Ahern's government would not comment on Ms. Creighton's remarks.
"We will not be drawn into comments on what other parties are saying," the spokesman said, requesting anonymity because he is not authorized to speak for attribution.
Released Friday, the statement comes as Ireland faces a popular vote on the EU's proposed Lisbon treaty, which would increase political integration of the 27-nation bloc and create the post of EU president.
Ireland is the sole EU member state holding a referendum on the treaty, with other nations planning to hold ratification votes in their parliaments.
Mr. Ahern said that a "no" vote by Ireland would be "a disaster for the country," after an opinion survey published Sunday showed pro-treaty sentiment with a narrowing three-point lead. Thirty-four percent of those polled were undecided on how they will vote in the June 12 plebiscite.
The Fine Gael statement targets two prominent Irish businessmen, who are funding a nationwide campaign for a "no" vote, claiming they represent "U.S. strategic interests."
"The businesses of both Ulick McEvaddy and Declan Ganley are heavily dependent on contracts from the State Department, the Pentagon and U.S. government agencies.
"I believe that these men are a lot less concerned about Irish sovereignty and the wording of the Lisbon treaty than they are about the potential hit to their own personal business interests," Ms. Creighton writes in the Web posting.
The businessmen lead a campaign group called Libertas, which is campaigning against the treaty's ratification.
"The contents of that statement are utterly without any foundation in fact, and represent a naked attempt to win a ... vote by stirring a nasty anti-American sentiment," a Libertas spokesperson told The Washington Times.
Fine Gael is the main opposition party in Ireland's legislature, and has been the traditional rival to the incumbent Mr. Ahern's Fianna Fail, with both parties conventionally depicted as "center-right."
In the 2007 parliamentary election, Fine Gael won 51 seats against Fianna Fail's 77, out of a total of 166, and narrowly failed in forming a coalition government with other parties.
Fine Gael's anti-American statement might come as a surprise to some observers, but it could also be an attempt to test the water on any growth of disaffection with the U.S. in Ireland.
However, the depth of anti-Americanism in Ireland — a country with close historical and cultural ties to the U.S., where between 40 million and 70 million people claim Irish ancestry — is difficult to assess.
A British Council poll on trans-Atlantic relations was conducted in seven European countries, Canada and the United States from Jan. 8 to 25, 2008.
Its findings showed that 48 percent of Irish polled had a positive view of the U.S. in world affairs, with 46 percent seeing the U.S. as a malign influence. The European average was 44 percent and 46 percent, respectively.
• David R. Sands in Washington contributed to this report.
By Simon Roughneen - DUBLIN — The party once led by the current European Union ambassador to Washington is claiming that the U.S. is actively opposing European integration, posing a potential embarrassment as Prime Minister Bertie Ahern prepares to address a joint session of Congress today.
Lucinda Creighton, a spokeswoman for Ireland's largest opposition party, Fine Gael, says in a Web posting that "U.S. foreign policy has traditionally been opposed to EU integration."
"The U.S. supports the EU as an economic bloc but nothing more. The idea of a politically strong EU, acting as a check or counterbalance on the U.S. does not sit well with our trans-Atlantic friends," says the spokeswoman, a member of Ireland's Parliament.
She also claims in the posting that the U.S. consistently opposes NATO expansion.
Fine Gael last held power from 1994 to 1997, under the current EU ambassador to Washington, John Bruton. Contacted yesterday by The Washington Times, Mr. Bruton declined to comment on Irish political affairs.
A State Department official noted yesterday that President Bush has strongly supported EU and NATO expansion into Eastern Europe in recent years, and has pushed strongly for a NATO invitation for former Soviet states Georgia and Ukraine at the alliance's Bucharest summit earlier this month.
"I will encourage our European partners to increase their defense investments to support both NATO and EU operations," Mr. Bush said prior to the summit.
U.S. Ambassador to NATO Victoria Nuland, in a widely discussed February speech in Paris, said:
"Europe needs a place where it can act independently, and we need a Europe that is able and willing to do so in defense of our common interests," she said.
A spokesman for Mr. Ahern's government would not comment on Ms. Creighton's remarks.
"We will not be drawn into comments on what other parties are saying," the spokesman said, requesting anonymity because he is not authorized to speak for attribution.
Released Friday, the statement comes as Ireland faces a popular vote on the EU's proposed Lisbon treaty, which would increase political integration of the 27-nation bloc and create the post of EU president.
Ireland is the sole EU member state holding a referendum on the treaty, with other nations planning to hold ratification votes in their parliaments.
Mr. Ahern said that a "no" vote by Ireland would be "a disaster for the country," after an opinion survey published Sunday showed pro-treaty sentiment with a narrowing three-point lead. Thirty-four percent of those polled were undecided on how they will vote in the June 12 plebiscite.
The Fine Gael statement targets two prominent Irish businessmen, who are funding a nationwide campaign for a "no" vote, claiming they represent "U.S. strategic interests."
"The businesses of both Ulick McEvaddy and Declan Ganley are heavily dependent on contracts from the State Department, the Pentagon and U.S. government agencies.
"I believe that these men are a lot less concerned about Irish sovereignty and the wording of the Lisbon treaty than they are about the potential hit to their own personal business interests," Ms. Creighton writes in the Web posting.
The businessmen lead a campaign group called Libertas, which is campaigning against the treaty's ratification.
"The contents of that statement are utterly without any foundation in fact, and represent a naked attempt to win a ... vote by stirring a nasty anti-American sentiment," a Libertas spokesperson told The Washington Times.
Fine Gael is the main opposition party in Ireland's legislature, and has been the traditional rival to the incumbent Mr. Ahern's Fianna Fail, with both parties conventionally depicted as "center-right."
In the 2007 parliamentary election, Fine Gael won 51 seats against Fianna Fail's 77, out of a total of 166, and narrowly failed in forming a coalition government with other parties.
Fine Gael's anti-American statement might come as a surprise to some observers, but it could also be an attempt to test the water on any growth of disaffection with the U.S. in Ireland.
However, the depth of anti-Americanism in Ireland — a country with close historical and cultural ties to the U.S., where between 40 million and 70 million people claim Irish ancestry — is difficult to assess.
A British Council poll on trans-Atlantic relations was conducted in seven European countries, Canada and the United States from Jan. 8 to 25, 2008.
Its findings showed that 48 percent of Irish polled had a positive view of the U.S. in world affairs, with 46 percent seeing the U.S. as a malign influence. The European average was 44 percent and 46 percent, respectively.
• David R. Sands in Washington contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20080430/FOREIGN/383010006/1003
Concentration camp doctor tops list of 10 most-wanted Nazis
By DAVID RISING, Associated Press Writer
Wed Apr 30, 10:58 AM ET
Former SS doctor Aribert Heim tops a list released Wednesday of most-wanted suspected Nazi war criminals. He is a man so brutal that witnesses remember him as the worst they saw, though he was only at Mauthausen concentration camp for two months.
Heim would be 93 today, but "we have good reason to believe he is still alive," said Efraim Zuroff by telephone from Jerusalem. Zuroff is the top Nazi hunter for Simon Wiesenthal Center, which published the list.
Still, despite a $485,000 reward for Heim's arrest posted by the center along with Germany and Austria, he has managed to avoid capture for decades.
He is only one of hundreds of suspected Nazi war criminals that the center estimates are still at large.
After Heim on the center's most wanted list are: John Demjanjuk, fighting deportation from the U.S., which says he was a guard at several death and forced labor camps; Sandor Kepiro, a Hungarian accused of involvement in the wartime killings of than 1,000 civilians in Serbia; Milivoj Asner, a wartime Croatian police chief now living in Austria and suspected of an active role in deporting hundreds of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies to their death; and Soeren Kam, a former member of the SS wanted by Denmark for the assassination of a journalist in 1943. His extradition from Germany was blocked in 2007 by a Bavarian court that found insufficient evidence for murder charges.
But the nature of Heim's alleged crimes are what catapulted him to the top of the list.
Karl Lotter, a prisoner who worked in the hospital at Mauthausen concentration camp, had no trouble remembering the first time he watched Heim kill a man.
It was 1941, and an 18-year-old Jew had been sent to the clinic with a foot inflammation. Heim asked him about himself and why he was so fit. The young man said he had been a soccer player and swimmer.
Then, instead of treating the prisoner's foot, Heim anesthetized him, cut him open, castrated him, took apart one kidney and removed the second, Lotter said. The victim's head was removed and the flesh boiled off so that Heim could keep it on display.
"He needed the head because of its perfect teeth," Lotter, a non-Jewish political prisoner, recalled in testimony eight years later that was included in a 1950 Austrian warrant for Heim's arrest uncovered by The Associated Press. "Of all the camp doctors in Mauthausen, Dr. Heim was the most horrible."
But Heim managed to avoid prosecution, his American-held file in Germany mysteriously omitting his time at Mauthausen.
The hunt for Heim has taken investigators from the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg all around the world. Besides his home country of Austria and neighboring Germany where he settled after the war, tips have come from Uruguay in 1998, Spain, Switzerland and Chile in 2005, and Brazil in 2006, said Heinz Heister, presiding judge of the Baden-Baden state court, where Heim was indicted in absentia on hundreds of counts of murder in 1979.
Born June 28, 1914 in Radkersburg, Austria, Heim joined the local Nazi party in 1935, three years before Austria was bloodlessly annexed by Germany.
He later joined the Waffen SS and was assigned to Mauthausen, a concentration camp near Linz, Austria, as a camp doctor in October and November 1941.
While there, witnesses told investigators, he worked closely with SS pharmacist Erich Wasicky on such gruesome experiments as injecting various solutions into Jewish prisoners' hearts to see which killed them the fastest.
But while Wasicky was brought to trial by an American Military Tribunal in 1946 and sentenced to death, along with other camp medical personnel and commanders, Heim, who was a POW in American custody, was not among them.
Heim's file in the Berlin Document Center, the then-U.S.-run depot for Nazi-era papers, was apparently altered to obliterate any mention of Mauthausen, according to his 1979 German indictment, obtained by the AP. Instead, for the period he was known to be at the concentration camp, he was listed as having a different SS assignment.
This "cannot be correct," the indictment says. "It is possible that through data manipulation the short assignment at the same time to the (concentration camp) was concealed."
There is no indication who might have been responsible.
The U.S. Army Intelligence file on Heim could shed light on his wartime and postwar activities, and is among hundreds of thousands transferred to the U.S. National Archives. But the Army's electronic format is such that staff have so far only been able to access about half of them, and these don't include the file requested by the AP.
Eli Rosenbaum, director of the Justice Department's Nazi-hunting Office of Special Investigations, declined to comment through a spokeswoman.
"I don't believe there is anything appropriate for Mr. Rosenbaum to add," said Justice Department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney in an e-mail.
Heim was relatively well-known, however, having been a national hockey player in Austria before the war, and there were plenty of witnesses from his time at Mauthausen.
Austrian authorities sent the 1950 arrest warrant to American authorities in Germany who initially agreed to turn him over, then told the Austrians, in a Dec. 21, 1950, letter obtained by the AP, that they couldn't trace him.
What happened next is unclear, but in 1958 Heim apparently felt comfortable enough to buy a 42-unit apartment block in Berlin, listing it in his own name with a home address in Mannheim, according to purchase documents obtained by the AP. He then moved to the nearby resort town of Baden-Baden and opened a gynecological clinic — also under his own name, Heister said.
In 1961, German authorities were alerted and began an investigation, but when they finally went to arrest him in September 1962, they just missed him — he apparently had been tipped off.
Heim continued to live off the rents collected from the Berlin apartments until 1979 when the building was confiscated by German authorities.
Proof that he is alive may lie in the fact that no one has claimed his estate. Heim has two sons in Germany and a daughter who lived in Chile but whose current whereabouts are unknown.
Ruediger Heim, one of the sons, would not comment when telephoned at his Baden-Baden villa.
"All I can say is that it has been implied that I am in contact with my father, and that is absolutely false," he said. "The rest is speculation, and I can't enter into that."
___
Associated Press investigative researcher Randy Herschaft contributed to this report from New York and Washington, D.C.
___
On the Net:
Operation Last Chance: http://www.operationlastchance.org/
Austrian Justice Ministry: http://tinyurl.com/4q9x9x
Wed Apr 30, 10:58 AM ET
Former SS doctor Aribert Heim tops a list released Wednesday of most-wanted suspected Nazi war criminals. He is a man so brutal that witnesses remember him as the worst they saw, though he was only at Mauthausen concentration camp for two months.
Heim would be 93 today, but "we have good reason to believe he is still alive," said Efraim Zuroff by telephone from Jerusalem. Zuroff is the top Nazi hunter for Simon Wiesenthal Center, which published the list.
Still, despite a $485,000 reward for Heim's arrest posted by the center along with Germany and Austria, he has managed to avoid capture for decades.
He is only one of hundreds of suspected Nazi war criminals that the center estimates are still at large.
After Heim on the center's most wanted list are: John Demjanjuk, fighting deportation from the U.S., which says he was a guard at several death and forced labor camps; Sandor Kepiro, a Hungarian accused of involvement in the wartime killings of than 1,000 civilians in Serbia; Milivoj Asner, a wartime Croatian police chief now living in Austria and suspected of an active role in deporting hundreds of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies to their death; and Soeren Kam, a former member of the SS wanted by Denmark for the assassination of a journalist in 1943. His extradition from Germany was blocked in 2007 by a Bavarian court that found insufficient evidence for murder charges.
But the nature of Heim's alleged crimes are what catapulted him to the top of the list.
Karl Lotter, a prisoner who worked in the hospital at Mauthausen concentration camp, had no trouble remembering the first time he watched Heim kill a man.
It was 1941, and an 18-year-old Jew had been sent to the clinic with a foot inflammation. Heim asked him about himself and why he was so fit. The young man said he had been a soccer player and swimmer.
Then, instead of treating the prisoner's foot, Heim anesthetized him, cut him open, castrated him, took apart one kidney and removed the second, Lotter said. The victim's head was removed and the flesh boiled off so that Heim could keep it on display.
"He needed the head because of its perfect teeth," Lotter, a non-Jewish political prisoner, recalled in testimony eight years later that was included in a 1950 Austrian warrant for Heim's arrest uncovered by The Associated Press. "Of all the camp doctors in Mauthausen, Dr. Heim was the most horrible."
But Heim managed to avoid prosecution, his American-held file in Germany mysteriously omitting his time at Mauthausen.
The hunt for Heim has taken investigators from the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg all around the world. Besides his home country of Austria and neighboring Germany where he settled after the war, tips have come from Uruguay in 1998, Spain, Switzerland and Chile in 2005, and Brazil in 2006, said Heinz Heister, presiding judge of the Baden-Baden state court, where Heim was indicted in absentia on hundreds of counts of murder in 1979.
Born June 28, 1914 in Radkersburg, Austria, Heim joined the local Nazi party in 1935, three years before Austria was bloodlessly annexed by Germany.
He later joined the Waffen SS and was assigned to Mauthausen, a concentration camp near Linz, Austria, as a camp doctor in October and November 1941.
While there, witnesses told investigators, he worked closely with SS pharmacist Erich Wasicky on such gruesome experiments as injecting various solutions into Jewish prisoners' hearts to see which killed them the fastest.
But while Wasicky was brought to trial by an American Military Tribunal in 1946 and sentenced to death, along with other camp medical personnel and commanders, Heim, who was a POW in American custody, was not among them.
Heim's file in the Berlin Document Center, the then-U.S.-run depot for Nazi-era papers, was apparently altered to obliterate any mention of Mauthausen, according to his 1979 German indictment, obtained by the AP. Instead, for the period he was known to be at the concentration camp, he was listed as having a different SS assignment.
This "cannot be correct," the indictment says. "It is possible that through data manipulation the short assignment at the same time to the (concentration camp) was concealed."
There is no indication who might have been responsible.
The U.S. Army Intelligence file on Heim could shed light on his wartime and postwar activities, and is among hundreds of thousands transferred to the U.S. National Archives. But the Army's electronic format is such that staff have so far only been able to access about half of them, and these don't include the file requested by the AP.
Eli Rosenbaum, director of the Justice Department's Nazi-hunting Office of Special Investigations, declined to comment through a spokeswoman.
"I don't believe there is anything appropriate for Mr. Rosenbaum to add," said Justice Department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney in an e-mail.
Heim was relatively well-known, however, having been a national hockey player in Austria before the war, and there were plenty of witnesses from his time at Mauthausen.
Austrian authorities sent the 1950 arrest warrant to American authorities in Germany who initially agreed to turn him over, then told the Austrians, in a Dec. 21, 1950, letter obtained by the AP, that they couldn't trace him.
What happened next is unclear, but in 1958 Heim apparently felt comfortable enough to buy a 42-unit apartment block in Berlin, listing it in his own name with a home address in Mannheim, according to purchase documents obtained by the AP. He then moved to the nearby resort town of Baden-Baden and opened a gynecological clinic — also under his own name, Heister said.
In 1961, German authorities were alerted and began an investigation, but when they finally went to arrest him in September 1962, they just missed him — he apparently had been tipped off.
Heim continued to live off the rents collected from the Berlin apartments until 1979 when the building was confiscated by German authorities.
Proof that he is alive may lie in the fact that no one has claimed his estate. Heim has two sons in Germany and a daughter who lived in Chile but whose current whereabouts are unknown.
Ruediger Heim, one of the sons, would not comment when telephoned at his Baden-Baden villa.
"All I can say is that it has been implied that I am in contact with my father, and that is absolutely false," he said. "The rest is speculation, and I can't enter into that."
___
Associated Press investigative researcher Randy Herschaft contributed to this report from New York and Washington, D.C.
___
On the Net:
Operation Last Chance: http://www.operationlastchance.org/
Austrian Justice Ministry: http://tinyurl.com/4q9x9x
29 April 2008
Serbia forgives $3 billion Iraqi debt
April 29, 2008
Iraqi defense ministry said Serbia had agreed to write off $3 billion in Iraq's foreign debt.
Serbia's move comes after an international conference last week in Kuwait at which Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice unsuccessfully pressed Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to forgive Iraq's debts as a sign of support for Iraq's government.
Iraq harbors at least $67 billion in foreign debt, the vast majority of it owed to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
Iraqi defense ministry said Serbia had agreed to write off $3 billion in Iraq's foreign debt.
Serbia's move comes after an international conference last week in Kuwait at which Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice unsuccessfully pressed Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to forgive Iraq's debts as a sign of support for Iraq's government.
Iraq harbors at least $67 billion in foreign debt, the vast majority of it owed to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
28 April 2008
Romanians, Russians, Ukrainians, Greeks and Arabs were also tortured.
Organ trade: Kouchner involved
April 28, 2008
Source: Kurir daily, Belgrade
April 28, 2008
Source: Kurir daily, Belgrade
Milijana Mitrovic, one of Carla del Ponte's sources for facts about death camps where Serbs were stripped of their organs, claims that Romanians, Russians, Ukrainians, Greeks and Arabs were also tortured.
BELGRADE - Albanian is not just a "blue tomb" for Serbs and Serbs abducted from Kosovo and Metohija were not the only ones whose organs were harvested. White slaves from Romania, Moldavia, Russia, the Ukraine, Greece, Montenegro, the Arab countries, etc. were also used for this purpose. The highest political leaders in Albania were involved in the affair, as well as Kosovo Liberation Army commanders and representatives of KFOR and UNMIK, Milijana Mitrovic testified in a statement for "Kurir". She said she was one of Carla del Ponte's sources of information regarding death camps in Albanian and in Kosovo and Metohija.
Ms. Mitrovic claimed that she saw these camps and learned a lot about crimes thanks to her friendship with an influential Albanian businessman. However, when she told official Serbian authorities about this in 2002, no one wanted to hear what she had to say. Moreover, some of them even threatened her and told her to remain quiet, and sent police representatives to question and harass her.
"The Albanians brought prostitutes from various countries to entertain the members of UNMIK and KFOR. When they no longer needed them, they would take them to Albania to harvest their organs. There were camps in Kukesh, Elbasan, Flora and Drach; the "yellow house" where their organs were removed was in Tirana. The Americans, Germans and English participated in this," emphasized Mitrovic.
She said that the healthiest males up to age 45 were picked out from among the imprisoned Serbs from Kosovo and Metohija, and transferred to U.S. military bases abroad, especially in Germany and Italy. Allegedly two missing Serb men from Kosovo and Metohija were seen in the U.S. base in Wiesbaden. She didn't know what was done with the abducted Serbs in those bases but there are indications that they were used as guinea pigs.
"Anyone who tried to escape would end up under the knife together with the others who were taken to the camps in Albania. Current and former Albanian premiers Sali Berisha and Fatos Nano were involved with the blessing of Bernard Kouchner, former UNMIK head and currently French foreign minister, a physician. Also involved were Ramush Haradinaj and his brother Daut, Agim Cheku and Hashim Thaci, as well as Halim Omer Osmani, Muhamed Luti, Enes Elmazi," recounted Mitrovic.
She said that in 2001 and 2002 some Serbian politicians, primarily belonging from the opposition at that time, were collecting money for finding the kidnapped Serbs. The final sum was several hundred thousand German marks; through the intercession of U.S. CIA Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Shaw the money was given to a certain Kosovo Albanian. The Kosovo Albanian learned a lot but he was caught and killed, said Mitrovic.
CARLA'S BOOK IS EVIDENCE AGAINST HER
Simo Spasic, president of the Association of Kidnapped and Abducted Civilians, Soldiers and Police from Kosovo and Metohija, said that Milijana Mitrovic told then what she knew several years ago but they could not believe her. However, Carla del Ponte's Book "The Hunt: Me and the War Criminals" convinced them that she was telling the truth.
"We finally received del Ponte's book from Italy and it states how many Serbs were transferred to Italy, and where their vital organs, intended for sale throughout Europe and America, were removed. The book will serve as evidence in our case against her because she hid the crimes while serving as Hague prosecutor. During a meeting with us in 2004 she told that our relatives and loved ones had all been killed but she didn't mention that they had been stripped of their organs," emphasized Spasic. In his opinion, del Ponte calculatingly chose to reveal this after the criminals had proclaimed Kosovo's independence.
"If she had published this only four or five years ago, no country in the world would have recognized such a criminal state. The generals of the so-called KLA would be in The Hague for their command responsibility," emphasized Spasic.
By Niksa Bulatovic
(Translated by sib on Resurrection Monday, April 28 / 15, 2008)
original link: http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3Lmt1cmlyLWluZm8uY28ueXUvY2xhbmFrL2t1cmlyLTI4LTA0LTIwMDgvenZlcmk=
Kosovo police seize weapons
April 28, 2008 - 6:35am
By NEBI QENA
Associated Press Writer
PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP) - Police stopped a car carrying weapons and ammunition from Kosovo toward Macedonia on Monday and arrested four Kosovo Albanians, authorities said.
The weapons, which were given to NATO-led peacekeepers responsible for securing Kosovo's borders, apparently were intended for extremists in neighboring Macedonia, police said.
The cargo contained high-caliber weapons and ammunition, including rocket-propelled grenades, mortar rounds and anti-aircraft machine guns, police said.
Kosovo and Macedonia have formed working groups to try to settle a border dispute concerning about 5,000 acres of land given to Macedonia in a 2001 border deal between Serbia and Macedonian authorities. Kosovo leaders oppose the deal, claiming that Serbia had no control over the territory and no right to give it to Macedonia.
Kosovo news reports say masked ethnic Albanians have been seen brandishing weapons in the region bordering Macedonia and pledging to fight for the contested territory. NATO-led peacekeepers and Kosovo police have denied any knowledge of armed groups operating there.
Macedonia's leaders have linked the border dispute to their recognition of Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia in February. In Macedonia, tensions between ethnic Albanians and the Slav majority continue about 7 1/2 years after an ethnic Albanian insurgency.
Ethnic Albanians make up more than a quarter of Macedonia's population, and they fought a brief war against government forces in 2001. They demand an immediate recognition of Kosovo's independence, greater use of the Albanian language and flag, and benefits for veterans of the guerrilla insurgency.
(Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
27 April 2008
Kosovo Serbs Targeted in Blast on Orthodox Easter Sunday
April 27, 2008
PRISTINA (AFP) — Three people were injured in a blast overnight in northern Kosovo, which is populated mostly by the Serb minority, Kosovo police said Sunday.
"A blast occurred around 2:15 a.m. (0015 GMT) in the centre of Leposavic," a Serb-populated town, police spokesman Besim Hoti told AFP.
Hoti said an "explosive device, apparently a hand grenade, was thrown from a moving vehicle," adding that an investigation was underway.
The blast took place just hours after the start of the celebration of Orthodox Easter.
The three injured were taken to hospital in nearby Kosovska Mitrovica.
Around 40,000 mostly Orthodox Christian Serbs live in the northern part of Kosovo, bordering Serbia, out of the 120,000 who remain here.
Kosovo proclaimed unilateral independence on February 17 that was soon recognized by big Western powers, including the United States, despite strong opposition from Serbia and its traditional ally Russia.
Kosovo Serbs also fiercely oppose the move, especially in the Serb-majority north where it has triggered violent incidents.
A special team of investigators from the United Nations arrived in Pristina this weekend to examine the one of the worst clashes, on March 17, in which a Ukrainian police officer was killed and 150 other people injured.
Also Saturday, Kosovo police seized three kilos of plastic explosives, several automatic rifles AK 47 and a large amount of ammunition in a house in Kosovska Mitrovica, Hoti said.
Three young Serbs, aged from 17 to 21, were arrested, he added.
The incidents occurred as Serbian pro-Western President Boris Tadic arrived to Kosovo to attend Easter celebrations in an Orthodox Serb monastery, making his first trip here since the breakaway territory proclaimed independence.
25 April 2008
I was right to oppose NATO intervention in Kosovo
I was right to oppose NATO intervention in Kosovo
By Robert Skidelsky
Commentary by
Friday, April 25, 2008
Kosovo's recent unilateral declaration of independence brought back memories. I publicly opposed NATO's attack on Serbia - carried out in the name of protecting the Kosovars from Serb atrocities - in March 1999. At that time, I was a member of the Opposition Front Bench - or Shadow Government - in Britain's House of Lords. The then Conservative leader, William Hague, immediately expelled me to the "back benches." Thus ended my (minor) political career. Ever since, I have wondered whether I was right or wrong.
I opposed military intervention for two reasons. First, I argued that while it might do local good, it would damage the rules of international relations as they were then understood. The United Nations charter was designed to prevent the use of force across national lines except for self-defense and enforcement measures ordered by the Security Council. Human rights, democracy and self-determination are not acceptable legal grounds for waging war.
Secondly, I argued that while there might be occasions when, regardless of international law, human rights abuses are so severe that one is morally obliged to act, Kosovo was not such a case. I considered the "imminent humanitarian disaster" that the intervention was ostensibly aimed at preventing, to be largely an invention. I further argued that non-military means to resolve the humanitarian issue in Kosovo were far from being exhausted, and that the failed Rambouillet negotiation with Serbia in February-March 1999 was, in Henry Kissinger's words, "merely an excuse to start the bombing."
This view was vindicated by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's Report on Human Rights Violations in Kosovo, published in December 1999. The report showed that the level of violence fell markedly when OSCE monitors were placed in Kosovo following the Holbrooke-Milosevic agreement of September 23, 1998; and that it was only after the monitors were withdrawn on March 20, 1999, in preparation for the bombing, that general and systematic violation of human rights began.
Between March and June 1999 - the period of NATO bombing - the number of deaths and expulsions in Kosovo shot up. The "humanitarian disaster" was in fact precipitated by the war itself. Despite this, the term "genocide," freely bandied about by Western interventionists, was grotesquely inappropriate at any time.
Without doubt, NATO air strikes and the subsequent administration of Kosovo as a protectorate improved the political situation for Albanian Kosovars. Without NATO intervention, they probably would have remained second-class citizens within Serbia. Against this must be set the large-scale deterioration in the economic situation of all Kosovars, Albanian and Serbian (44 percent unemployment), widespread criminalization, and the fact that under NATO rule, Kosovo was ethnically cleansed of half its Serb minority.
Kosovo remains in political limbo to this day. Two thousand European Union officials run the country, and 16,000 NATO troops guard its security. Its "independence" is rejected by Serbia, unrecognized by the Security Council, and opposed by Russia, China, and most multi-national states in Europe and Asia, which fear setting a precedent for their own dismemberment. Indeed, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was quick to blame the disturbances in Tibet on Kosovo's declaration of independence.
A Serbian insurgency and de facto partition of Kosovo remain possible, and we have yet to face the destabilizing effects of Kosovo's claim to independence on other divided Balkan states such as Bosnia and Macedonia But the balance sheet is even worse in terms of international relations. Kosovo was a stalking horse for Iraq, as the doctrine of humanitarian intervention morphed into President George W. Bush's doctrine of "pre-emptive war," by which the US claimed the right to attack any state that it deemed a threat to its national security. As then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan rightly argued, this opened the door to the proliferation of unilateral, lawless use of force.
Not the least damaging consequence of the Bush doctrine is that it dispenses with the need for public proof of aggressive intent. The Iraq invasion was justified by the same use of fraudulent evidence as was displayed in Kosovo.
On balance, I believe that I was right to oppose the Kosovo war. It was a regressive answer to a genuine international problem: how to hold together multi-ethnic-religious states in a reasonably civilized way. Since 1999, Kosovars have rejected Serbian offers of autonomy, because they were confident of American support for independence.
Western countries must consider more seriously how far they should press their human rights agenda on states with both the power and the will to defend their territorial integrity. Under American leadership, it is the West that has emerged as the restless, disturbing force in international affairs. China should certainly grant Tibet more autonomy; but is pumping up the Dalai Lama into a world leader or threatening to boycott the Beijing Olympics the best way to secure a better deal for Tibetans, or to obtain Chinese cooperation on matters that are far more important than Tibet's status?
Activists, impassioned by the justice of their cause, will not consider these questions. But world leaders should take them seriously.
Robert Skidelsky, a member of the British House of Lords, is professor emeritus of political economy at Warwick University, author of a prize-winning biography of the economist John Maynard Keynes, and a board member of the Moscow School of Political Studies. THE DAILY STAR publishes this commentary in collaboration with Project Syndicate (c) (www.project-syndicate.org).
Part 2: More Greed Than Pioneer Spirit
By Walter Mayr
Part 2: More Greed Than Pioneer Spirit
AP
Grateful graffiti, after Kosovo's independence in February.
It's estimated that 20 percent of Kosovars are illiterate, while more than 90 percent have a minimal education. The consequences of Serbian colonial policy under Milosevic have left their mark. Kosovo's three-percent economic growth is insufficient to provide adequate employment for the new crop of young people entering the labor market every year.
According to economist Muhamet Mustafa of the Riinvest Institute for Development Research in Pristina, the black market economy is responsible for 30 to 40 percent of Kosovo's gross national product. The path up the economic ladder is as good as blocked for the country's youngest and most hopeful.
"We must keep our best people in the country, but we lack young elites," says Harvard graduate Shpend Ahmeti, who heads the Institute for Advance Studies (GAP) and plans to establish an academy for future business leaders. Kosovo's main export is still scrap metal, but Ahmeti mentions what politicians intend to ask for at an upcoming international donors' conference -- a subway in the small industrial city of Ferizaj, for €36 million ($58 million), and an opera house dedicated to the now-deceased former president, Ibrahim Rugova, for €25 million ($40 million).
What embitters the idealists among international aid workers and democratic lone wolves among Kosovo's ethnic Albanians is that the UN mission tends to encourage greed, rather than a pioneering spirit. "Ninety percent of the people here come for the money," says a police official with the UN's organized crime division in Pristina. "The motivation (among UN workers) is moderate, people are constantly rotated, and we don't get the really good ones, anyway." Tours of duty in Kosovo, he says, are detrimental to careers at home.
Ten-Figure Sums and No Electricity
The UN mission is variously described as anything from a "paper tiger" to a "bureaucratic monster" to a "colonial administration," while much of its international personnel has the reputation of being in Kosovo either to pursue an adventure or for personal enrichment (From a 2007 study completed for the Bundeswehr)
In the upper management echelons at UNMIK, in the Kosovar government and in international consortiums, ten-figure sums of money are thrown around. For the planned Kosovo C brown coal heating power plant, a bidding war has reached €4 billion ($6.4 billion). The new plant is needed because the existing sections of the power plant, despite €1 billion ($1.6 billion) in investments in the power grid, can't deliver enough energy. Daily power outages last up to eight hours. Many people use diesel generators. But who's responsible for this electricity fiasco? Ethem Çeku is CEO of the current electricity monopoly. He's also the cousin of former Prime Minister Agim Çeku and has close ties to UNMIK Director Rücker. Çeku has also served as chairman of the steering committee in the race for the new €4 billion project. One of his former colleagues is part of the favored consortium, while other companies bidding on the power plant project include German energy giants EnBW and RWE.
Çeku and his lot, together with UNMIK leaders, form "a sort of Cosa Nostra for Kosovo," says Avni Zogiani, who heads the anti-corruption NGO called ÇOHU! ("Wake Up!"), despite risks to life and limb. He has received threats because he prepares dossiers on the sins of members of parliament, and because he, to the dissatisfaction of Western ambassadors of democracy, utters sentences like: "So far, UNMIK has worked primarily with criminals and made deals with the devil, merely for the sake of stability in the country." Zogiani's claim, says UNMIK Director Rücker, "does not coincide with reality."
In early April, Zogiani's organization filed a complaint with the special prosecutor in Pristina alleging favoritism within Kosovo's privatization agency. The accused is 39-year-old Hashim Thaçi, who, as one of the KLA commanders in the guerilla war against the Serbian army, was known by his combat name, "Snake." He is now Kosovo's prime minister.
Will his past matter? German author Jürgen Roth cites a 2005 intelligence study (from the Bundesnachrichtendienst) which asserts that as far back as 1999, at the time of the Serb-Albanian peace negotiations, Thaçi controlled "a criminal network active throughout Kosovo." According to the report, he is also suspected of having hired a "professional killer." Thaçi himself has declined to comment on these accusations. The prime minister is busy with governing and dealing with his party, the PDK. Thaçi -- with the support of Germany's left-leaning Friedrich Ebert Foundation -- is trying to establish the PDK within Europe's spectrum of leftist parties, where his old comrade-in-arms and former Prime Minister Agim Çeku also wants to build ties.
Women and Heroin
It is assumed that a corporate structure of organized crime and corruption is behind every political party in Kosovo. (The UN's Directorate of Organized Crime)
The UN special investigators for organized crime work in a dilapidated collection of trailers on the edge of Kosovo Field (Kosovo Polje), the historic site of the 1389 Battle of Kosovo between Serbs and the Ottoman Empire. Rain echoes on the corrugated metal roofs of the trailers while the officials inside drink thin coffee. Their weary faces reflect doubt in the purpose of their assignment.
DER SPIEGEL
Europe's newest nation, still unfinished.
"We are fighting with wooden swords against an extremely well-armed opponent," says one of the investigators, who prefers to remain anonymous. "In 2005 and 2006, when the first locals were admitted into the Kosovo police, we suddenly found not a single gram of heroin. Our undercover investigators and informants disappeared. We know literally nothing since then."
According to law enforcement agencies, Kosovo is the most important interim destination for opiates and heroin coming from Afghanistan . It is believed that up to four or five tons of heroin are brought across Kosovo's borders every month. The drug then reaches the EU countries through Albanian distribution rings. (Rastislav Báchora, Notes from Southeastern Europe, 2008)
The central Balkans' drug smuggling route, under observation of international police since 1999, runs through Kosovo. According to Europol, ethnic Albanian organized crime groups now control 80 percent of heroin smuggling in some northern European countries, and 40 percent in Western Europe. Officials at UNMIK in Pristina are familiar with the reports, as well as the warnings of a "further aggravation of the security situation" -- now that the tiny republic's independence facilitates access to government business for the ruling clans.
But nothing is happening. The multinational apparatus is too large, too out of control and too involved with itself. The daily bureaucracy of compiling organizational charges, sending progress reports (known as "okay reporting") to New York, and preparing proof of activity, keeps people busy.
The UNMIK list of Kosovar brothels and bars suspected of promoting or tolerating illegal prostitution -- which are off-limits for UNMIK staff -- includes 138 establishments of various calibers. "Dodana," a dimly lit bar in the divided city of Mitrovica, sits just outside the French Kosovo Force (KFOR) barracks. It's not on the UNMIK list and, at first glance, doesn't seem to have any prostitutes, either. But the owner is a KLA veteran who did time in a German prison near Stuttgart for drug trafficking, and it doesn't take long for him to change his mind and say: "Come back tomorrow, and then you can get what you want."
At the Buze Ibrit across the Ibar River, Fatmiri, who leases the establishment, offers his rooms for €5 ($8) for two-hour "relaxation" periods. Turkish, Albanian and Moldovan women are available in the bars further east along the river.
Bajram Rexhepi has himself driven past the Buze Ibrit in a Jeep every day. He's a slim, gray-haired man who carries a Croatian nine-millimeter pistol concealed in his suit jacket. He knew Mitrovica as a coal-mining town, before there were KFOR troops, UNMIK police and the attendant brothels. He's a former prime minister of Kosovo and the town's current mayor.
DPA
Bajam Rexhepi, Mayor of South Mitrovica
To be more precise, he's the mayor of South Mitrovica, the Albanian section. But his villa is across the river, on the city's Serbian side. This puts it in the future Serbian special administrative zone. But somehow the powerful Rexhepi has managed to have his house -- surrounded by Serbian neighborhoods and with a panoramic view -- assigned to the Albanian south.
Rexhepi trained as a surgeon. He served as a doctor at the front during the guerilla war, and as personal doctor of KLA co-founder Adem Jashari until Jashari was murdered. After the war Rexhepi went into politics. As prime minister he gained particular respect by denouncing the anti-Serb pogroms in March 2004 which killed 19 people, injured thousands and destroyed or damaged monasteries, churches and cultural sites.
The Serbian Orthodox cemetery in South Mitrovica, which is now cut off from the Serbian neighborhoods, is still seen as a memorial. Its chapel was desecrated, gravestones were disturbed and cow manure and bits of clothing scattered among the graves. But violence tends to be the exception now, says Rexhepi calmly, pointing to nearby Serbian houses. "Those people over there," he says, "want to create parallel structures."
The Multiethnic Future
A multiethnic Kosovo does not exist, except in the written pronouncements of the international community. (From a study by the International Commission on the Balkans)
Students at the technical university in North Mitrovica wear T-shirts reading "Kosovo is Serbia." The administration of Kosovo's recalcitrant north, funded by Belgrade, now resides in a small, cobalt blue house along the river. North Mitrovica is a planet with its own orbit, a collection of drab neighborhoods with apartment buildings dating back to the days of former Yugoslav dictator Josip Tito. It has shop-window portraits of Russian President Vladimir Putin and perhaps 30,000 Serbian residents, who are being used as spearheads in the struggle over Kosovo's future.
Those who work in North Mitrovica's hospital, court system, schools and university are paid two to three times the standard salary, as compensation for living here. By simply persevering, the idea is, they embody Belgrade's legal claim to Kosovo. The leader of Serbia's Radical Party, Tomislav Nikolic, is greeted like the Orthodox Messiah in North Mitrovica, with bread, salt and folk dancing. He can except to capture 70 percent of the vote in this neighborhood.
Experts from the Institute for European Politics consider the dreams of a multiethnic Kosovo a "grotesque denial of reality in the international community," triggered by a "politically mandated pressure to succeed." It is not difficult to reconstruct the source of this pressure.
Washington's influence has been decisive, from the NATO attack on Serbian targets in 1999 to its leadership role in the peace negotiations in Rambouillet, France, and the road map for Kosovo's declaration of independence. "The Spaniards didn't want a decision before March 2008, because of their upcoming elections, but the Americans wanted February," says a UNMIK employee. "So February 17 it was."
The resolute phrase "no way" -- spoken into a mobile phone by an official at the American diplomatic mission in Pristina -- which barely prevented Kosovar Prime Minister Thaçi from declaring independence two days early (from an American perspective), is now one of the most colorful myths surrounding the establishment of the young republic. The Americans have reaped the rewards of their commitment to Kosovo: the Camp Bondsteel military base, arms deliveries for the future Kosovo army and a loyal community of fans among the Albanian majority.
And the Europeans? Javier Solana, the EU's chief diplomat and a dedicated supporter of trans-Atlantic cooperation, did not attract much attention with his moderate appeals during the gallop to Kosovo's independence. EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso is already suggesting that Kosovo could be offered "EU prospects." UNMIK Director Rücker takes it a step further, when he says: "I see both Kosovo and Serbia a members of the EU in 10 years."
What steps need to be taken before that can happen? A few bastions would have to be worn down and bridges built.
The Serbs, in their blossoming, rural landscape in the north, bordering on the wild Sandzak region, and with their fields, pastures and beehives, would have to learn to find a common language with the Albanians in the south, in their sprawling settlements of unfinished buildings and streets littered with garbage.
The old and new residents of Prizren, at the center of the Kosovo controversy, a medieval residence of Serbian kings and the birthplace of dreams of a greater Albania, will have to find ways to reconcile once again. They will have to clear occupied houses, repair desecrated mosques and churches, and allow justice to prevail.
There are currently 38,000 pending lawsuits for the restitution of property in Kosovo -- mostly fields and meadows. EU experts expect to encounter 180,000 court cases that have not been processed yet. Among 40,000 criminal cases still pending, 700 are classified as "top priority," because they lead directly into the heart of the clan system.
It is that system, and not the people, which is still the source of power in Europe's youngest republic.
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
Part 1: The Slow Birth of a Nation
The Slow Birth of a Nation
By Walter Mayr
Two months after Kosovo declared independence, thousands of foreign experts are ready to descend on its capital to shape Europe's youngest republic into a constitutional state -- although its status is still disputed. Soon the EU will take over, and its team can expect a country ruled by corruption and organized crime.
REUTERS
Protesters set fire to the replica of a judge's robe during a protest over the acquittal of Ramush Haradinaj, a former Kosovo prime minister who had been tried for war crimes in The Hague. In other parts of Kosovo, he was celebrated.
But where, exactly, is Rücker? What country is he in?
According to international law, Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, still belongs to Serbian territory. Rücker's boss at UN headquarters in New York, Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, has not said anything new to the contrary. Under UN Resolution 1244, adopted in 1999, Kosovo was placed under an interim UN administration, after enduring a 16-month war that claimed about 10,000 lives. The resolution makes no mention of Kosovo's right to secede from Serbia.
On the other hand, Kosovo unilaterally declared independence on Feb. 17. More than three dozen countries worldwide -- including the United States and Germany -- have recognized the tiny republic, whose population is 90 percent ethnic Albanian. There are now signs with the words "Republic of Kosovo" along the southern border and Kosovar customs officers at the Pristina airport.
But in the north and in the Serbian enclaves south of the Ibar River, separate elections will probably take place on May 11 -- for the Serbian parliament in Belgrade and for the local Serb government. Here, in the shadow of medieval monasteries, time seems to stand still. The Serbian dinar is the standard currency here, and wages, food and political directives come straight from Belgrade.
Kosovo's situation is complex. Two countries claim a territory that is about one and a half times the size of the US state Rhode Island (and has about the same population density). In the middle, acting as a UN referee in a diplomatic minefield, sits Joachim Rücker, 56, the former mayor of the small southwestern German city of Sindelfingen. At the request of the UN Secretary General and in response to pressure from Russia, Rücker is expected to continue behaving as if nothing had happened, as if Serbia's national borders had remained unchanged.
He's returning from a reception held by the newly appointed German ambassador in Pristina. Strictly speaking, according to diplomatic protocol, Rücker had no business there -- as the supreme UN administrator in Serbia's southwestern province. But he calls Kosovo's hermaphroditic condition "cohabitation," and manages to find complicated language to describe the future of this torn region.
In June, administrative duties are expected to change hands from the UN to the European Union, which plans to send 2,200 judges, prosecutors, police officers and customs officials to Pristina. But without the approval of the Russians and the Chinese in the Security Council, the UN will hardly be able to slip quietly out of Kosovo. Instead, says Rücker, it will have to maintain its presence, and its mission, "while keeping its status neutral." The UN will have to "reconfigure" itself and emphasize the "discontinuity" between the EU and UN mandates.
The UN will stay in Kosovo, in other words, and discreetly phase out its presence, hoping for a change of course in Moscow, Beijing and Belgrade -- so that the skirmishes over Europe's youngest state don't turn into a full-blown war.
For now, at least, life is still relatively good in Pristina. The penne arrabiata and chocolate tarts at "Il Passatore," an Italian trattoria, are exceptional. Rücker seems pleased as he leaves the restaurant.
Elephants at the Watering Hole
The UN's Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) is the largest show of strength in the history of the world body. Rücker has led it since 2006. The multinational administrators oversee everything -- government, police, judiciary, customs, the economy. The goal of the now nine-year operation is to transform Yugoslavia's former poorhouse into a home for more than two million people that deserves to be called a constitutional state.
DER SPIEGEL
Europe's newest nation, still unfinished.
Kosovo's foreign rulers -- especially the French, Americans and Germans -- are wrestling for billions in reconstruction contracts, for key positions in the new government and for influence over the Kosovar parties and clan leaders. The region is awash with intelligence agents and soldiers of fortune, idealists and professional adventurers. This constellation could, of course, hinder the planned birth of democracy here, rather than help it.
The UN has spent an estimated €33 billion ($53 billion) for its mission in Kosovo since 1999, when a NATO bombing campaign drove out former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic's murderous troops. This corresponds to €1,750 ($2,800) per capita, annually -- or 160 times the average yearly per capita aid for all developing countries combined.
Nevertheless, UNMIK isn't wanted by everyone here. The streets to UNMIK headquarters in Pristina have been known to be blocked by protest banners reading: "No access. Criminal zone." Stickers are affixed to some traffic lights in the city, displaying "No to EUMIK" when the lights are red and "Independence" when they turn green. At the Strip Depot café, a philosopher called Shkelzen Maliqi, surrounded by disciples lounging on couches, jokes: "Kosovo is a bastard country. You fathered it, and now it's your job to care for it."
Officially, close to half of Kosovo's residents live on less than €3 ($4.80) a day. Kosovo's per capita gross national product is lower than that of North Korea or Papua New Guinea. It has one of the worst balances of trade worldwide and Europe's highest fertility rate. Youth unemployment hovers at 75 percent.
But as long as Albania's young people, equipped with their bulky sunglasses and tiny mobile phones, can camp out in all of Pristina's cafés before the third call of the muezzin, poverty alone won't explain the local population's growing discomfort with the international presence. Studies by scientists, intelligence services and EU panels seek to examine the deeper-seated reasons for this phenomenon.
These Kosovo analysts have one thing in common: They paint a picture of a clan-based society in which a handful of criminal leaders controls the population -- and are tolerated by bureaucrats from Europe and the rest of the world, who have come here under the guise of enlightening the Kosovars.
'Leading Political and Criminal Figures'
The international community and its representatives in Kosovo bear a significant share of responsibility for the alarming proliferation of Mafia-like structures in Kosovo. As a result of their open support for leading political and criminal figures, they have harmed the credibility of international institutions in numerous ways. (From a study by the Institute for European Politics in Berlin, completed for the German military, the Bundeswehr, in 2007)
UN special envoy Rücker wants nothing to do with "leading political and criminal figures," at least not as long as they've been convicted by a court of law. But not one of the former heroes of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerilla force -- who liberated Kosovo in their battle with Serbian troops -- has so far been sentenced. Now they control Kosovo's politics and economy.
Ramush Haradinaj is a former KLA commander who later became prime minister of UN-administered Kosovo. His indictment in The Hague consisted of 37 charges, including murder, torture, rape and the expulsion of Serbs, Albanians and gypsies in the weeks following the end of the war in 1999. Carla Del Ponte, former chief prosecutor of the UN War Crimes Tribunal, called him a "gangster in uniform." He returned to Kosovo this spring, after his acquittal on April 3.
Haradinaj received a hero's welcome, complete with pistol shots and motorcades through a sea of Albanian flags. But there was also an announcement from UNMIK referring to reservations from The Hague: "The court was under the strong impression that witnesses in this trial did not feel safe."
Steven Schook, Rücker's American deputy at UNMIK's fortress-like headquarters in Pristina, was already out of office by then. The former American brigadier general said he left because he loved his job too much, but that wasn't the real reason. It also wasn't because of his supposed weakness for beautiful Kosovar women, or because he considered it useful to "get drunk with Ramush Haradinaj once a week," as described in a German situation analysis.
Even before that, though, Schook's boss at UNMIK -- Rücker -- had given Haradinaj an exceptional private audience before his departure to a prison cell in The Hague. Rücker still insists this treatment was justified for a political alpha dog. "It's a completely normal order of business for a former prime minister and party chairman to pay me a visit before embarking on a longer journey."
As a result of his suspended sentence, Haradinaj's "longer journey" ended up being shorter than expected. During the trial he was even permitted to run as a candidate in the elections for the Kosovar parliament -- with UNMIK's blessing. Because of Haradinaj's background, this attracted attention far beyond the borders of his native region.
Wanting to be Boss
The family clan structure in the Decani region from which Haradinaj derives his power is involved in a wide range of criminal, political and military activities that greatly influence the security situation throughout Kosovo. The group consists of about 100 members, and deals in the drug and weapons smuggling business, as well as in the illegal trade in dutiable goods. (From a 2005 report by the Bundesnachrichtendienst, Germany's foreign intelligence agency)
These charges weren't brought up in The Hague. But now that Haradinaj, dressed in a suit and tie, has returned to the political arena, he can call for new elections and consider himself officially confirmed as the guiding figure of an independent Kosovo. The need for politicians with an untarnished name in Kosovo has grown considerably -- because according to a study completed last year, "mafia boss" is the most commonly cited dream profession among children in and around Pristina.
24 April 2008
23 April 2008
Canadian general speaks at Hague
Canadian general speaks at Hague
CTV.ca News Staff
Wed. April. 23 2008 10:19 PM ET
A highly decorated Canadian soldier, touted as one of the possible successors to Gen. Rick Hillier, testified against a former top Croatian general at The Hague Wednesday, saying the shelling of Serbian rebels in a small town in 1995 left mostly civilians dead.
Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie, head of the Canadian army, served as part of the United Nations Protection Force as a colonel during the mid-1990s wars in former Yugoslavia.
On Wednesday, Leslie recalled details about the shelling of Knin, a small town in Croatia, in the early hours of August 4, 1995. Former Croatian general Ante Gotovina was one of the key military commanders during the operation. The Croatian military had focused on three rebel targets, but Leslie said the operation killed dozens of civilians.
Defence lawyers have questioned Leslie's credibility on the matter, forcing the Canadian general to defend his observations.
In early August 1995, Leslie told the BBC that, "Essentially, every large urban centre in (the area) has been hit by shellfire."
Defence lawyers said those comments were not true, noting that after the battle had ended, United Nations inspectors concluded that "shelling was concentrated against military objectives."
They also implied that Leslie could not accept that conclusion, so he contacted two other Canadian soldiers to verify his account of the battle.
One of those soldiers, a captain, later said: "Col. Leslie asked if I would be willing to do him a favour, even though it was illegal, to find proof that the (Croatian military) had committed war crimes."
Leslie, however, completely dismissed that allegation.
"I do not know why the good captain would imply that this was illegal. I do not recognize the exact words as described by the good captain."
But in another effort to undermine his integrity, defence lawyers pointed out another incident stemming from Leslie's time in Afghanistan. In 2004, after years of what the military called outstanding leadership, Leslie was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal.
The commendation cited several heroic actions in Croatia, including his role in rescuing about 40 UN employees trapped in their residences. But on Wednesday, Leslie said that never happened -- he only learned of the military's statement as he was about to receive his medal.
"I spoke to the vice-chief of defence staff and said, 'I think you've got it wrong,'" Leslie told the tribunal. "He told me, 'That's good enough, it's going to stay.'"
The defence is trying to show that Leslie exaggerated the events of 1995, to destroy his credibility and claims against Gotovina. But Leslie is under a court order not to speak about his testimony, so has been unable to publicly defend himself.
With a report by CTV's Tom Kennedy at The Hague
22 April 2008
Conviction overturned for commander of Bosnian Jihad beheaders
Conviction overturned for commander of Bosnian Jihad beheaders
MIKE CORDER - ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 22, 2008 11:52 AM
THE HAGUE, Netherlands-A U.N. appeals panel overturned the murder convictions and reduced the sentence Tuesday of a Bosnian army commander in charge of Muslim fighters who murdered and tortured Bosnian Serbs and Croats in the Balkan wars in 1993.
Enver Hadzihasanovic was originally convicted by the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in March 2006 of failing to prevent the mujahadeen volunteers from killing two prisoners, and refusing to punish them afterward. One of the prisoners was beheaded, and several other captives were beaten.
But the U.N. court's appeals chamber ruled that the foreigners, many of them veterans of the war against Soviet forces in Afghanistan that ended in 1989, were beyond the control of Hadzihasanovic's 3rd Corps of the regular Bosnian Muslim army.
It also overturned one of his two convictions for failing to prevent or punish the cruel treatment of prisoners held at a music school in the Bosnian town of Zenica in 1993.
The court reduced his sentence from five to 3 1/2 years imprisonment.
"The facts of the case reveal a situation in which the relationship between the El Mujahadeen detachment and the 3rd Corps was not one of subordination," Presiding Judge Fausto Pocar said. "Instead, it was close to overt hostility since the only way to control the detachment was to attack them as though they were a distinct enemy force."
Hadzihasanovic's deputy, Amir Kubura, had one conviction overturned for failing to prevent the mujahadeen from plundering and his sentence cut from 2 1/2 years to two years.
Both men smiled and hugged their attorneys after Tuesday's hour-long hearing. Because of time they served in pretrial detention, both will now go free.
The two were among the highest ranking Muslim officers brought to trial by the war crimes court, which has been criticized in Serbia for prosecuting far more Serbs than members of other ethnic groups.
Their trial marked the first time the Yugoslav tribunal dealt with crimes by the mujahedeen, or holy warriors, who came mainly from north Africa and the Middle East to fight on the Muslim side in the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
Hundreds of volunteers enlisted in the Muslim cause in mid-1992 after Bosnia declared independence from the crumbling Yugoslav federation.
Prosecutors had charged Hadzihasanovic with responsibility for around 200 deaths and sought a 20-year sentence. They recommended a 10-year sentence for Kubura.
But the original trial judges dismissed most charges, ruling that the Bosnian army had little control over the mujahedeen until they were absorbed as an army unit in August 1993.
MIKE CORDER - ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 22, 2008 11:52 AM
THE HAGUE, Netherlands-A U.N. appeals panel overturned the murder convictions and reduced the sentence Tuesday of a Bosnian army commander in charge of Muslim fighters who murdered and tortured Bosnian Serbs and Croats in the Balkan wars in 1993.
Enver Hadzihasanovic was originally convicted by the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in March 2006 of failing to prevent the mujahadeen volunteers from killing two prisoners, and refusing to punish them afterward. One of the prisoners was beheaded, and several other captives were beaten.
But the U.N. court's appeals chamber ruled that the foreigners, many of them veterans of the war against Soviet forces in Afghanistan that ended in 1989, were beyond the control of Hadzihasanovic's 3rd Corps of the regular Bosnian Muslim army.
It also overturned one of his two convictions for failing to prevent or punish the cruel treatment of prisoners held at a music school in the Bosnian town of Zenica in 1993.
The court reduced his sentence from five to 3 1/2 years imprisonment.
"The facts of the case reveal a situation in which the relationship between the El Mujahadeen detachment and the 3rd Corps was not one of subordination," Presiding Judge Fausto Pocar said. "Instead, it was close to overt hostility since the only way to control the detachment was to attack them as though they were a distinct enemy force."
Hadzihasanovic's deputy, Amir Kubura, had one conviction overturned for failing to prevent the mujahadeen from plundering and his sentence cut from 2 1/2 years to two years.
Both men smiled and hugged their attorneys after Tuesday's hour-long hearing. Because of time they served in pretrial detention, both will now go free.
The two were among the highest ranking Muslim officers brought to trial by the war crimes court, which has been criticized in Serbia for prosecuting far more Serbs than members of other ethnic groups.
Their trial marked the first time the Yugoslav tribunal dealt with crimes by the mujahedeen, or holy warriors, who came mainly from north Africa and the Middle East to fight on the Muslim side in the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
Hundreds of volunteers enlisted in the Muslim cause in mid-1992 after Bosnia declared independence from the crumbling Yugoslav federation.
Prosecutors had charged Hadzihasanovic with responsibility for around 200 deaths and sought a 20-year sentence. They recommended a 10-year sentence for Kubura.
But the original trial judges dismissed most charges, ruling that the Bosnian army had little control over the mujahedeen until they were absorbed as an army unit in August 1993.
21 April 2008
Criminal clans rule Kosovo
Criminal clans rule Kosovo
April 21, 2008
Political power in Kosovo is in hands of criminal clans and the international community has been passively looking at it for years, reads the article of the German weekly Spiegel.
That renowned magazine points that
Kosovo is a clan-based society in which a handful of criminals are keeping their own people as hostages while EU bureaucrats are ignoring that writes Spiegel.
Spiegel says that the international community has done nothing during the ten years of the UN rule to curb the corruption. Nor has the Albanian organized crime in Kosovo been curbed even though the police forces and governments of western countries have known for a long time that the province is the main Balkan crossroad for drug and arms dealing, as well as for people trafficking in Europe.
Europol says that the Albanian organized crime gangs are controlling 80% of the drug market in northern Europe, and some 40% in Western Europe, notes Speiegel.
April 21, 2008
Political power in Kosovo is in hands of criminal clans and the international community has been passively looking at it for years, reads the article of the German weekly Spiegel.
That renowned magazine points that
Kosovo is a clan-based society in which a handful of criminals are keeping their own people as hostages while EU bureaucrats are ignoring that writes Spiegel.
Spiegel says that the international community has done nothing during the ten years of the UN rule to curb the corruption. Nor has the Albanian organized crime in Kosovo been curbed even though the police forces and governments of western countries have known for a long time that the province is the main Balkan crossroad for drug and arms dealing, as well as for people trafficking in Europe.
Europol says that the Albanian organized crime gangs are controlling 80% of the drug market in northern Europe, and some 40% in Western Europe, notes Speiegel.
Masked Muslim Albanian gunmen seen in Macedonia
Masked Muslim Albanian gunmen seen in Macedonia
April 21, 2008
SERBIANNA
Kosovo police says that it is investigating reports that masked Albanian gunmen have reappeared in villages near Macedonia border.
Neighboring Macedonia has been under increasing pressure by the Kosovo Islamic separatists so relinquish some of its territory because separatists demand that.
The latest report of masked armed Albanians come from the village of Debelde where villagers are reportedly saying that they are ready "if need be, take up arms to defend their farms".
Under a 2001 agreement, the territory belongs to Macedonia but Islamic separatists in Kosovo demand that the lend be relinquished over to Kosovo separatists.
Kosovo Protection Service spokesman, Veton Elshani, says that they do not know who the gunmen are.
Albanian daily Express published a photograph of these masked man saying that the are called "Village Liberation Army".
"Armed men are everywhere in the village of Tanushevci, which is in Macedonia. They are also patrolling the village of Mjake, which is for the time being in Kosovo. The border between these two villages does not exist," the daily wrote.
A commission for on border demarcation has been set up in Kosovo and Macedonia that is based on the Ahtisaari plan.
Ahtisaari plan is illegal because it was not approved by the UN and has been imposed on Serbia by Western powers that have military control of the area.
Macedonia is also under pressure by Kosovo separatists who want their southern neighbor to recognize their illegal independence declaration.
17 April 2008
Organ-harvesting claims spark controversy
April 17, 2008 - 11:44 AM
Organ-harvesting claims spark controversy
Image caption: Del Ponte's memoirs detailing her eight years as war crimes prosecutor are making waves (Keystone)
Allegations by former war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte of organ trafficking in Kosovo and Albania must be fully investigated, says a Swiss ex-parliamentarian.
In her new book, Del Ponte claims - based on what she describes as credible and eyewitness reports - that Kosovar Albanian guerrillas transported 300 Serbian prisoners to Albania where they were killed and their organs removed and trafficked.
Serbia and Russia are demanding a war crimes investigation into the accusations. The Kosovar government, now headed by the former guerrilla leader Hashim Thaci, dismisses the claims as untrue, and other officials and politicians have expressed scepticism.
The allegations appeared in Del Ponte's just published memoirs, "The Hunt: Me and War Criminals", of her eight years as chief prosecutor for the international war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia, based in The Hague.
Ruth-Gaby Vermot-Mangold, a former Social Democrat parliamentarian who has investigated organ trafficking in Europe, told swissinfo it was crucial to shed light on the affair.
"We hear about these kind of trafficking stories but we have very few concrete cases," said the human rights campaigner. "It's important to go right to the end of the investigation for Kosovo, Serbia and for justice."
New York-based Human Rights Watch has urged the Kosovo authorities to determine the veracity of the charges, saying there was "sufficiently grave evidence" in Del Ponte's book.
But on Wednesday Olga Karvan, a spokeswoman for the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, said UN investigators had found "no substantial evidence" to support the allegations.
And Florence Hartmann, Del Ponte's former spokeswoman at the war crimes court, said the claims were "irresponsible".
"Mixing up genres, juxtaposing crimes that have gone to trial, and these non-verified theories from witnesses she doesn't know anything about, even their identity, encourages confusion between rumour and fact, and risks encouraging all kinds of revisionists," she wrote in Wednesday's French-language newspaper Le Temps.
A Swiss judge at the war crimes tribunal, Stefan Trechsel, also criticised Del Ponte's book as unprofessional. He told Swiss television that she could not provide any proof to back her strong accusations.
Del Ponte, now Switzerland's ambassador to Argentina, has been ordered to keep silent by the Swiss government.
House-clinic
In the book, published in Switzerland and Italy, Del Ponte writes that her investigators visited a house in a mountainous region of Albania. The clinic was reportedly being used to hold 300 Serbs captured by the Kosovo Liberation Army and transported across the border from Kosovo to Albania in June 1999.
According to witnesses - including one who said he had driven some of the organs to Tirana airport, and a team of unnamed journalists who investigated the allegations - the victims had had their kidneys removed before being killed and having other organs taken.
UN investigators examined the house and found medical equipment used in surgery and traces of blood, but were unable to determine if the blood was human.
Most of the victims were said to be Kosovo Serbs, but they also included women from Kosovo, Albania, Russia and Slavic countries.
Other sources claim the body parts were flown to Turkey, where they were transplanted into wealthy patients.
If the accusations prove to be true, Turkey's role in the trade in organs is not surprising, said Vermot-Mangold.
"We have proof that people have their organs transplanted there and we know there is a market for organs, especially kidneys," said the campaigner, who investigated the trade in body organs for the Council of Europe in 2003.
"Fabrications"
Del Ponte's account is the first time such accusations have come from such an authoritative source. But some people are amazed that she should report five years after her investigators went to the alleged scene of the crime. Del Ponte says it proved impossible at the time to pursue a full investigation owing to insufficient evidence.
Kosovo Justice Minister Nekibe Kelmendi dismissed the allegations as "fabrications".
"I have had four private meetings with Carla Del Ponte and she never once mentioned any such allegations," she told Associated Press.
She criticized Del Ponte "for writing about issues that were not turned into official charges".
Albania's former prime minister, Pandeli Majko, who held the post during the Kosovo war and its aftermath, rejected Del Ponte's claims as "strange stories, a fantasy".
On Tuesday the Slovak foreign affairs minister, Jan Kubis, told the Council of Europe that Del Ponte's allegations risked weakening the credibility of the UN tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
However, families of missing Serbs accuse the prosecutor of failing to take action even though they have provided the names of 300 people they say were involved in the kidnapping of Serbs.
swissinfo, Simon Bradley with agencies
INETERNATIONAL CRIMINAL TRIBUNAL FOR THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA (ICTY)
The ICTY was established by Resolution 827 of the UN Security Council in May 1993.
Based in The Hague, it is the first international body for the prosecution of war crimes since the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials held after the Second World War.
The tribunal has jurisdiction over individuals responsible for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in the territory of former Yugoslavia after January 1, 1991.
Several thousand people, mostly Albanians, died in Kosovo's 1998-1999 war. Some 1,500 Albanians and 500 Serbs and other nationalities are still missing.
CONTEXT
Carla Del Ponte was born in 1947 in Bignasco, in the southern Swiss canton of Ticino. She studied international law in Bern, Geneva and Britain.
In 1981 she became Ticino's chief prosecutor, where she became well known for her fight against money laundering, organised crime and gun running.
Del Ponte was Swiss federal prosecutor from 1994-9, to a mixed reception, with some accusing her of "activism".
In 1999 the then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed her chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. During her eight years, she put Slobodan Milosevic in the dock, but he died before a verdict was reached. She was unable to capture the other two genocide suspects, Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic.
She left this post at the end of 2007. In January she took up her new job as Swiss ambassador to Argentina.
LINKS
- International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (http://www.un.org/icty/)
- Swiss foreign ministry (http://www.eda.admin.ch/eda/en/home.html)
- Serbian government (http://www.srbija.sr.gov.yu/?change_lang=en)
- Kosovo government (http://www.ks-gov.net/portal/eng.htm)
- Ruth-Gaby Vermot-Mangold's Council of Europe 2003 report on organ trafficking (http://assembly.coe.int/documents/workingdocs/doc03/edoc9822.htm)
- Human Rights Watch (http://www.hrw.org/)
URL of this story:http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swissinfo.html?siteSect=105&sid=8983195
16 April 2008
The situation of Serbia and of the Serbs
Alex
Date: Apr 16, 2008 6:28 PM
Subject: RE-POST:
The situation of Serbia and of the Serbs
Body: Go to this site for some news on Serbia.
It might open your eyes to what's happening!!
www.serbianna.com
Great articles. Almost everything you'd need to educate people on what is going on. Today the Serbs are the new Czechoslovakians. When Hitler carved up Czechoslovakia in 1938, the world did nothing and in fact even made it easier on him. He had sway and forced many to just keep silent and "go along with the crime." Today America is doing the exact same thing. Today it's forcing European nations to recognize independence. Today America is pulling the strings and forcing us to give up the most precious part of our history and culture. And it's using puppets in Serbian politics to pull it off. Dont' for a second think that Boris Tadic isn't a stooge. A puppet of the West. He will sell Kosovo off for the EU and pretend to "feel your pain" like a Clinton! The Clintons were all about fake tears and fake patriotism. There will be a lot of talk about how they are TRYING to save Serbia, but it will be just talk. And maybe the radicals are not any better, but at least they are standing for something more principled!! They are standing for culture, history, pride, and honor.
What's happening in Kosovo today is a great injustice, but no one cares because the Serbs are simply not really showing much outrage. Did we cut off the Shiptars electricity? Nope. We gave them plenty of light to have those parties. Did we put an embargo on them and cut them off from trade? Nope. We're still doing business. I just feel like nothing has been done expect more talk. I'm not suggesting war. I'm simply suggesting "SOMETHING" be done! Those who rioted in Kosovo against the UN removing the Serbs from the court did a good job. I'm surprised, and sad, that the Russians didn't do much. Not with military, but maybe sending in some people.
It seemed that the KFOR troops got away with attacking the Serbs in the North!
Then there are those guys who burned the embassy and went on a riot, I would give them medals. Some may have been just doing it because it was "fun" and didn't really care about the significance, but I feel like those who did do it out of anger are ok in my book. What that incident exposed was an America that is criminal. It complained that WE were breaking international law by allowing that!! And yet, this is the same country that just broke international law to take Kosovo from us! Do you see the irony there? Or how about this so-called court, the Hague Tribunal. It has prosecuted more Serbs than all other parties put together. And yet... the CROATS committed the greatest act of ethnic cleansing of the Serbs. The single worst act of ethnic cleansing was committed against the Serbs in Krajina. And yet... WE greatly outnumber the Croats in Hague suspects. Then comes Bosnia, which was allies with Al'Queda and even had some of the same men who attacked America fighting for the Bosnian Side! Yet, WE are the bad guys!! The second in command of Al'Queda has a Serbian bullet in his leg. He got it fighting in Bosnia. And yet... WE are the ones who are the most guilty in the Hague.
This is the same court that has yet to put ONE American on the stand for all the crimes against international law dating back to the 1999 war! Let's not even bring up Iraq!!! How many Bosnia's is that? Over half a million died in Iraq so far, maybe a million. How many died in Bosnia? Oh no, not 500,000... not 250.000... but only 98,000!!! And of that number, 35,000 were Serbs!
So I have trouble seeing how we CAN cooperate. Is agreeing to hand over our citizens to a bullshit court really right? I don't think so. Fuck the Hague Tribunal and the men who made it up. Those men, by the way, are American and German and many other Westerners. The court is designed to make US look guilty, so that history documents it that way, you know... the way history documented how the Americans HAD TO use the atom bomb to stop the war with Japan... regardless of the fact that the war was pretty much over and there was no need to use the bomb! But history doesn't really focus on that. You need to investigate a little and find that part of history. So the Serbs will be looked at as the bad guys in the wars. And the Americans will look like SAVIORS. Those who did what they could to prevent everything and help the poor innocent people. If you wanted the truth, you'd have to search for it. You'd find out that it was the Americans, along with the Germans, who started the break up of Yugoslavia. You'll also find stories of CIA training the KLA to fight the Serbs in Kosovo, which lead to the NATO bombing! And there will be stories of how the Americans told Izetbegovic to NOT sign a peace deal with the Serbs in Bosnia in 1993, two years the war went on and thousands more died. But you'll never hear about the American responsibility.
So if I know all of that to be true, then how on Earth can I call myself a Serb and not care about that injustice, not hate Boris Tadic for selling out to the Americans, and not be for the radicals. When a person is being kicked, you don't just take it, you fight back. You become more patriotic. That's how you fight back. You care. You need to be aware.
Mexican drug cartels and terrorist are recruiting for more fighters to train as soldiers
Mexican drug cartels and terrorist are recruiting for more fighters to train as soldiers
Wednesday, 16 April 2008 Michael Webster: Investigative Reporter
Mexican drug cartels are advertising for young men to come and join their ranks to fight the Mexican army. The ads and banners premise those who join will make good money have food and a place to stay even while in training.
Mexican drug cartels according to recent press reports have military style training camps on and near the border with the United States. These Training camps are for military-style killers. Federal authorities say these camps have Afghanistan and other middle eastern instructors who teach the latest military fighting tactics that are utilized in Iraq and Afghanistan by the Islamic radicals that are fighting and killing American and allied troops in those countries. Mexican officials admit they know of special training camps in the Mexican states of Tamaulipas and Michoacan, where newly recruited Zetas take intensive six-week training courses in weapons, tactics and intelligence gathering.
Iran is believed providing at least some of the money for this recruiting and training program. The training camps are teaching hit and run gorilla technique's. Cells of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) have sent their seasoned veterans to oversee the training of the new troops and to direct the war against the Mexican government on behalf of the Mexican Cartels. Trained fighters from al-Qaida, Hizballah (Party of God) Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement) and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have been seen in Mexico and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has reported cells from these terrorist organizations are believed here in the U.S. as well. According to a well placed CIA operative.
The El Paso Journal has been told by an anonymous caller who claims to be an Lt. of a Mexican cartel said in advance, "that the Mexican drug cartels would be advertising for recruits to train as cartel soldiers to fight the Mexican army which has been sent to the border with the U.S. to extinguish the Mexican drug cartels". Just today a week or so since he made the predictions banners where string across a main artery in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico advertising for recruits. He also said they would be advertising on the internet which has also happened. His predictions have been accurate so far. He told of the Mexican army coming to each border town before they did. The Journal has not reported any of his predictions to date without confirmation from other independent unrelated and reliable sources.
The Mexican government first realized that Islamic radical militants were already starting to infiltrate the country in statements by high-ranking Mexican officials prior to and following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks indicated "that Islamic extremist organizations has sought to establish a presence in Mexico".
Former Mexican national security adviser and ambassador to the United Nations, Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, stated, that "Spanish and Islamic terrorist groups are using Mexico as a refuge… In light of this situation, there are continuing investigations aimed at dismantling these groups so that they may not cause problems". He also mentioned that the terrorist groups in question are located in the northern part of the country. "Islamic people" in Mexico sparked speculation among observers that the Lebanese Shi'ite terrorist organization Hizbollah have established cells in Mexico.
Remarks made by Mexican public officials indicate the real possibility that al Qaeda cells are present in Mexico and could potentially attempt to cross the U.S. southwest border to conduct additional attacks.
The former director of Mexico's Center for Intelligence and National Security (Centro de Inteligencia y Seguridad Nacional—Cisen), Eduardo Medina Mora, remarked that the possibility of an al Qaeda attack against the United States launched from Mexico "could not be ruled out."
National Migration Institute (Instituto Nacional de Migracion—INM) official Felipe Urbiola Ledezma made more alarming statements during remarks to the press, Urbiola said, "We have in Mexico people linked to terrorism and we are constantly observing unusual immigration flows…[people connected to] ETA, Hizbollah and even some with links to Usama Bin Laden."
Other terrorist and criminal groups are in Mexico including the Russian mafia groups such as the Poldolskaya, Mazukinskaya, Tambovskaya, and Izamailovskaya have been detected in Mexico. The Moscow-based Solntsevskaya gang is also reported to be present in the country, as are other mafia gangs from Chechnya, Georgia, Armenia, Lithuania, Poland Croatia, Serbia, Hungary, Albania, and Rumania. Their major activities include drug and arms trafficking, money laundering, prostitution, trafficking in women from Eastern and Central Europe and Russia, alien smuggling, kidnapping, and credit card fraud.
Reforma a leading Mexican newspaper reported that U.S. intelligence agencies had detected a partnership between the Tijuana-based Arellano-Felix Organization (AFO) and Russian mafia groups based in southern California. In a separate story, Reforma reported that members of the former KGB-affiliated Kurganskaya group in San Diego had met with AFO operative Humberto Rodríguez Banuelos.
Reforma reported that for at least the last ten years the Russian mafia was supplying Mexican drug traffickers with radars, automatic weapons, grenade launchers, and small submersibles in exchange for cocaine, amphetamines, and heroin. It cited a 1996 sting operation in which undercover DEA agents posing as Russian mafia members sold Carillo Fuentes operatives 300 AK-47s and ammunition in Costa Rica.
Even ten years ago, ten Russians, including four known members of the Russian mafia, were arrested at Mexico City's international airport when they arrived on a KLM flight from Amsterdam. The mafia members included Aleksandr Zakharov, one of the leaders of the Moscow mafia and founder of the Uralinvest, known to have a principal role in organized crime in Russia. Another detainee was Nicolay Novikov, a Uralinvest director who had been imprisoned on three previous occasions for arms trafficking. A third was Yevgeniy Sazhayev, who had been arrested on two previous occasions for drug trafficking. The fourth was Vladimir Titov, wanted for various assassinations and who had escaped from several Russian prisons with the help of the mafia. The four men, who were traveling with six women, were apparently en route to Acapulco and Cancún. The group was reportedly deported. The Interpol head in Mexico, Juan Manuel Ponce, corroborated accounts that the group had been carrying arms and a substantial amount of cash.
According to Mexican analyst Jorge Fernández Méndez, the Russian mafia bosses had come to Mexico in order to mediate in the gang war being fought between the CFO and various other groups for control of drug trafficking routes through Mexico in the wake of the death of Alejandro Paez.
It is well known that the Russian mafia is deeply entrenched in the criminal fabric of the Mexican drug cartels and still today plays an important roll in providing guns and other weapons to the cartels and are purveyors of, drug smuggling, money laundering, prostitution, trafficking in women from Eastern and Central Europe and Russia, alien and terrorist smuggling, kidnappings for ransom.
The self proclaimed Mexican drug cartel Lt. says," that we will be offering Mexican soldiers very attractive pay packages and other benefits to cross over and go to work for us". He told the journal we can look for that new development to be happening soon. He also predicts that "active current duty Mexican soldiers and Mexican Federal Police officers will be killed by well armed and trained cartel soldiers".
Sources:
Hundreds being rounded- up and many Arrested in Juarez Mexico,The U.S. placed Mexico under a travel alert As Thousands of Armed Mexican Troops Patrol the Streets of Juarez, Linking of drug cartels on the Texas border with Middle East terrorist,
President Bush's top intelligence aide has confirmed that Iraqi terrorists have been captured coming into the United States from Mexico Americans Being Kidnapped, Held and killed in Mexico.
They're known as "Los Zetas
Reforma Reforma Mexico City Newspaper.
Library of Congress Federal Research Division: Terrorism and Crime ...
www.cnn.com
© Michael Webster - All Rights Reserved
America's leading authority on Venture Capital/Equity Funding. A trustee on some of the nations largest trade Union funds. A noted Author, Lecturer, Educator, Emergency Manager, Counter-Terrorist, War on Drugs and War on Terrorist Specialist, Business Consultant, Newspaper Publisher. Radio News caster. Labor Law generalist, Teamster Union Business Agent, General Organizer, Union Rank and File Member Grievances Representative, NLRB Union Representative, Union Contract Negotiator, Workers Compensation Appeals Board Hearing Representative. Investigative Reporter for print, electronic and on-line News Agencies.
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