Muslims – Croatia, the War, and the Future

Radovan Karadzic Genocide Against Croats And Bosniaks ICTY Trial At Its End

Radovan Karadzic – Photo: AP

On Monday 29 September 2014 the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Hague heard the Prosecution’s final arguments in the genocide and war crimes trial of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, charged with some of the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II, including the Srebrenica massacre of 1995. Initially indicted on 25 July 1995, Karadzic, 69, is facing 11 charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) and Bosnian Croats between 1992 and 1995 during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which claimed more than 100,000 lives and displaced 2.2 million people. Karadzic evaded arrest for many years to be finally found living in Serbia in July 2008, under an assumed name, reportedly practicing as a faith healer. He was arrested on a Belgrade bus and taken to The Hague; his ICTY war crimes trial commenced in October 2009.

Prosecutor says Karadzic along with late Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic and Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic acted together to “cleanse” Bosnia’s Muslims and Croats from Serb-claimed territories after the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1991.
“Under his command and oversight, Karadzic’s subordinates and those cooperating with them expelled, killed, tortured and otherwise mistreated hundreds of thousands of Muslims and Croats,” said the prosecutor’s final trial brief (PDF click here), released on Friday 26 September.
“The scale and scope of these criminal campaigns is vast,” the brief says.
Karadzic is notably accused of masterminding the July 1995 massacre in the small eastern Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica, where Bosnian Serb troops slaughtered almost 8,000 Muslim men and boys and dumped their bodies into mass graves.
Apart from genocide, Karadzic is also facing charges over the 44-month-long siege of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, which ended in November 1995 with some 10,000 people killed.
During the siege, “fear pervaded daily life — the most mundane acts such as crossing the street or fetching water carried the risk of death,” the prosecutor said.

In their final statements the prosecution stated on Monday that Karadzic was the driving force of genocide against Croats and Bosniaks in Bosnia and Herzegovina; that he was responsible, among other war crimes acts, for the killing of 7 to 8 000 men and boys in Srebrenica, and for the shelling of Sarajevo. The prosecution seeks lifelong prison sentence.

The ICTY prosecution has no doubts: Radovan Karadzic is a “Mafia-gangster” and a liar who implemented genocide and ethnic cleansing. After hundreds of witnesses, 8 000 pages of court transcript and 10000 items of evidence the prosecution minced no words, hid no emotion, at the Hague on Monday.

“Let me give you the sad picture”, said prosecutor Alan Tieger, “the population was systematically harassed, thousands were taken forcefully from their homes, mutilated and killed, the whole ethnic minorities tens of thousands of people were forcefully deported, hundreds of thousands suffered months long sieges in Bihac, Derventa, Gorazda and Sarajevo. Many ended up in camps in inhumane conditions where hundreds were killed…”

Tieger said Karadzic publicly “bragged at the time about the painstaking steps he was taking” to violently remove non-Serbs from parts of Bosnia to create an “ethnically pure” Serb state within Bosnia.

The court saw many examples of brutality, depravity and sheer criminal activity as evidence – evidence that showed prisoners in these camps were forced to eat parts of each other’s bodies, women were forced to clean up blood during the day and were raped at night, to thousands of boys and men murdered in Srebrenica. All that and more was done within the joint criminal enterprise that had as its goal a forceful creation of an ethnically clean Serbian state.

Karadzic is expected to close his own defence today (Wednesday) and Thursday of this week. According to legal advisor Peter Robinson, Deutsche Welle reports, “He will demonstrate that he played no part in genocide or the murder of Muslims,” Robinson told the British Broadcasting Corporation, calling the opportunity for Karadzic, who is defending himself, a “milestone.”
At his opening statement in March 2010, Karadzic told judges that the atrocities for which he was being held had been “staged” by his Muslim enemies – and that the Srebrenica massacre was a “myth.” Do not expect remorse or admission from a born and bred criminal.
The verdict is not expected before mid to late 2015. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)

Is This A Joint Criminal Enterprise and Muslim Aggression Against Bosnia and Herzegovina?

Muslim Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina displays its mujahedin strength, Zenica 1994
(Photo first published in The London Times, 1994)

We have seen it over and over again: ICTY Prosecution is more than capable of building a case on shaky grounds for the so-called joint criminal enterprise against a group of people from one ethnic group (as this blog is about Croatia and Croats I’ll stick to that ethnic group) and bringing that criminal charge to trial. In the last year we have seen the ICTY Appeal Chamber acquit Croatian Generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac (as well as Croatian leadership headed by Franjo Tudjman) of joint criminal enterprise plan and execution against Serbs in Croatia. In the last fortnight we have witnessed the ICTY Trial Chamber convict 6 Croats from Herceg-Bosna (as well as the 1990’s Croatian leadership headed by Franjo Tudjman) of joint criminal enterprise against Muslims. The ICTY prosecutors premise (malicious and dangerous delusion, if you ask me!) is that Croatia wanted to expand its territory into Bosnia and Herzegovina and by offering its military support to help Bosnian Croats who were victims of Serb and Muslim led crimes, Croatia became an aggressor against Bosnia and Herzegovina.

So, I ask myself: why has the ICTY prosecution not used the same logic with the fact that Bosnian Muslims brought into Bosnia and Herzegovina foreign jihadists, Al Qaeda operatives, mujahedins and therefore planned and executed a joint criminal enterprise – aggression within its own country. ICTY prosecutor used the country or citizenship origins of fighters in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the 1992 – 1995 war as a measure of aggression against the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, so if a soldier belonged to a unit of say army from Croatia that went into Bosnia to assist Bosnian Croats who were defending their lives, then that unit is an aggressor against Bosnia and Herzegovina, according to the ICTY, as things stand at this moment in time!

But, bringing soldiers/killers from foreign countries specifically to train and fight with the Muslim controlled Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina is not aggression, according to ICTY prosecutor!

Oh, please – give humanity and its intelligence a break!

ICTY has had a handful of cases for war crimes committed through lines of command or responsibility by senior persons of Muslim controlled Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina – but none of these (as far as I can see) had the joint criminal enterprise element spelled out, even though it is as clear as day that Muslim leadership of Bosnia and Herzegovina, headed by Alija Izetbegovic, did not bring the mujahedins into his army for a nice vacation! The idea of pointing a finger against Alija Izetbegovic for planning and executing criminal enterprise against non-Muslim people of Bosnia and Herzegovina seems to have fizzled away in some political cloud that hovers above Britain and the United States of America, who it seems, played a double game: condemned jihadists and Al Qaeda on the one hand, but assisted or turned a blind eye to Alija Izetbegovic importing mujahedins to train his soldiers in murder and to murder for “his” Bosnia and Herzegovina, which decided mid-stream (because up till then Muslims and Croats were allies in defending territory and lives against Serb aggression in Bosnia and Herzegovina), “suddenly”, to fight against Bosnian Croats in 1993. And what a vicious fight or conflict it turned out to be.

The ICTY Trial Chamber has not yet published the full judgment in the case against 6 Croats of Herceg-Bosna even though the summary of judgment was published over a week ago (29 May). Extraordinary! That being the case it’s difficult to comment on the issue of Croat-Muslim conflict as seen by the Trial Chamber through the eyes of the so-called 6 Croats of Herceg-Bosna case, but the disturbing public confession of a mujahedin Ali Hamad a couple of days ago upon being threatened of expulsion from Bosnia and Herzegovina and actively seeking asylum in Serbia, is opening more and more eyes worldwide to the fact how this aspect of Bosnian Muslim army during 1990’s war has largely been overlooked from the standpoint of international aggression. All it seems knew of it, but somehow, the Bosnian Muslims’ import of foreign jihadist forces has evaded, it seems, the theorists of and prosecutors for “joint criminal enterprise”!

Dnevno.hr reports that, according to press online, an officer of Al Qaida, Ali Hamad, citizen of Bahrain, who has this week asked for asylum from Serbia after he completes serving his 12 year prison sentence in Bosnia and Herzegovina for 1997 bombing of Mostar, has admitted to having personally during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, participated in horrible crimes by the “El Mujahedin” unit against Croats. His admission comes out of his remorse, her reportedly stated.

“The greatest number of murders were executed by the Egyptian Abu Mina,” Hamad said, “an officer assigned to security and special tasks. Mina murdered people with a chainsaw and with a large knife. He murdered prisoners at Zavidovici. He cut their heads off with an axe in front of standing mujahideens, and ordered us to impale the prisoners on stakes and leave them to die in terrible suffering…”

The Croat – Muslim conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina has largely been depicted in the international media (as well as the ICTY) as an attack on Bosnian Muslims.

Mujahedins from North Africa, Middle East, Pakistan, Afghanistan … started arriving in Bosnia and Herzegovina at the beginning of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, at the invitation and plan of the Muslim president of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Alija Izetbegovic. They arrived in the territory of Central Bosnia first, the areas of Bosnia and Herzegovina populated mainly by Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats. Mujahedins then started accumulating followers there and set up military training camps in the villages near Zenica, Travnik, Bugojno… They support and fight with the Bosnian Muslim forces, whose existence was threatened at that time and who were victims of the Serb occupation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. But the real goal of the mujahedins coming to Bosnia and Herzegovina was far beyond training or humanitarian tasks. Mujahedins shared beliefs with their fellow Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina – to come to the aid of “oppressed” Muslims and use the opportunity to strike at “infidels”! Create a Muslim state in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Does did look like planned aggression to you!?

Does this look like true joint criminal enterprise planned by Alija Izetbegovic, Muslim leader in Bosnia and Herzegovina at the time, and executed?

It’s known that the British battalion, within the UN peace mission there, arrived in Central Bosnia at the same time as first mujahedins.

Only a few months after the British arrived a merciless conflict between Croats and Muslims erupted in the area. Incidentally or not, recruiters of mujahedins for the Army of Bosnia and Heerzegovina also came from Britain; British citizens… Mujahedins take part in military operations of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Muslim). They commit untold atrocities against the Croatian population, using their well known brutal signatures – blood letting, destroying peoples’ faces, heart extraction, beheading.

The Islamist, jihadist connections of the Izetbegovic government are one of the most overlooked – or deliberately ignored – facts of the Bosnian War. It certainly continues to be so, unless the full judgment from ICTY Trial Chamber against 6 Croats of Herceg-Bosna actually opens new windows for justice, instead of playing politics and collective guilt.

Ali Hamad was a witness for the prosecution before the ICTY Trial against the commander of the Main Staff of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosniak General Rasim Delic, and Hamad’s testimony went largely undisputed and he said that authorities all knew about the crimes of mujahedin and their connections with the Bosniak (Muslim) politicians and officers.

And now this week Ali Hamad confesses he committed war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina as part of mujahedins, part of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina. I hope that his wish to be extradited to Serbia upon completion of his prison sentence in Bosnia and Herzegovina for bombing of Mostar in 1992 will not be granted. I hope that work has already begun at Bosnia and Herzegovina’s public prosecutor’s office, at least, on compiling criminal charges for war crimes and participation in Muslim joint criminal enterprise against non-Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)