Goldstone Played Fast & Loose with Evidence and Due Process of Law in His Yugoslav Adventure

UPDATING/REVISION 10-16-2009 & 10-27-09 see at bottom

Anti-Zionism is the anti-imperialism of fools

In their effort to provide credibility for Richard Goldstone and his deeply prejudicial and simplistic "report" on Gaza warfare, his defenders cite his supposed sterling international reputation, as --among other things-- the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia [ICTY] at the Hague. However, Goldstone is not universally admired for his exertions as prosecutor of that war crimes tribunal. We will show here some of the criticisms of his doings there and will review, or fisk, a report by an investigating committee of the ICTY prosecutor's office [OTP] which was ostensibly meant to inquire whether NATO should be prosecuted before the Tribunal for killing civilians and for attacking civilian sites in Serbia. The committee recommended NOT prosecuting NATO [Surprise, surprise!!] for war crimes during that 1999 war. Goldstone, as might be expected, defended the decision not to prosecute NATO --or even to investigate it more extensively.

To be sure, Goldstone's critics in regard to Bosnia, Yugoslavia, and Kossovo are likely to be partisans. But then the Western governments in NATO and the Western media were partisan over Yugoslavia. They were not mere impartial observers. Be that as it may, it is curious how some of the same faults on Goldstone's part that were noticed in regard to his doings in Bosnia, et al., are now noted in regard to the report of his guilt-decided-in-advance "fact-finding mission" to Gaza.

Here is a critique of Goldstone's Bosnian/Yugoslav endeavors by Prof. Kosta Cavoski posted on the Emperor's Clothes blog on November 8, 2000, nine years ago, so it was obviously not written in response to the 2009 Goldstone Report on Gaza. The critique concerns the indictment of two high Bosnian Serb officers captured by Bosnian Muslim forces. Bear in mind that all three parties to the civil war in Bosnia committed massacres and extra-judicial executions. However, the Bosnian Muslim side enjoyed the support of Western govts and media against the Serbs.
Due to the critique's length, we will reproduce only critical mentions of Goldstone which are quoted here below [links to this critique are found above and below].

The Prosecutor's Gullibility and Rashness
. . . international actors in Bosnia were biased towards one side if not indifferent. What was surprising, however, was the tendency of the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague, and especially its prosecutor Richard Goldstone, to incorrectly apply and breach the very rules that it had instituted. From November 1993 when eleven judges were appointed and the Tribunal began to work, up to 30 January 1996 (two years and two months later), the Prosecutor's office carefully collected all available data related to war crimes on the territory of former Yugoslavia, in particular in Bosnia and Herzegovina. During this time absolutely no-one marked General Djordje Djukic and Colonel Aleksa Krsmanovic as suspected war criminals, even though all sides, including the Muslim authorities in Sarajevo assisted in the collection of data and the compilation of a list of suspects. This fact should have prescribed at the very least restraint and great caution on the part of Prosecutor Richard Goldstone . . . the ambitious Richard Goldstone decided on 7 February to instigate proceedings against General Djordje Djukic and Colonel Aleksa Krsmanovic, thereby validating the lawlessness of the Muslims and their alleged suspicion of the two for being war criminals. He then sent his experts to Sarajevo to investigate this long awaited case.

During talks with CSCE representatives in Vienna, Goldstone clearly stated that proof against Djukic and Krsmanovic "was serious enough to call for an investigation"(1). Hence Christian Chartier, spokesman of The Hague Tribunal announced that Goldstone "had concluded that there were adequate grounds to take the Bosnian charges seriously and carry out an investigation into the possible guilt of the suspects for acts under the jurisdiction of the International Tribunal"(2).

. . . at the request of Prosecutor Richard Goldstone, General Djordje Djukic and Colonel Aleksa Krsmanovic were transferred to the International Tribunal prison in The Hague as suspects. This implied that in accordance with Rule 2 of the Tribunal "the Prosecutor possesses reliable information which tends to show that they may have committed a crime over which the Tribunal has jurisdiction". It is hardly necessary to say that the most important component of this sentence is the reliability of the information regarding alleged crimes committed by the suspects.

The Prosecutor's Violation of the Rules of Procedure and Evidence
To his great regret, Richard Goldstone very quickly realized that the information he had received from Sarajevo was not at all reliable, and that the thirty or so officials sent to The Hague by the US Ministry of Justice at its own expense had not discovered anything of importance in the meantime. Only then did he realize that at the very beginning of the case he had made an unforgivable mistake and seriously violated the Tribunal's Rules of Procedure and Evidence.
--end of quotes from Cavoski -read more at link--

Prof. Cavoski goes on to make further criticisms of Goldstone's performance but we will not bring them in here for the sake of brevity. Those interested can go to Cavoski's critique at the link.

Now, in a related Yugoslav matter, after Goldstone was succeeded as chief prosecutor of the ICTY by Louise Arbour, an official report was issued by a committee of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, a UN affiliate. The Tribunal [ICTY] set up a committee that was supposed to investigate the NATO attack on Serbia for killings of Kossovo Albanians, killings that actually began only after the start of the NATO attack. The report is called Final Report to the Prosecutor by the Committee Established to Review the NATO Bombing Campaign Against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The Prosecutor refers to the prosecutor of the Tribunal. Here is how the legal issues involved in the NATO attack on the Serbian TV & Radio station are described. No rush to judgment here about war crimes or deliberate killing of civilians. Goldstone too defended the recommendations of this committee.

iii) The Bombing of the RTS (Serbian TV and Radio Station) in Belgrade on 23/4/99

71. On 23 April 1999, at 0220, NATO intentionally bombed the central studio of the RTS (state-owned) broadcasting corporation at 1 Aberdareva Street in the centre of Belgrade. The missiles hit the entrance area, which caved in at the place where the Aberdareva Street building was connected to the Takovska Street building. While there is some doubt over exact casualty figures, between 10 and 17 people are estimated to have been killed.

72. The bombing of the TV studio was part of a planned attack aimed at disrupting and degrading the C3 (Command, Control and Communications) network. In co-ordinated attacks, on the same night, radio relay buildings and towers were hit along with electrical power transformer stations. At a press conference on 27 April 1999, NATO officials justified this attack in terms of the dual military and civilian use to which the FRY [= Federal Republic of Yugoslavia] communication system was routinely put, describing this as a

"very hardened and redundant command and control communications system [which …] uses commercial telephone, […] military cable, […] fibre optic cable, […] high frequency radio communication, […] microwave communication and everything can be interconnected. There are literally dozens, more than 100 radio relay sites around the country, and […] everything is wired in through dual use. Most of the commercial system serves the military and the military system can be put to use for the commercial system […]."

Accordingly, NATO stressed the dual-use to which such communications systems were put, describing civilian television as "heavily dependent on the military command and control system and military traffic is also routed through the civilian system" (press conference of 27 April, ibid).

73. At an earlier press conference on 23 April 1999, NATO officials reported that the TV building also housed a large multi-purpose communications satellite antenna dish, and that "radio relay control buildings and towers were targeted in the ongoing campaign to degrade the FRY’s command, control and communications network". In a communication of 17 April 1999 to Amnesty International, NATO claimed that the RTS facilities were being used "as radio relay stations and transmitters to support the activities of the FRY military and special police forces, and therefore they represent legitimate military targets" (Amnesty International Report, NATO/Federal Republic of Yugoslavia: Violations of the Laws of War by NATO during Operation Allied Force, June 2000, p. 42). [see the Final Report . . . here]

Note the attention and space given in the above report to NATO justifications for bombing the Serbian Radio/TV station in Belgrade. On the other hand, Goldstone and his report belittled and denied without serious consideration Israel's reasons for hitting targets such as mosques known to be storage places for weapons and explosives. In the end the investigating committee recommended against prosecuting NATO and its officers for war crimes, violations of international humanitarian law, and the like. The Committee declared that it

has tended to assume that the NATO and NATO countries’ press statements are generally reliable and that explanations have been honestly given. . .

Here we note that NATO is assumed to have been truthful by the investigating committee. Israel was denied that credibility.

there is simply no evidence of the necessary crime base for charges of genocide or crimes against humanity [on the part of NATO or its officials] . . .

So the committee found no basis for charging "genocide or crimes against humanity" on NATO's part. Conversely, Goldstone and his gang were eager to find Israel guilty of such crimes.

NATO has admitted that mistakes did occur during the bombing campaign; errors of judgment may also have occurred. . .

This last statement accepts NATO's claim to have been acting in good faith, although "mistakes did occur." Again, Goldstone did not give Israel such benefit of the doubt. But the investigating committee essentially exonerated NATO and its officials.

. . . the committee is of the opinion that neither an in-depth investigation related to the bombing campaign as a whole nor investigations related to specific incidents are justified. . . On the basis of information available, the committee recommends that no investigation be commenced by the OTP [= Office of the Prosecutor] in relation to the NATO bombing campaign or incidents occurring during the campaign. [see Final Report here]

Goldstone was in a debate over the Kossovo war against Serbia some time after the war and he defended the failure to prosecute NATO officials. He said that:

"there was not sufficient evidence against individuals to warrant further investigation" [see Herman & Peterson quoted below]

We see that regarding Yugoslavia, Goldstone takes a whole different attitude. He is deferential toward NATO officials, whereas he is dismissive and contemptuous towards Israelis. But NATO was paying his salary, directly or indirectly. Here Goldstone is put into the Yugoslav war crimes picture although he was at that time the previous prosecutor of the Tribunal. Louis Arbour was his successor as head of the OTP, Office of the Prosecutor:

In the indictment of Milosevic, Arbour used evidence about events that took place only six weeks earlier from a war zone, provided by an interested party (NATO), unverified by Tribunal personnel, and in conflict with her claim that she would never proceed on the basis of “uncorroborated” evidence. But neither she nor Del Ponte [Arbour's successor] could even "open an investigation" into NATO’s conduct during the war, after a year, with overwhelming evidence in the public domain pertaining to NATO actions that had killed many more than the numbers presented in the initial indictment of Milosevic (May 22, 1999). That indictment and the charge of "crimes against humanity" were based on an alleged 385 killings for which Milosevic is said to have borne “command responsibility;” but the OTP Report found that the 500 deaths attributable to NATO’s actions were too few to rate--"there is simply no evidence of the necessary crime base for charges of genocide or crimes against humanity." (49) (It should also be noted that the first chief prosecutor of the ICTY, the sainted Richard Goldstone, vigorously defended the Tribunal’s handling of the NATO charges in a debate with John Laughland, saying that the Tribunal simply “held that there was not sufficient evidence against individuals to warrant further investigation,” when as we have indicated there was no serious initial investigation and the 500 deaths conceded by the OTP exceeded the total charged to Milosevic.) (50) [links both here & here]
[Prof Edward Herman, emeritus, University of Pennsylvania Wharton School, & David Peterson. Herman is a notorious "leftist."]

A picture of petty louche people, demi-mondains, assigned to deal with very big issues. Not a pretty picture but one of hypocrisy, immorality hiding behind lofty statements and ideals, and moral corruption. Don't forget that in Bosnia and Kossovo the noble victims featured by the Western media were Muslims. Likewise in Gaza. Meanwhile, the designated villains were non-Muslims, Serbs in Bosnia and Kossovo and Jews/Israelis in Gaza.
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See comparison of Goldstone's forgiving attitude toward NATO forces with his animosity to Israel [here].
Our previous post on the Goldstone Report is here.
More on Goldstone in Yugoslavia here.
See the all important "Goldstone Report" website [here]
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UPDATING 10-27-2009
Amnesty International, the British-guided sister of the American agency "Human Rights Watch," has implicitly rejected Goldstone's position on war crimes committed by NATO when it attacked civilian targets in Serbia during the 1999 Kossovo War.

Associated Press, 23 April 2009

An international human rights group demanded Thursday that NATO be held accountable for civilian casualties in the bombing of Serbia's state television headquarters a decade ago, calling the attack a "war crime."Sixteen civilians were killed and 16 others injured during the attack on April 23, 1999, on the headquarters and studios of Radio Television Serbia in central Belgrade.

Amnesty International called on NATO and its member states to ensure independent investigations, full accountability and redress for victims and their families.

A NATO official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with standing regulations, said the U.N.'s International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia had already assessed those allegations and found the alliance had no case to answer. [This official is referring to the report --quoted above-- of the ICTY investigating committee that Goldstone endorsed.].

. . . .

"The bombing of the headquarters of Serbian state radio and television was a deliberate attack on a civilian object and as such constitutes a war crime," Sian Jones, Amnesty International's Balkans expert, said in a statement. "Even if NATO genuinely believed RTS was a legitimate target, the attack was disproportionate and hence a war crime," Jones said. [ABC News 4-23-2009; Jerusalem Post (paper edition), 4-24-2009 -- source was AP].

Amnesty was not criticizing any ICTY or NATO official by name. Surely today they would not criticize Goldstone for denying NATO war crimes in Serbia, since they support his dishonest Goldstone Report on Gaza. Since Amnesty is British-guided, it most likely did not seriously seek to prosecute any British officials in NATO. This statement may have been meant as a cover to give some credibility to their earlier denunciations of Israel for alleged attacks on civilian sites in Gaza. They had issued an attack on Israel about a month before the April statement quoted by the AP. This earlier attack on Israel over Gaza had been signed by, among others -- Richard Goldstone, as they proudly declared.

Don't hold your breath waiting for the UN human rights council, security council or general assembly to take up the issue of NATO war crimes in Serbia. If they cross NATO, who is going to pay the UN's bills??

"The Poilet Drupped the Bumms in Gude Feyeth" -- quoth a Scottish NATO spokesman [& Jamie Shea]

When we recently heard that the Scottish Trade Union Congress was calling for a boycott of Israel, we were reminded of the immortal words of another Scotsman, an erstwhile spokesman for NATO forces in Yugoslavia when they were bombing Serbia and its province of Kossovo. Although NATO was ostensibly fighting the war to protect the Kossovo Albanians, allegedly subject to Serbian genocide, NATO air forces bombed a large group of fleeing Kossovo Albanians. I believe that the NATO forces killed about 70 or 80 of these people. The spokesman was asked to explain himself at a press conference and stated in his quaint, folksy Scottish burr [concealing a world class propagandist] that: "The pilot dropped the bombs in good faith" [quotes & reports here & here & ici & aqui]. In other words, the spokesman wanted and expected the international press to take his word for it that the bombs had been dropped "in good faith." Maybe the pilot did bomb those refugees in good faith. Apparently the international press took the spokesman's word for it and so did the Scottish TUC. After all, the spokesman was not a Jew. He was British. He speaks for Her Britannic Majesty. Maybe next we'll hear that Himmler operated the death camps "in good faith."

The same thing was said in substance by Jamie Shea, apparently not a Scot, who seems to have been the chief NATO spokesman at the time of the Kossovo War.

NATO forces, of which British forces were a part, also killed Serbian civilians during the Kossovo war back in 1999. But apparently it was all "in good faith," since I have heard of no boycott called by the Scottish TUC of the Scottish NATO spokesman or of British products or of British officials or of British universities, so on and so forth. Likewise, British forces in Iraq and Afghanistan in ongoing wars in those places have killed local civilians in air strikes and in other ways. So too the allies of the UK, the United States and other NATO powers have killed civilians in those countries. Yet no call for a boycott by the Scottish TUC or the Irish TUC or any other English-speaking TUC. What gives then, oh Righteous Moralists of the TUC of the Highlands and the Lowlands and the Foggy Islands at sea?? Why aren't you boycotting Britain, or at least the English or maybe the Americans?? Anyhow, who is more responsible for the war --the UK or the USA? Shouldn't you be boycotting at least one of them to show your distaste for those two wars [or those three wars if we include the Kossovo assault on Serbia]?? What about your abhorrence of civilian deaths caused by First World armies?? How many poor Afghans have to die before you boycott both the UK and USA??

Maybe the Scottish TUC and the Irish TUC and all the other TUCs in the British Isles ought to be boycotting themselves. Maybe British hypocrisy is a threat to world peace.

US "Human Rights", "Humanitarian" Intervention in Kossovo Leads to Human Rights Violations & Murder

UPDATING 1-1-2011

When Bill Clinton was president, back in 1999 in the last century, the USA led its NATO allies into a humanitarian war, a war for human rights, for all things good, for yellow and pink flowers and for peanut butter. This was in Kossovo, a region of Serbia in the Middle Ages until the Ottoman conquest. The Serbs and Albanians were allies against the Ottoman invaders, including in the battle of Kossovo Polye. This battle, which took place exactly 620 years ago [15-28 June 1389] was an Ottoman victory. Afterwards, whereas most Albanians eventually converted to Islam, most Serbs did not. In subsequent centuries Albanians as Muslims harassed and exploited Serbs. Albanians also eventually became the majority population in what is now Kossovo. Serbia claims it as a Serbian province from which most of the Serbian population has been driven out in the last 35 years, whereas Albania and the Kossovo Albanians declared an independent Kossovo in 2008. The declaration of independence was promoted by US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and several NATO member states, but has not been recognized by many countries.

In contrast to the immense international handwringing over Palestinian Arab refugees, the hundreds of thousands of Serbs driven out of Kossovo since the mid-1970s, especially since the NATO victory over the Serbs in 1999, are seldom accorded more than a bored yawn by the international press/media and "human rights" and "humanitarian" organizations. The Kossovo Serbian refugees may be added to the hundreds of thousands of Serbs driven out of Croatia and Bosnia while the world media was full of heartfelt moralistic outcries against "ethnic cleansing." Shall we have a large serving of hypocrisy, anyone?


The world should not stay silent about Kosovo's missing

By Fron Nahzi and Chuck Sudetic
Commentary
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
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The world should not stay silent about Kosovo's missing Hundreds of people disappeared 10 years ago in Kosovo, the former Serbian province that is now the world's newest state. These are not missing persons like the Albanians whom Serbian police executed and buried in secret graves during the Kosovo conflict of 1999. These missing persons disappeared after the conflict, on NATO's and the United Nations' watch. Most were Serb civilians. Relatives of most of these people have reported that they were abducted.

Kosovo, to a significant degree, owes its independence to a NATO military intervention undertaken in the name of human rights. And in the name of human rights, it is time for the truth to come out about the people who went missing after the conflict, and about why, for a decade, United Nations officials have ignored appeals by the victims' families and have launched no criminal investigation.

Kosovo's Albanian authorities have for years made no significant decision without receiving the imprimatur of the European Union and, especially, the United States. The EU and the US should urge the Kosovo government to mount a credible investigation, for the sake of the victims and people in Kosovo who want their state to be ruled by law.

In 1999, the US led NATO into war against Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia to end gross violations of the rights of Kosovo's majority Albanians. Serb nationalists had quashed Kosovo's autonomy. Serb troops beat, killed, and jailed Albanians, whose leaders, following cues from Western embassies, urged nonviolence.

After the rise of an Albanian insurgency, the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK), Milosevic launched a violent, all-out campaign to expel Kosovo's Albanians. Villages were burned. Serbian police forces killed Albanian civilians and cast out hundreds of thousands from their homes. (The authorities in Belgrade have yet to come clean on the Albanians civilians executed and buried on police and military bases in Serbia.)

NATO forced Serb forces to withdraw in June 1999, and international peacekeepers, under NATO's leadership, occupied Kosovo. The UN sent a mission to help establish local institutions. The US and West European countries began shepherding Kosovo's new Albanian authorities toward statehood. Last year, Kosovo gained independence. Sixty countries, including the US and most EU states have recognized it.

According to a recent BBC news investigation, however, UCK members abducted Serbs, Albanians, Roma, and others after NATO's arrival. UN missing-persons researchers - not criminal investigators - searched for them for years and found no trace of them in Kosovo. They did, however, find Albanian witnesses who asserted that UCK members took captured Serbs, Albanians, and Roma into Albania, where they were killed.

Now the BBC has broadcast interviews with Albanians who were imprisoned in secret UCK camps in Albania. These witnesses confirmed that the camps also held Serbs, Roma, and others. The BBC located graves of some of the missing in Albania. There have been leaks of UN documents citing Albanian sources who name people involved.

From June 1999, the UN and NATO contingents in Kosovo clearly calculated that stability trumped justice. Despite the urging of staff members, leaders of these missions avoided launching criminal investigations into the missing. Some UCK leaders, lionized by the local Albanian population as the victors of 1999, are now running Kosovo's government. Their blanket denials are no longer credible. [Daily Star, Beirut, 24 June 2009]

--end-- [For full article see here]

Chuck Sudetic, one of the authors of this article, was also a coauthor of a book by Carla del Ponte, the Italian former chief prosecutor of the Hague Tribunal for crimes in the former Yugoslavia.
In any case, Chucky's hands are not all that clean either. But while we're talking about Yugoslavia, about Serbia and Kossovo, let's not forget that the present secretary of state, Hilary Clinton, was close to the decision-maker --Prez Bill Clinton-- who decided to make war on Serbia in 1999 in the name of "human rights." The American public and the Western public generally know little about what was really happening in Yugoslavia in those terrible years, which have not fully ended as the Serbs in the town Kosovska Mitrovica are still under siege. But unlike the 1/4 siege of Gaza by Israel, the siege of Kosovska Mitrovica elicits little, if any, international humanitarian outrage. In case anyone was unaware, Bill Clinton developed a second career after leaving the White House. He makes speeches and gives lectures, especially for the rich Arabs in the Persian Gulf states. There are some good bucks to be made in the lecture racket.

UPDATING 1-1-2011 More about the top man in Albanian-run Kosovo trading in Serbs' body parts [here]. Hashim Thaci is the prime minister of Kossovo, which declared unilateral independence from Serbia with the sponsorship of Condloleezza Rice and the US State Dept. He is also a major trader in the body parts racket. Welcome to the 21st Century!

Condoleezza Rice Embraces Anti-Israel Terrorists -- Her Friends in Kossovo Traffic in Human Body Parts

UPDATE 4-22 & 4-23-2008 &12-12-2010 & 1-1-2011at bottom

We have long known that Condoleezza Rice [riso amaro] is partial to Arab terrorists who believe that they have the right to murder Jews. We don't know whether Condi goes so far as to share that attitude. But she has spoken in a favorable way in the past about both Fatah & Hamas. Meanwhile, we also know that Condi and the State Department, even before she became secretary of state, favored the ethnic Albanian terrorists in Kossovo. Support for the breakup of Yugoslavia and for the several ethnic groups there hostile to Serbs appeared as early as the first Bush administration, in the days of Daddy Bush. Recently, George Junior's State Dept, led by Condi, has been promoting Kossovo independence, although it has been known that scores of thousands of ethnic Serbs were "ethnically cleansed" from there since the 1999 war, not to mention Serbs driven out of Kossovo starting in the 1970s when the area was under ethnic Albanian government within the Yugoslav framework.

Now it turns out that Condi's friends in Kossovo were trafficking in human body parts. This is the accusation of Carla del Ponte, the former chief prosecutor of the Hague court on crimes in the former Yugoslavia.

Kosovo Albanian leaders have been implicated in the war-time trafficking of organs taken from hundreds of Serbs, according to a book by former UN war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte.

The book entitled "The Hunt: Me and War Criminals" alleges those involved in the trafficking included leaders of the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) which fought Serbian forces at the time in mid-1999.

Del Ponte wrote that around 300 prisoners, including women and other Slavs, were kidnapped and transported from Kosovo to Albania, where they were locked up and had their organs removed.

"These organs were then sent from Tirana airport to private clinics to be implanted in patients abroad who paid," she said in the book, available in Italy under the title "La Caccia: Io e i criminali di guerra." [Agence France-Presse, France24 (French counterpart of the BBC), 14 April 2008]

Condi's friends now running the Kossovo govt were kidnapping live people, mainly Serbs, to use their organs in trade in order to make money.

See commentary here.
For condoleezza rice's pro-Hamas sympathies, see here. It's true that rice has recently criticized jimmy carter for meeting the top Hamas leaders in Damascus against official US Govt policy. But it is clear that she herself --and most likely the State Dept as an institution-- wants to bring Hamas into "talks" with Israel, thereby diminishing Israel by placing it on the level of a Nazi-like, outlaw body that wants to commit genocide against Jews [see Article 7 of Hamas charter].
Tony Blair too has his pro-Hamas sentiments. See here and here.
For more on Kossovo on the Emet m'Tsiyon blog, see here.

UPDATE 4-22 & 23-2008 More about Kossovo atrocities and UN coverup.
The BBC website in English mentions Carla del Ponte's charge of organ trafficking very briefly towards the end of an article devoted to the appointment of a new chief prosecutor for the Hague Tribunal and his meetings with Serbian officials. The very important body parts story is NOT the subject of an article in its own right. Thus, the BBC wanted to minimize what is a very sensational story.
Where are Amnesty International & Human Rights Watch on this story? Isn't this a human rights matter?? Suppose that there were some way to connect an Israeli, any Israeli or any Jew, to a similar story. Would the BBC or Amnesty or HRW show any restraint or hesitation whatsoever in featuring it prominently in their broadcasts, on their website, or in their press releases???
Julia Gorin wrote up the story for Huffington Post and here.
UPDATING 12-16-2010 Hashim Thaci, prime minister of the new, democratic Albanian Kossovo, is accused of being head of a gang of organ thieves, confirming Carla del Ponte's book of 20o8.
1-1-2011 More on Hashim Thaci. A Serbian official accused him of depositing money made in the body parts trade in the accounts of Muslim charities [here].
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Coming: Jews in Jerusalem, Hebron, and the Land of Israel, propaganda, peace follies, etc.

War on Terrorism OR War for Islam?

Do we need an interpreter with the capability of Rashi, maybe, in order to tell what is really the Bush Administration policy on terrorism? On the one hand, Mr Bush declared a War on Terror. On the other, the Bush Administration, particularly the State Department, helps Arab terrorists against Israel while --in the Balkans-- it is trying to expand the territory of the Muslim-dominated Bosnian entity. After 500 years of conflict between Christians and Muslims in the Balkans, after World War II when Bosnian Muslims formed an SS division under the religious supervision of Haj Amin el-Husseini [al-Husayni], British-appointed mufti of Jerusalem, after the bloody Bosnian war of the 1990s when all three ethnic-religious groups in Bosnia perpetrated atrocities on one another, the State Dept now wants to incorporate the remaining part of Bosnia from which Serbs have not yet been "ethnically cleansed" into the Muslim-dominated Bosnian state. We bear in mind that during WW2, Serbs suffered mass murder at the hands of both Croatian Catholics and Bosnian Muslims. This was against the background of a multi-century history of Muslim suppression of Serbs in the Balkans, especially the bloody and brutal suppression of a 19th century Serbian revolt against the Ottoman Empire in Bosnia.

Let's just say that the State Dept does it again.

U.S. Selling Out Bosnian Christians to Muslims, Serb Leader Says

Kenneth R. Timmerman [NewsMax]
Thursday, May 24, 2007

The man who helped overthrow Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic says the State Department is pressuring him to hand over Christian Bosnia to its powerful Muslim neighbor, threatening the delicate balance that ended the Bosnian War.

The Bosnian Serbian entity was created under the 1995 Dayton peace accords.

"At the U.S. embassy in Sarajevo, I was threatened that if I did not agree to these U.S. demands, I would have problems," Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Milorad Dodik told NewsMax in an exclusive interview.

In a meeting on Wednesday at the State Department, Dodik said that Assistant Secretary Daniel Fried didn't repeat the threats, but insisted that Dodik and the Christian Bosnian Serb government agree to dissolve its independent police force and parliament, and merge them into Muslim-majority federal institutions.

"The United States is trying to assimilate us into Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), which is a Muslim entity," Dodik said. Today, Dodik will be meeting with Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, who is expected to reinforce these demands. Dodik told NewsMax, "I will refuse."

Asked why he was coming to Washington if to be read the riot act, Dodik said it was "hard to refuse when you've been summoned."

Nearly 1.4 million Serbian Christians live in the Republic of Srpska [Republika Srpska = Serbian Republic (of Bosnia)], the autonomous Serbian entity that Serbs say was "forced down [their] throats" under the 1995 Dayton agreement

Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. official who negotiated the 1995 agreement, told a forum marking the 10th anniversary of the Dayton accords in November 2005 that among his "mistakes" were the words "Republika Srpska." He called for the Serbian entity to be dissolved into Muslim Bosnia.

Dodik said that while 99 percent of Bosnian Serbs would prefer to live in an independent state, the Dayton accords had achieved a "balance" and that it would be a mistake to change them now.
. . . .

"If the U.S. project of turning BiH into a single government controlled under one man one vote, in 10 years there will be no more Serbs in the area. All I want is for the U.S. to leave us alone."

Under the current arrangement, the Bosnian Serbs have 22 members of the federal parliament, and the Bosnian Muslims have 24 members. Simple majority rule, as advocated by the United States, would allow the Bosnian Muslims to transform the Bosnian federation into an Islamic Republic.

In addition, the assimilation of the independent Bosnian Serb police force into a single, federal force "would mean we must accept terrorists who have been recruited into the police by the Bosnian Muslims."
. . . . .

Well before the Dayton accords, the Bosnian Muslim authorities forged a close relationship with Osama Bin Laden, even providing him a Bosnian diplomatic passport after his Saudi passport was revoked by the Saudi government.

Five of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers were trained in Bosnian Muslim al Qaeda camps.

During the Clinton administration, "the U.S. gave its blessing as 4,400 jihadis came to Bosnia from Afghanistan," Dodik said.

If the Bush Administration supports expansion of the pro-Islamist terrorist, Muslim-dominated Bosnian entity --in particular at the expense of the Serbs-- then its claim to be fighting terrorism cannot be taken seriously. Likewise, in the Middle East, why should it be seen as fighting terrorism when it openly calls for giving money and weapons to the Fatah terrorist gang of Mahmud Abbas [Abu Mazen]? Of course, if the above account is reliable, then the Clinton Administration was no better in its dealings with terrorism, particularly of the Islamist variety.

Timmerman's full article is here and commentary on it by Hugh Fitzbgerald is here.
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Coming: More on James Baker and US policy toward Israel, peace follies, propaganda, Jews in Jerusalem and Hebron, etc.