U.S. needs to stay out of Balkan feuds

U.S. needs to stay out of Balkan feuds

By WILLIAM S. LIND

Published: May 14, 2009 at 2:28 PM

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WASHINGTON, May 14 (UPI) -- A story I read years ago culminated with the protagonist holed up in a cheap hotel in the Balkans, listening unwillingly through the paper-thin wall as the man in the room next door beat his wife. As he pummeled her, she cried again and again, "Balkan! Balkan!" "Balkan," it seems, may be a term of opprobrium even in the Balkans.

Few episodes in American history have been more Balkan than our late war there. In case the folly of the war in Iraq and the futility of the war in Afghanistan have caused Americans to forget, the Clinton administration bombed Serbia for almost three months, for reasons no one quite remembers. Somewhere around 5,000 Serbian civilians were killed, and much of an already poor country's economic infrastructure was wrecked. As usual, the bombing had virtually no effect on military targets.

The Serbs caved when the Russians pulled the rug out from under them and the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization dropped its most extreme demands. NATO could have gotten the same deal with no bombing, had the initial ultimatum to Serbia not been written to make acceptance impossible.

The truce, which is the most one can get in Balkan wars, required Serbian forces to evacuate the Serbs' ancestral homeland, Kosovo. That turned Kosovo's remaining Serbian civilians over to the tender mercies of the Albanians, who promptly ethnically cleansed most of them while NATO forces stood by. Serbia did not renounce its claim to Kosovo; no Serbian government could do that and survive.

Now, it seems, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wishes to revisit the scene of the crime. Perhaps looking about for something more promising than fighting Pashtuns, she is rumored to want another round with the Serbs. The demands, this time, are to be Serbian recognition of Kosovo's "independence." But Kosovo is not a country and never has been; there are no Kosovars, only Serbs and Albanians who live in Kosovo.

Clinton also wants the destruction of Republika Serbska, the Serbian portion of Bosnia. The effect would be to delegitimize the current moderate Serbian government and drive the remaining Serbs in Kosovo and Bosnia out as refugees.

Only people as shallow and self-absorbed as the Clintons could want to mess around in the Balkans. Talk about smoking in the powder magazine. The potential for disaster is always high, and the effects can spread, as the catastrophe of World War I between 1914 and 1918 might remind us.

In fact, the two previous rounds of Balkan fighting and American and NATO meddling since 1995 have left unstable situations needing only a spark to erupt. Bosnia is a hothouse creation, a figment of the globalist elite's imagination. Like Oakland, Calif., there is no there there. It is a Croat-Muslim "federation" that neither party accepts. The Croats want out, and the Muslims hate the Croats. All that keeps the lid on is the money that pours from the foreign troops who occupy the place.

Kosovo remains a festering boil, home to jihadists, drug distribution networks and other fourth-generation war elements of every sort. Serbia won't give it up, and the Albanians will not rest until every Serb is gone or dead and every Serbian church or cultural monument obliterated.

Clinton wants to push the United States back into this beehive, or so the rumor mill in Washington has it. We must pray that adults somewhere in the Obama administration won't let the children again set fire to the house so they can roast marshmallows over the embers. A few folks who, unlike the Clintons, know something of Balkan history are sponsoring a conference on Capitol Hill on May 27 to urge that we let sleeping dragons lie. Let's hope that for once someone listens.

--

(William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation.)

http://www.upi.com/Security_Industry/2009/05/14/US-needs-to-stay-out-of-Balkan-feuds/UPI-98351242325736/2/

The Hague: a tool of ‘legal vengeance’

This  article is an absolute gem. Phil Hammond writes with such 

devastating clarity. This abomination of a court has gone too far 

this time!

---

Wednesday 13 May 2009

The Hague: a tool of 'legal vengeance'

ESSAY: The ICTY's Kafkaesque decision to bump up a prisoners' sentence by 12 years shows that it is nothing like a proper court of law.
Philip Hammond

Imagine that you are convicted of a crime and sentenced to five years' imprisonment. But, just as you are about to finish serving your time, the court decides that its original verdict wasn't harsh enough and sends you back to prison for a further 12 years.

It's the sort of nightmarish thing you might think could happen only in a totalitarian regime. Yet it happened last week at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, a court fêted by its supporters as a model of international justice.

The target of the ICTY's Kafkaesque brand of 'justice' was Veselin Šljivančanin, a former officer in the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), who was originally convicted in September 2007 of 'aiding and abetting torture' during Croatia's war of secession from the federal Yugoslav state in 1991. At the time of his conviction, Šljivančanin had already been in the ICTY's custody for more than four years. He was released at the end of 2007, pending appeal. But last week the ICTY's Appeals Chamber overturned his original five-year sentence and imposed a 17-year term of imprisonment, while dismissing all counts of appeal entered by Šljivančanin and his co-defendant and former superior officer, Mile Mrkšić.

The Appeals Chamber's decision was not based on any new facts. No fresh evidence was brought to light to challenge the original verdict. The Appeals judges themselves noted that the 2007 judgement 'did not err in its factual findings'. Nevertheless, a majority of them (with two out of five judges dissenting) agreed with the prosecutor that 'a five years' imprisonment sentence does not adequately reflect the level of gravity of the crimes' (1).

The ICTY gave two key reasons for its new sentence. First, it argued that Šljivančanin had been wrongly acquitted at his original trial of aiding and abetting murder. On the basis of nothing more than the record of its own trial acquitting him of this charge, the ICTY now found him guilty. Second, it asserted that the five-year term imposed in 2007 – for aiding and abetting torture – had to be revised because it was not clear whether the judges had given sufficient weight to the suffering of the victims and their families. Both of these spurious arguments reveal more about the tribunal's flaws than about Šljivančanin's culpability.

The 'hospital massacre'

Šljivančanin's case concerns what is often – sensationally and misleadingly – referred to as the Vukovar 'hospital massacre'. You might imagine him marauding through wards attacking doctors and patients. Over the years, that is what many journalists and commentators have imagined. In the Observer, for example, Tim Judah described how 'Yugoslav army commanders went into the hospital and dragged out 200 of the wounded and hospital staff… beat them and shot them dead' (2). In the Telegraph, Julius Strauss wrote that Serbian forces 'took nearly 300 wounded from the hospital and executed them' (3). Such 'reports' bear little resemblance to what happened back in 1991.

After prolonged fighting, Croatian forces surrendered the city of Vukovar to the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), on 18 November 1991. The JNA took prisoners of war to the nearby village of Ovčara and kept them there overnight before transferring them to a POW facility at Sremska Mitrovica in Serbia, where they were to be held with a view to arranging a future prisoner-exchange with Croatia.

Some Croatian fighters, however, had taken refuge in the city's hospital, hoping to be evacuated along with its civilian occupants to Croatian-held territory. On 20 November the JNA apprehended those in the hospital whom they suspected of being enemy combatants – over 200 men and two women – and took them to the local barracks. Contrary to what was often claimed in media reports after the event, these were not civilians seized on a pretext. The ICTY itself accepts that 'the evidence reveals that at least the vast majority of them, if not all, had been involved in Croat military formations active in the fighting at Vukovar' (4).

The original intention was evidently to send them to Sremska Mitrovica like the earlier group of POWs. But Serbian paramilitaries and local Territorial Defence men were out for revenge. The local Serbian civil authorities – an ad hoc government formed in opposition to Croatia's nationalist regime – were also unhappy about prisoners being transported out of the area. The prisoners were instead sent to the site at Ovčara used the previous day.

There, the POWs were severely beaten by the local Territorial Defence and paramilitaries. The JNA military police who had been sent to guard the prisoners made what the ICTY called 'inconsistent and insufficient' efforts to protect them from abuse. That evening, Mrkšić ordered the withdrawal of JNA troops from Ovčara. This left the prisoners at the mercy of the local Territorial Defence and paramilitaries, who subsequently took the revenge they had been waiting for and massacred them.

Neither Šljivančanin nor Mrkšić ordered, participated in, or was even present at the killing of prisoners. The charge of aiding and abetting murder – for which Šljivančanin was acquitted in 2007, but of which both men are now thought guilty by the ICTY – hinges on Mrkšić ordering the withdrawal of JNA personnel from Ovčara and Šljivančanin failing to disobey that order. In extending Šljivančanin's sentence, the Appeals Chamber found that, 'even though [he] no longer had de jure authority over the military police deployed at Ovčara, he could have informed [them] that Mr Mrkšić's order was in breach of the overriding obligation under the laws and customs of war to protect the prisoners of war' (5).

It is worth emphasising that this crucial decision was based, not on any new information or evidence, but simply on re-reading the trial record from 2007 when Šljivančanin had been acquitted of aiding and abetting murder. As one of the dissenting Appeals judges, Fausto Pocar, observed, the Appeals Chamber has made 'a conviction based on the trial record without having observed the witness testimony or the presentation of evidence, factors which may be particularly important in assessing witness credibility'. Noting the past 'inconsistent' practice and 'oscillating jurisprudence' of the Appeals Chamber, Pocar also disputed whether it even had the authority under its own rules to enter new convictions or impose longer sentences.

The other dissenting judge, Andrésia Vaz, went even further, pointing out that the new judgement was based on 'speculative suggestions as to what Šljivančanin should or could have done to prevent the crimes'. In particular, the Appeals Chamber's verdict hangs on the assertion that Šljivančanin could and should have acted after he learned about the decision to withdraw the military police from Ovčara, but does not establish when he learned about it. Complaining of a 'lack of precision' and an absence of 'clear evidence', Vaz doubted whether Šljivančanin had either the opportunity or the means to prevent the murders, and concluded that the prosecution had therefore 'far from [succeeded] in eliminating "all reasonable doubt"' as to his guilt (6).

The Appeals Chamber has substantially increased Šljivančanin's sentence despite the protestations of one of its own judges that it lacks the power to do so. And one of its key justifications for this decision is that Šljivančanin committed a crime of omission, of which he was previously acquitted, by failing to prevent murders carried out in his absence by people not under his command. As Judge Vaz put it, this decision violates the 'fundamental principle of criminal law' that 'where there is doubt, there can be no conviction entered'.

A hierarchy of victimhood

The charge on which Šljivančanin was found guilty in 2007 was another crime of omission: aiding and abetting torture by failing to ensure that, when JNA personnel were still at Ovčara, they protected the prisoners from abuse at the hands of the Territorial Defence and paramilitaries.

Media reports of last week's verdict have often noted that public opinion in Croatia was very critical of Šljivančanin's original five-year sentence for this crime as too lenient (7). The Appeals Chamber seemed to acknowledge this in explaining why the sentence now needed to be more than tripled, emphasising that it was unclear whether the original judgement had 'weighed the consequences of the torture upon the victims and their families, or whether or to what extent it considered the particular vulnerability of the prisoners, in the determination of Mr Šljivančanin's sentence' (8).

This is such a specious argument it defies belief. First, it is obvious that that original judgment did take account of the suffering of victims – by noting, for example, that 'close family members have been left without their loved ones. In almost all cases the anguish and hurt of such tragedy has been aggravated by uncertainty about the fate which befell these victims.' (9) According to the Appeals Chamber, such statements at the 2007 trial did not constitute full enough consideration of victims' suffering. Apparently, the 'correct' level of consideration could only have led to a 17-year sentence.

Second, it is clear from the ICTY's track record that some victims do not count as much as others. In 2006, for example, the ICTY convicted Bosnian Muslim commander Naser Orić of failing to prevent the ill-treatment and murder of Serbian prisoners by men under his command. The sentence? Two years. Since he had already been detained for longer than that during the trial, he was immediately released. Last summer, Orić's case also went to the Appeals Chamber, which promptly overturned the conviction and acquitted him. Orić became notorious for murdering Serb civilians during the Bosnian war: he even made bizarre snuff videos as trophies and showed them to journalists as he boasted about his exploits (10). In his case, however, the victims seem to have weighed hardly at all in the deliberations of the court.

It is worth asking why, as the ICTY puts it, there were such 'intense feelings of animosity harboured by the Serb Territorial Defence and paramilitary forces against members of the Croat forces' in Vukovar. This question is seldom asked, probably because the evil of the Serbs is simply assumed. Yet it was not just the pent-up anger and tension generated by weeks of fighting that sealed the fate of the Croatian POWs at Ovčara, but the long-standing grievances of local Serbs. As one reporter noted in 1999, 'Before the war, Vukovar was one of the most ethnically integrated cities in Croatia… But the relative harmony that prevailed here since World War II was upset in the late 1980s by an outburst of Croatian nationalism.' (11) This article was a rare exception to the general trend, which is to ignore or deny the plight of Serbs under Croatian nationalist rule.

Long prior to the battle of Vukovar – certainly since the election of Croatia's nationalist leader Franjo Tudjman in spring 1990 – Serbs in Croatia had become an increasingly persecuted minority, sacked from their jobs, driven out of their homes, attacked and killed. Even before the outbreak of war, 20,000 Serbs had fled Croatia (12). Tudjman's government revived the symbols of Croatia's fascist Second World War regime, which had exterminated Serbs along with Jews, Gypsies and other 'undesirables'. To ethnic Serbs in Croatia, there was plenty of evidence to suggest that they were once again becoming 'unpersons'.

The ICTY has always claimed to act on behalf of victims. 'For us the victims are the most important', said chief prosecutor Richard Goldstone 1996: 'The victims of the Yugoslav war want legal vengeance.' (13) The tribunal emphasises its advocacy for victims because it stands outside the societies to which it applies its 'international law'. Lacking any real connection with the people over whom it sits in judgement, the claim to speak for victims is a way to assert its legitimacy. Yet it is difficult to see how a mission of 'legal vengeance' is compatible with dispensing impartial justice. In practice, it leads to double standards and politicised judgements.

A political tool

Michael Scharf, a lawyer who helped to write the original ICTY statute for the US State Department, has acknowledged that 'the tribunal was widely perceived within the [US] government as little more than a public relations device and as a potentially useful policy tool'. The tribunal's usefulness in this regard was demonstrated most vividly during the 1999 Kosovo conflict, when it indicted Serbian president Slobodan Milošević at the very moment when NATO was bombing his country. For the British and American governments, Scharf observed, the ICTY was 'a useful tool in their efforts to demonise the Serbian leader and maintain public support for NATO's bombing campaign' (14).

From the outset, the ICTY has been fundamentally shaped by a simplistic, good-vs-evil narrative of the Yugoslav wars, perpetuated by Western politicians and the media. The 'hospital massacre' was one of the key events in establishing that narrative, and was one of the main events highlighted by the US State Department in 1992 when it first suggested that Milošević should be indicted for war crimes (15).

In 1999 it was raised again by those seeking to promote the argument that Milošević should be indicted. Prominent British human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson claimed to know of 'compelling evidence that he personally approved the massacre of 200 patients at Vukovar hospital' (16). Once the indictment had been issued, Robertson was beside himself, urging that Milošević should also be 'charged with ordering the Vukovar hospital massacre in 1991, when his army machine-gunned 260 Croatian patients, doctors and nurses into a mass grave' (17). This scenario existed only in Robertson's imagination. The beating and execution of prisoners of war is surely bad enough. Yet advocates of 'international justice' often appear driven to ladle on the horror in order to sustain their own fantasies of righteousness.

One key rationale often given for the existence of the ICTY is that the states involved in the Yugoslav wars would be incapable of holding the guilty to account themselves. Yet more than a dozen of those who – unlike Šljivančanin and Mrkšić – were directly involved in the mistreatment and murder of POWs at Ovčara have been convicted and sent to prison by Serbian courts. The ICTY, meanwhile, pursues its peculiar, politicised 'legal vengeance', supposedly on behalf of selected, 'worthy' victims.

In reality, the ICTY serves no useful purpose except as a political tool of its Western sponsors. In common with other international tribunals, as it sits in judgement on other people's wars it allows Western leaders to set themselves up as morally superior to weaker states, including those they bomb.

Philip Hammond is reader in media and communications at London South Bank University, and is the author of Media, War and Postmodernity, published by Routledge in 2007 (Buy this book from Amazon(UK)).

(1) Appeals Chamber Judgement, 5 May 2009 (pdf)

(2) This war criminal must be brought to justice, Tim Judah, Observer, 4 October 1998

(3) Massacre that started long haul to justice, Julius Strauss, Daily Telegraph, 30 June 2001

(4) Trial Chamber Judgement, 27 September 2007 (pdf). The judgement also notes that 'the two Croat women included with the men were also thought by the JNA to have been involved in the Croatian forces'

(5) Appeals Chamber Judgement Summary, 5 May 2009 (pdf)

(6) Appeals Chamber Judgement, 5 May 2009 (pdf)

(7) See, for example Hague triples Vukovar jail term, BBC News, 5 May 2009

(8) Appeals Chamber Judgement Summary, 5 May 2009 (pdf)

(9) Trial Chamber Judgement, 27 September 2007 (pdf)

(10) 'Weapons, cash and chaos lend clout to Srebrenica's tough guy', John Pomfret, Washington Post, 16 February 1994

(11) 'In the Misery of Vukovar Lies an Awful Model for Postwar Kosovo', Blaine Harden, International Herald Tribune, 3—4 April 1999

(12) 'A Brief History of Ethnic Cleansing', by Andrew Bell-Fialkoff, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 72, No. 3, 1993, p118

(13) Quoted in Fools' Crusade, by Diana Johnstone, Pluto Press, 2002, p96

(14) Indicted for war crimes, then what?, Michael Scharf, Washington Post, 3 October 1999

(15) Michael Evans and Jamie Dettmer, US wants Serbia war crimes trials, The Times, 17 December 1992

(16) 'Should Milosevic be indicted as a war criminal?', Geoffrey Robertson, Guardian, 6 April 1999

(17) 'No right without wrong, no peace without justice', Geoffrey Robertson, Independent on Sunday, 30 May 1999

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/6657/

 

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/

6657/

It's time to end the Cold War

 

It's time to end the Cold War

JAMES BISSETT

From Tuesday's Globe and Mail

May 12, 2009 at 12:00 AM EDT

NATO supporters frequently claim the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was the greatest military alliance of all time since it won a major war without firing a shot and without suffering any casualties. The war referred to was the Cold War and, until the disintegration of the Soviet Union, that claim was valid. However, after the Warsaw Pact armies went home, NATO continued to act as if the Cold War were still being fought - and it still does.

In 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down, the issue of whether a united Germany should become a member of NATO became an immediate issue. The Russians, as might be expected, had serious misgivings, but these were overcome with the assurances given to Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev by George H. W. Bush that if the new Germany were allowed to join NATO, the alliance would not expand eastward.

The Russians also knew that Article 1 of the NATO treaty stipulated that NATO would refrain from using or threatening to use force in the resolution of international disputes and would always act in accordance with the UN Charter. Article 1 acted as a security blanket for the Russians since they could always use their veto power in the Security Council should NATO threaten to use military force.

All of this changed in March, 1999. In that fateful month, NATO decided to ignore its first article and, without consulting the United Nations, began the bombing of Serbia, allegedly to prevent genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Albanian population of Kosovo. This was a historic turning point. The alliance was suddenly converted from a purely defensive organization, acting in accordance with the principles of the UN Charter, into an aggressive military machine that could use force whenever and wherever it might choose to do so.

In the same month, despite the promises previously given, NATO was joined by three former Warsaw Pact members: Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Since then the Baltic states, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia have been given membership. Russia has been surrounded by NATO countries - some of them for historical reasons - hostile to Russia. Adding to Russian anxieties is the determination of the United States to have Ukraine and Georgia admitted to the alliance.

The U.S.'s unilateral withdrawal from the anti-ballistic missile treaty in 2002 and, more recently, its intention to place anti-missile shields in Poland and the Czech Republic, have added to Russia's concerns about NATO's true intentions. The decision of most NATO countries to recognize the independence of Kosovo, in violation of the UN Charter and the Helsinki Final Accords, was also seen as a signal to the Russians that NATO had become a law unto itself.

The violation of Serbia's territorial integrity was simply ignored despite a UN resolution reaffirming Serbian sovereignty and then-Russian president Vladimir Putin's warning that a unilateral declaration of independence would set a dangerous precedent. He cautioned that Russia would follow by recognizing the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. NATO dismissed Mr. Putin's warning, apparently assuming Russian interests did not need to be taken into account.

This dangerous assumption was abruptly proven wrong in August of last year when, on the eve of the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing, Georgian armed forces suddenly attacked South Ossetia. Moscow reacted with speed and force. Within days, the Georgian armed forces were routed and Russian forces had complete control of South Ossetia.

NATO's reaction to this humiliating reversal was predictable. The United States and other NATO countries, supported almost unanimously by the Western media, condemned the Russian military action and expressed dismay and shock that Georgia's territorial integrity had been violated. The U.S. immediately promised $1-billion in aid to help Georgia rebuild.

In the months that have followed, there is little evidence NATO has learned anything. The U.S. is still pressing, despite German and French reservations, to get Georgia and Ukraine into NATO. The decision by NATO this month to hold military exercises in Georgia is a deliberate provocation to antagonize Russia. And the silly Cold War diplomatic game of mutually expelling diplomats is also back in fashion.

In a world struggling with financial and economic recession, continued bloodshed in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, a Pakistan on the verge of civil war, ongoing strife in the Middle East, and a hostile and perhaps soon to be nuclear-armed Iran - it is time for NATO to end the Cold War and make peace with Russia, a Russia that could prove to be one of the West's most useful and powerful allies in the years ahead.

James Bissett is former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090511.wcorussia12/BNStory/specialComment/home

Serbia backs Russia against NATO drills

Serbia backs Russia against NATO drills
30 April, 2009, 20:42
The Serbian Cabinet has confirmed that Serbia won’t take part in NATO-led drills in Georgia scheduled for May 6 through June 1.
Earlier in an interview with the B92 TV channel, Serbia’s Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic said: “nobody in Serbia will take part in those NATO-led drills in Georgia. The reason is that Russia said those military exercises pose a threat to its security,” reports the Ria Novosti news agency.
On Thursday the Moldovan government withdrew from the maneuvers without explanation. Earlier, the Baltic states of Latvia and Estonia, as well as Kazakhstan in central Asia announced that they were pulling out of the exercises.
It’s reported that Riga and Tallinn withdrew due to financial reasons while Astana has not commented on its decision not to take part.
Russia has strongly criticized the upcoming NATO-led drills, officially known as Cooperative Longbow 09/Cooperative Lancer 09. Moscow says the military exercises will further destabilize the region, the scene of an armed conflict less than a year ago.
Meanwhile, NATO still regards Georgia as a close partner.
According to Russia’s envoy to the alliance, Dmitry Rogozin, the issue was addressed at the official meeting of the Russia–NATO Council (the first since the conflict in South Ossetia) held in Brussels on Wednesday 29.
“NATO's point of view on Georgia puzzles us, since a major organisation like NATO could definitely show more flexibility. Everybody realises perfectly that there can be no normal relations with an aggressor. Still, there is one message in the final documents of the NATO summit in Strasbourg and in public speeches of NATO executives: that Georgia is an advanced partner who will have their support against all odds,” he said after the meeting.
Official co-operation between Russia and NATO only resumed recently after being suspended following the war in South Ossetia.
Rogozin acknowledged that Russia and the alliance "still have serious disagreements over the assessment of events in Georgia" and called on the Council to make a "professional, thorough and unemotional assessment of the events in August of last year".

http://www.russiatoday.com/Politics/2009-04-30/Serbia_backs_Russia_against_NATO_drills.html

EXCLUSIVE: Kosovo Liberation Army Ran Torture Camps in Albania

EXCLUSIVE: Kosovo Liberation Army Ran Torture Camps in Albania

Kukes, Bajram Curri, Tropoja, Kruma, Prizren, Pristina and Tirana 09 April 2009 By Altin Raxhimi, Michael Montgomery and Vladimir Karaj

The building that served as a KLA prison at the factory compound in Kukes


The Kosovo Liberation Army maintained a network of prisons in their bases in Albania and Kosovo during and after the conflict of 1999, eyewitnesses allege. Only now are the details of what occurred there emerging.
In a run-down industrial compound with shattered windows and peeling plaster in Kukes, Albania, chickens rummage for food and two trucks sit idle in a courtyard surrounded by rusted warehouses and a crumbling two-story supply building.

In the middle of the compound stands a cinderblock shack that was once the office of a mechanical plant that produced everything from manhole covers to elevator cages.

But, during the NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia, from March to June 1999, this facility took on another purpose. It was occupied by a guerrilla force, the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, as a support base for their operations across the border in Serbian-ruled Kosovo.

But the factory was not merely the headquarters for guerrillas fighting the regime of Slobodan Milosevic to secure the independence of Kosovo from Serbia.

It assumed more sinister purposes: dozens of civilians, mainly Kosovo Albanians suspected of collaboration, but also Serbs and Roma were held captive there, beaten and tortured. Some were killed, their remains never recovered. The men who allegedly directed the abuses were officers of the KLA.

At least 25 people were imprisoned in Kukes, witnesses say. Amongst them were three Kosovo Albanian women. In the camp at least 18 people were killed, while others were later rescued by NATO troops.

It appears that Kukes housed one of a number of secret detention centres in Albania and Kosovo, and that prisoners were transferred from one facility to another.

Even after the NATO interventions, a camp was maintained in Baballoq/Babaloc in Kosovo, holding around 30 Serb and Roma prisoners, whose current whereabouts are unknown. Other camps in Albania may have held Serbs kidnapped in Kosovo after the war, according to four sources.

The names of several alleged perpetrators have been known to UNMIK for some time. One of them is still holding a high position in the Kosovo judiciary, Balkan Insight understands.

Bislim Zyrapi, an official of the Kosovo Interior Ministry, who was responsible for KLA operations in Kukes, told Balkan Insight that there were no people killed, either at the base or outside of it.

Two of the KLA’s former top leaders rejected the allegations in separate interviews with the BBC.

Kosovo’s Prime Minister, Hashim Thaci, who was then the political director of the KLA, and Agim Ceku, former Prime Minister and former chief of the KLA headquarters, told the BBC they were not aware of any KLA prisons where captives were abused or where civilians were held.

Thaci said he was aware that individuals had “abused KLA uniforms” after the war, but said the KLA had distanced itself from such acts. He added that such abuse was “minimal”. Ceku said that the KLA fought a “clean war”.

However, Jose Pablo Baraybar, the chief of the Office of Missing Persons and Forensics within UNMIK for five years, says: “There were people that are certainly alive that were in Kukes, in that camp, as prisoners. Those people saw other people there, both Albanians and non-Albanians. There were members of the KLA leadership going through that camp. Many names were mentioned, and I would say that that is an established fact.”

Baraybar tracked missing citizens in Kosovo and across the border in Albania.

Karin Limdal, spokeswoman for the EU rule of law mission in Kosovo, EULEX, told Balkan Insight that the mission is aware of the allegations concerning the Kukes case, and that prosecutors are looking at the evidence to see if they can bring indictments.

YELLOW MERCEDES OF DEATH

These grave allegations about the Kukes camp, in the north west of Albania, are based on interviews with several sources: two eyewitnesses – one former inmate and one member of the KLA, records from a cemetery in Albania and UN documents that we have gained access to, which detail the testimonies of people ill-treated in Kukes.

Together, they paint a portrait of a brutal prison regime that is at odds with the claims of former KLA leaders, who say they adhered to international human rights conventions and never detained civilians.

The abuses in Kukes may not have been isolated events. According to former KLA fighters who talked to us, as well as independent testimony provided to UN investigators, the KLA maintained a loose network of at least six secret jails in the dozen or so bases they operated in Albania and the two they had in Kosovo during and after the 1999 war.

Those jails were used for interrogations that routinely included torture, according to sources interviewed for this story.

Most former KLA soldiers we interviewed are proud of their war with the Serbian forces, whose bloody actions forced the mass flight of hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanians from their homes in 1999.

But some said they felt shamed by what some KLA commanders and leaders had done under the cover of war.

“It didn’t seem strange at the time,” one former KLA soldier, who witnessed the events, said. “But now, looking back, I know that some of the things that were done to innocent civilians were wrong. But the people who did those things act as if nothing happened, and continue to hurt their own people, Albanians.”

Another eyewitness, a Kosovo Albanian, says he was held at the KLA base in Kukes on the pretext of being a Serbian spy, an allegation he vehemently denies.

This man, who did not wish to be named, described witnessing KLA soldiers abusing and torturing prisoners at the base for weeks, often under the supervision of KLA officers.

“I saw people being beaten, stabbed, hit with batons,” he said. “I saw people left without food for five or six days. I saw coffins being thrown in graves. I’ve seen people killed.”

This man claimed most of the captives held at Kukes were non-combatant civilians, mainly Albanians accused of working for the regime, and some Roma. There were also some KLA soldiers, imprisoned for disciplinary measures.

According to both sources, three prisoners were Kosovo Albanian women. Two were Roma from Prizren. The rest were young Kosovo Albanian males, aged between 20 and 27, all accused of collaborating with Serbian forces. The inmate said he also heard shouts in Serbian from prisoners who were being tortured a short distance away from the compound.

The inmate said that he heard “people crying and yelling at being tortured, and I could specifically distinguish native Serbian being spoken there.”

He said some Kosovo Albanian prisoners were shot or beaten to death on the base, while others were driven off in a yellow Mercedes. One Kosovo Albanian prisoner died in front of him and five other inmates, after being shot in the calf by his interrogators and then left untreated.

The records of the cemetery in Kukes shed light on the man who died after being shot in the calf.

According to cemetery records, he was buried on June 6th 1999, four days before Serbian forces pulled out of Kosovo, in a plot reserved for Kosovo Albanians who died in Albania during the conflict ,.

“Every time I saw the yellow Mercedes, someone was taken in that car and then I would never see that person again,” he said. “They were never found.”

The same former inmate said he believed the people had been taken captive for various reasons, which included revenge and greed, as well as allegations that they were Serbian spies.

One prisoner had worked as a policeman in the western town of Gjakova/Djakovica under the Milosevic regime. He was taken away in the yellow Mercedes and has not been seen since.

Another had been a teacher, whose apparent offence was to have a license to carry a gun issued by the Serbian authorities.

The inmate said he believed that more than 25 people were held there from March to June 1999, from the start of the NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia until NATO forces moved into Kosovo.

The inmates were mostly from the city of Prizren and surrounding villages. The KLA had apprehended them after waves of Kosovars entered Kukes during the NATO bombing. At least one was arrested as far away as Durres, or Lushnja, in central Albania, according to both sources.

Our source, who was an inmate, recalls another inmate, a Kosovo Albanian, yelling from the barred windows to the troops in the yard, telling them that if they killed him, he had six brothers who would avenge him. “What would you do about them?” he challenged them.

According to the same two sources, and UNMIK documents from their investigation into the case, some of the survivors were transferred in the aftermath of the war to detention cells at the police station in Prizren, in Kosovo.

On June 18th, they, and other people detained by the KLA in Prizren, were released by German KFOR troops, who stormed the building.

The same sources estimated that as many as 18 captives may have been killed in Kukes.
The source who was a member of the KLA said: “I understand that they had cooperated with the Serbs and had done a lot of harm. This would make people mad when one thinks of the massacres happening across the border. But their treatment was brutal. At times, I was sorry for them.”

The former inmate we spoke to was sceptical about whether any of the captives had actively collaborated with Serbian death squads.

“But even if they deserved punishment, no-one had the right to do that [torture] to someone [else],” he said. “No-one has the right to do such things to other human beings.”


A NETWORK OF CAMPS

Kukes was an important strategic location for the KLA. Weapons, uniforms, cash and fresh recruits all flowed through the warehouses and storage buildings at the site.

The base was also important for the KLA military police, which reportedly rounded up suspects from among the mass of civilians who fled to Albania, or were expelled by Serbian forces.

A unit of the Albanian army, stationed at the base in Kukes, assisted the KLA to set up its military police operations, according to several policemen we interviewed.

It appears that Kukes was one of many detention centres in Albania and Kosovo, and prisoners would be transferred from one to another.

Two captives were brought to Kukes from a similar KLA facility near the town of Burrel, where the KLA ran a barracks for training soldiers during the last two months of the war, said the former inmate.

“They told us about people being killed there, people put into lime pits there,” he said. “I could also see what was going on in Burrel from the state [in which] they were brought in... They’d been tortured badly.”

According to the UN documents, the interviews with KLA members and the inmate, other captives were transferred to Kukes from KLA facilities in at least two other places - Durres, and after the war, Prizren in Kosovo itself.

The KLA had intelligence units and military police in most bases they maintained in Albania.

Halil Katana, a military journalist from Tirana, in his authorised biography of Kudusi Lama, the commander of the Kukes division, ‘Kudusi Lama: War General’, writes: “Those units [of the KLA military police] played an important role in establishing the discipline in KLA groups trained in the Kukes area, and in seizing Serb agents who entered the country amongst refugees from Kosovo.”

These units maintained detainment cells in Babine, a logistics centre near the border region of Tropoja; in the training camp of Burrel and at a KLA base in Durres, according to our third source, another member of the KLA.

Bislim Zyrapi, currently an official at the Interior Ministry of Kosovo, was responsible for the KLA operations at the base in Kukes from early May to the end of the NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia on June 10th.

He says that the people detained at the jail in Kukes were soldiers with disciplinary problems, and that there were no people killed at the base, or outside of it. But he added that he found the KLA in disarray, with armed soldiers and individuals who wandered freely in town and elsewhere in Albania. “One of the first things I had to do was to discipline them,” he said.

PERPETRATORS AT LARGE

According to eyewitnesses, two Albanian citizens involved with the KLA took part in these interrogations.

One man, described as having long black hair, was especially brutal to the Roma from Prizren, according to one source.

One source said KLA fighters coming back from fighting in Kosovo sometimes took out their rage on the inmates.

The other said the prisoners were tortured into admitting they had cooperated with the Serbian state security forces, UDBA. The interrogators wanted to record the prisoners confessing collaboration with the Serbs.

The same sources that witnessed the base in Kukes, told us that the interrogators in Kukes were KLA officers who had been involved in the capture of suspected collaborators.
Both our sources concerning the base, identified several KLA officers involved in the abuses at Kukes.

One of them is currently in a top position in the judicial system in Kosovo.

We have withheld names of the alleged perpetrators, so as not to endanger our sources.

Some men involved in the abuses at Kukes were also involved in abducting Kosovo citizens after the war, according to former KLA soldiers we interviewed.

Their targets were not Albanian ‘traitors’, but Serbs or Roma who had remained in Kosovo after NATO troops entered the territory.

One Kosovo Albanian who returned to fight in Kosovo after spending many years abroad, told us he saw nearly 30 Serbs and Roma held in a KLA camp in Baballoq/Babaloc, near Decan in western Kosovo, after the war, in summer 1999.

He said he heard screams from the location and assumed the inmates were being tortured. When NATO patrols passed through the area, the prisoners were hidden in a workhouse, the same source added.

This former KLA fighter said he suspects the group was taken over the border to Albania and killed. “I never saw them again, never read anything about them in the newspaper,” he said. “So they probably disappeared into the mountains.”


Listen to Michael Montgormery on BBC

Read also:
Burrel: KLA Training Camp with Another Purpose?
The KLA: From Guerilla Wars to Party Plenums

Altin Raxhimi is a freelance journalist based in Tirana. Michael Montgomery is a special correspondent for the Center for Investigative Reporting in Berkeley, California. Vladimir Karaj is a reporter with ‘Korrieri’, a Tirana daily.

The research for this story was funded by the Alumni fund for the Balkan Fellowship for Journalism Excellence. Part of the funding was provided by SCOOP, a structure of the Danish Association for Investigative Journalism that helps fund investigative journalism in Eastern Europe.

© The full text of this article is the copyright of the Balkan Investigative Journalism Network, BIRN, and its authors. No part of this article may be reproduced in any form without the express permission of BIRN. Requests for syndication should be directed to ana@birn.eu.com

http://balkaninsight.com/en/main/news/18047/

Cancer: NATO’s time bomb in the Balkans

Cancer: NATO’s time bomb in the Balkans
24 March, 2009, 22:23

Tuesday marks the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the three-month NATO bombing campaign of the former Yugoslavia - and a decade later, the wounds of the war are still felt.
Throughout the areas which have been affected by NATO bombings, hundreds of people are dying of cancer. Experts say that this may be a result of uranium shells being used.
A little cemetery in Bratunac, Eastern Bosnia became the final resting place for a number of cancer victims. A local resident, who preferred to remain anonymous, gave RT the names of some who are buried there. He says they all died of cancer.
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Djoko Zelenovic, who worked in the local military repair factory, died from the disease at the age of 65. The 35 year-old mother of two small children also rests here.
There used to be no more than one or two funerals a year in this small Serbian village in Eastern Bosnia. Since NATO dropped bombs on Sarajevo in the summer of 1995, the number has climbed to as many as one or two deaths a month.
Nikola Zelenovic’s parents are buried here. He says they were healthy until the NATO bombings and is now spearheading an investigation.Nikola says that "my family lived throughout the war years in the town of Hadjici. My father was working in one of the factories there when NATO bombed it. His health problems started soon afterwards. He died from lung cancer. My mother died a year and a half after him from Leukemia. My parents were never sick before."
Starting on March 24th, 1999, for three months NATO bombed Serb targets in the Former Republic of Yugoslavia. Four years earlier its forces had bombed Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Their aim was to end the fighting between Serbs and Albanians who lived in the areas.
But they left a time bomb behind them. In the years that followed, hundreds of people living in the areas that were hit have died of cancerIn Kosovo, the number of cancer patients has grown three times over the last ten years, while in Bosnia-Herzegovina, already more than a thousand people have died from cancer.
Doctor Slavko Zdrale has treated several cancer patients over the past years and boldly advances theories on the subject: He told RT that “a few years ago we started noticing that there was as many as five times the number of people dying of different kinds of cancer as compared to the number of people who had been sick before the war.”
“We worked out that 90% of them came from areas NATO had bombed and from areas where ammunition with uranium was used. Nobody in the international community took much notice until Italian soldiers who were stationed in those areas started dying from cancer-related illnesses.”
In Pale, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the war crimes court is recording evidence of an increased number of cancer patients. The court says that the pieces of ammunition found in the bombed areas had a much higher level of radiation than is internationally allowed. Investigators are convinced that this radiation is the underlying cause of cancer.
Simo Tusevljak, the coordinator of the Research and documentation of war crimes, stated that “we believe that this was a deliberate attempt by NATO forces to kill as many people as possible. It was also a chance for the West to test new weapons.” .
“But there is nothing we can do," he added. "We cannot file any complaint against NATO because all those involved have diplomatic immunity. A NATO soldier can kill and never be prosecuted. But perhaps one day some senior officials from NATO who ordered the bombings will be prosecuted. I believe the order came from high up."
NATO hasn't commented on the claims and has dismissed Serbian and Italian investigations.There has been no other independent research conducted on the subject.
The little cemetery in Bratunac is already full. But locals fear the number of cancer victims will continue to grow for at least the next fifty years, or for as long as it takes for the air to clean.
Ten years after the NATO bombings, the alliance still has a lot to answer for. But no matter when those answers come (or whether they will come at all) they will be too late for the cancer victims.
http://www.russiatoday.ru/Top_News/2009-03-24/Cancer__NATO_s_time_bomb_in_the_Balkans.html

`Hushing up disappearances in Kosovo is betrayal`

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19 February, 2009, 08:55

Covering up the atrocities committed in Kosovo against the non-Albanian population is ultimately a betrayal of hopes of building a civilised society in Kosovo itself, believes independent filmmaker Ninoslav Randjelovic.

For the last decade Randjelovic has been producing films on the human rights of minorities living in Kosovo. His work has been shown all around the world.

RT: Where did the idea for your work come from?

NR: The essence of it has been an effort to document cases of severe human rights violation that was affecting and that has been affecting civilian population of Kosovo and Metohia particularly Serbian and the non-Albanian ethnic minority in Kosovo. To have it recorded as much as it can be recorded and brought to attention of whoever wants to see it.

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RT: You say that you are drawn to this work because were hearing reports that people had gone missing, but how in fact did this information even come through?

NR: Here in Belgrade I would learn about that only occasionally even though 1,300 people in such a short period of time had been kidnapped. Sometimes there were no photos of these people of course in the newspapers, sometimes names and nothing much more, or maybe a location where they were seen last time. In 1998 I went down there and tried to collect some information from the family members and that's how it all started – with the hope that if we bring to the world's attention what really is happening in these remote villages of Kosovo maybe the suffering of people will cease

RT: From the data that you collected what do you understand happened to these people? How did they go missing?

NR: Well, you know, lots of them had been just kidnapped outside. They were stopped at the road and then just abducted like that. But at that time it was like devastating for me even though I did record these facts, it seemed like nobody really cared about it. The lack of media attention to what was really going on in Kosovo is something that I think we can say made space for such terrible things to happen at the first place.

RT: Who did you understand kidnapped these 1,300 non-Albanians and why?

NR: According to the people I talked to, most likely paramilitary troops, KLA troops were the ones who were involved in this kidnapping process. But you know, the thing is, not a single person came back alive that we know of, so we can’t know that for sure.

RT: What did people suspect happened to them?

NR: We see that they have been killed Now there is legitimate concern that some of them were used to take organs from the body and killed later on.

RT: How lucrative a business is the trafficking of human organs and who's involved in it?

NR: Well now people say that – you know I don't know. But that's what I read that ahuman body is worth a million euros on the black market. If you have one body so to say worth a million euros, imagine 1,300 bodies or anything like that! And that brings another issue like I mean I'm not saying that is something that we will know, but at least we must ask ourselves and we must look into the lack of media coverage of these crimes and atrocities suffered by the civilian population of Kosovo is part of the reason why these things could have happened.

RT: Why was there such a lack of media coverage then?

NR: Because somehow politics in a certain way obscured certain issues such as these atrocities suffered by the Serbian civil population, because simply it was considered maybe politically incorrect to talk about sufferings that the Serbian and not the Albanian civil population experienced.

RT: Politically incorrect by whom, the Serbian authorities?

NR: Well, I guess not by the Serbian authorities but by the world media. But the thing is I'm more concerned – much more – by the lack of interest shown by the Serbian media.

RT: How do you explain that there was so little Serbian media interest?

NR: There's no ready explanation. I cannot explain that. But I think it's because the Milosevic regime wanted to show itself as in control of the region, as being powerful enough to protect Serbian interests in Kosovo that was jeopardised by, let's say, Albanian terrorists. Then, showing how ineffective Belgrade is in protecting people in Kosovo will undermine the message that he wanted to send. On the other hand, after the Milosevic regime was gone, the lack of interest in the problem – the suffering of the Serbian and non-Albanian population – continued. The lack of interest from the Serbian media is something that really makes it hard for me to come up with any kind of explanation.

RT: It's now 10 years later and obviously Milosevic is no longer on the scene, but from what you seem to suggest, the issue of human rights and non-Albanians in Kosovo still remains an issue and the media is still not interested in covering this. So how do you explain it?

NR: Well, actually, explanation is kind of a hard word. But the fact is we do still have such a serious issue as the lack of freedom in human rights. Basically it was again politically incorrect for the Belgrade regime to address that issue from that angle. Only two weeks ago we heard that an elderly couple a few kilometres from the border in Kosovo had been killed, and people are guessing whether it is because they didn't sell their house.

What about this tragedy from a human angle? From a human point of view? And how much do we really know about the fate of these people now? It is more important than ever now especially that the EULEX is coming to Kosovo. It is more important than ever to raise this issue of safety and who's going to do it? So, for example, with the help of Greece and Russia I hope that three of my films will soon be translated into 10 languages, six of which will be official UN languages, and in that sense this will be used to show how serious the issue of safety has been in Kosovo.

RT: These people are not safe from whom? The new Kosovo government? Or random acts of violence?

NR: Random acts of violence. Such numerous things. I mean lots of objects that have been destroyed and have not been rebuilt yet. People have not returned to their houses or rebuilt their houses. Hundreds of thousands of them!

RT: It's all very well. You're talking about Greece and Russia, but why is the Serbian government today not doing enough to assure their safety?

NR: It is a hard question for me to explain. For example, right now I'm in the process of trying to convince them after all these years. If the Serbian government is not pressing these particular issues, what will happen with people who still live there in Kosovo, non-Albanians, then who will?

RT: Are you surprised with what happened regarding Kosovo? That the Serbian government did not put up more of a fight to prevent Kosovo from declaring independence?

NR: I'm kind of surprised that the Serbian government has not developed this argument more. What matters to Serbia down in Kosovo are people. Ultimately it's not about history. It is not about identity. It is not about religion. It's about loyalty to a fellow human being. By betraying them – and betrayal is if you don't talk about someone who's dying and who's been killed and who's yours – we are actually losing ground in becoming a civilised society here in Serbia. We must ask about them. They must be the number one thing in the minds of our politicians. Because if they are not, then what else is? And that's why I think we’ve failed so far as a country to convince the world what it is really that we are fighting for, because we have not stood together for these people.

RT: Is this issue only about Kosovo or is it an international issue?

NR: The international community arrived in Kosovo to stop killings and to help create a multi-ethnic society that is civilised. That's how we will measure the success of this international mission – the implementation of all this money, weapons and political will. Is it going to result in a better life for an ordinary citizen of Kosovo?

RT: Thank you for talking to us on RT.

http://www.russiatoday.com/Top_News/2009-02-19/_Hushing_up_disappearances_in_Kosovo_is_betrayal_.html

One year after independence, Kosovo needs 'a revolution'

Kosovo proclaimed independence on 17 February 2008 (Photo: Wikipedia)

ELITSA VUCHEVA

Today @ 06:59 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – One year after its declaration of independence, Kosovo has surprised observers by remaining stable but it has yet to tackle the profound reforms it needs to make it a viable state.

When it unilaterally seceded from Serbia on 17 February 2008, many voiced fears about the future of the young state and about possible outbursts of violence between Kosovo's Albanian majority and its minority Serb population, loyal to Belgrade.

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