Radovan Karadjic

[Wayne Hall]

Karadzic Court Letter Insists There Was An Immunity Deal

www.efluxmedia.com/news_Karadzic_Court_Letter_Insists_There_Was_An_Immunity_Deal_21330.html

Radovan Karadzic insisted in a letter published Friday that he was promised immunity from prosecution by the United States in 1996 - a claim strongly denied by Richard Holbrooke and Carl Bildt, both involved in diplomacy to end the 1992-95 Bosnia war.

The four-page letter was published by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) before which the former Bosnian-Serb leader and war crimes suspect went on trial Thursday on 11 charges including genocide and crimes against humanity.

In the letter, Karadzic, 63, writes that former US mediator Richard Holbrooke promised his political representatives that Karadzic would not have to appear before the ICTY provided he withdrew from the public arena.

"Mr Holbrooke obligated himself on behalf of the US that I would not be tried before this tribunal," according to a translation of the letter released by the court.

Karadzic also referred to remarks he made during his initial appearance about fearing he would be killed while in the UN detention centre in Scheveningen, near The Hague.

"It is clear that, due the fact that the agreements he (Holbrooke) made on behalf of the US were not implemented, he has moved on to plan B - the liquidation of Radovan Karadzic."

Holbrooke, in a number of media interviews Thursday, vehemently denied having made any deal with Karadzic, calling the claim an "outrageous fabrication by a war criminal" and saying a deal would have been "unethical and immoral."

Holbrooke told Dutch television that owing to continued refusal by NATO in 1995 and 1996 to arrest Karadzic, he had been forced to negotiate with Karadzic's representatives about an agreement with the Bosnian-Serb leader to pull back from the public arena.

"This agreement was signed on July 18, 1996. But I did not give Karadzic anything in exchange," Holbrooke emphasized, "and it would have been a lot better had someone ordered NATO to arrest him when it was still possible."

Rumours about a possible deal between the US and Karadzic are not new. In her recently published book, Florence Hartmann, a former assistant to former ICTY prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, claimed the same, as has former Bosnian ambassador Mohammed Sacirby.

Holbrooke laughed about Karadzic's expressed fears that the US envoy's "long arm" might endanger his life in the UN detention centre.

"In a way it is flattering that he thinks my arm reaches to The Hague," Holbrooke said. "But the truth is, I am just an ordinary citizen and Karadzic is where he should have been a long time ago - at the ICTY."

Karadzic's claim of a deal was also denied Friday by Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, who served as an international envoy in the Balkans in the 1990s.

"There was never any such deal," Bildt told Swedish radio news. "There were no efforts to drop the charges (against Karadzic)," Bildt added, saying that he and Holbrooke were "active" in efforts to get Karadzic arrested.

Karadzic also claimed in his letter that he had become the object of a "media witchhunt," meaning he would never receive a fair trial at a UN war crimes tribunal. His branding as a war criminal by the press made an acquittal "unimaginable."

© 2007 - 2008 - eFluxMedia

[Wayne Hall]

Karadzic Denounces "Media Witch-Hunt," Mentions Immunity Deal with US

www.efluxmedia.com/news_Karadzic_Denounces_Media_Witch_Hunt_Mentions_Immunity_Deal_with_US_21336.html

As he made his first appearance before the international U.N. crimes tribunal at The Hague, Bosnian Serb suspected war criminal Radovan Karadzic denounced the "media witch-hunt" that will eventually end with him not receiving a fair trial.

Mr. Karadzic, held responsible for the most infamous carnage since WW II (the Srebrenica massacre in which 8000 Muslims were slaughtered), said the media already labeled him as a war criminal and this fact makes an eventual acquittal "unimaginable", as he put it.

The 63-year-old formed political leader also told judges that he made an immunity deal with the United States, a fact firmly denied by Richard Holbrooke, negotiator of the accord that ended the Bosnian war.

"There was never any deal," Holbrooke told BBC.

The deal mentioned by Karadzic meant that the Bosnian Serb leader and Holbrooke, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, reached and agreement according to which Karadzic would withdraw from the public life while the CIA would stay off his back.

It seems, however, highly improbable that such a deal wasn’t made, considering the fact that Mr. Karadzic has been “hiding” right in Serbia’s capital city, Belgrade, for almost 13 years and was caught by Serbian secret agents right at a time when Serbia intends to start negotiating the adherence to the European Union. The EU’s told Serbian officials that the first and foremost condition of adherence was the capture and trial of Mr. Karadzic.

Mr. Karadzic said the deal was made in 1996, but, although he kept his side of the deal, later, there were attempts to "liquidate me".

"It is clear that, unable to fulfill the commitments he had undertaken on behalf of the USA, he (Holbrooke) switched to Plan B - the liquidation of Radovan Karadzic," he said.

Karadzic submitted a document to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in which he said that his arrest had several irregularities. The most important of them is the media witch-hunt which began in the Muslim media even before the beginning of the armed conflict, he said.

"I believe that this fact seriously jeopardizes the trial itself."

Mr. Karadzic also said that he decided to represent and defend himself during this trial. However, he hadn't entered a plea yet. The court gave him 30 days to do so, and the tribunal judge adjourned the hearing until 29 August.

© 2007 - 2008 - eFluxMedia

[Wayne Hall]

macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/2622/46/

Americans were responsible for Karadzic's well being

Radovan Karadzic and former US negotiator Richard Holbrooke had signed a deal at the end of 1995, Serbian media said, adding that it entered into effect in 1996.

The Karadzic-Holbrooke pact called for Karadzic to give up leadership of his political party and to drop out of political life in return for his already existing war crimes indictment being scrapped, local media said.

The exclusive document is made up of four chapters. In the first part of the deal, Karadzic undertook to quit political life.

The second part of the deal envisioned the obligations of the US government i.e. to provide security for then Bosnian Serb leader, to provide funds and accommodation. The then US administration also undertook not to meddle with the members of his party's presidency.

According to the deal, the then US government undertook to provide $600.000 in local currency for Karadzic. The government also granted Karadzic a residential facility at a location previously agreed. The government also tasked at least six bodyguards to take care of Karadzic's safety.

The deal's final chapter entitled "joint provisions" clearly states that if Karadzic jeopardizes the deal, it will be viewed as "serious breach of the informal deal" and will be duly sanctioned. The deal can be terminated on mutual consent or upon an initiative of the US government.

In his first appearance at Hague Tribunal on Thursday, Karadzic alleged that he had made a deal with then top US negotiator Richard Holbrooke to withdraw from political life in return for his war crimes indictment being dropped. He said now the deal puts his life at risk

[Wayne Hall]

--- In [e-mail], M.J. wrote:
>
> "If Milosevic was not cunning and smart enough
> to keep himself alive while in the custody of the International
> Criminal Court the less cunning and smart Karadzic would seem to have grounds for concern."
>
> Can you be a bit more explicit. I am not sure what you mean :0)
>

The reference to Milosevic being "cunning and smart" seems to
motivated by the fact that despite his four years in the custody of
the International Criminal Tribunal, no evidence was ever found to
convict him of the crimes of which he had been accused. Misha
Glennie's innuendo is that, since by definition Milosevic was
guilty, the fact that the court could not prove him guilty shows how very very clever he was.

Karadjic announces that a similar fate to Milosevic's may be in store for him. According to Misha Glennie's conception of humour,
Karadjic's alleged inferiority to Milosevic in smartness means that
the Court will succeed in finding him guilty, in which case there
will be no need for the same "solution" to be found with Karadjic as was found with Milosevic.

To quote John Laughland on the circumstances of Milosevic's death
("Travesty", p.3)

"Milosevic died in custody, the seventh defendant at the
International Criminal Tribunal to have died either in the Hague or
shortly after release. He had been in poor health throughout and yet, instead of releasing him on compassionate grounds as the British authorities had done with General Pinochet (after having detained him for months on the basis of an arrest warrant issued by a Spanish magistrate), the International Criminal Tribunal judges used his illness as an excuse for taking the unprecedented decision to impose a defence lawyer on their most famous defendant. This means that, in international law, a sick man can now be convicted on the basis of a trial at which he has been "represented" by a lawyer whom he has in fact not appointed and whom he does not instruct. He can even be tried in absentia, as Milosevic himself was. As the International
Criminal Tribunal admitted, there is no precedent anywhere in
national or international law for such measures. Staff at the
International Criminal Tribunal added insult to injury when they
alleged, after his death, that Milosevic had deliberately damaged his health by taking medicine that had not been prescribed."

For all Misha Glennie's cynicism, Karadjic's being "less smart" than
Milosevic does not seem to be much of a reason for believing that
he is unlikely to meet with a similar fate to Milosevic's.

Let me give some reasons for my statement on why I think it is
journalists such as Misha Glennie who should be in the dock for the deaths of thousands of people in Yugoslavia, rather than politicians such as Karadjic and the late Milosevic.

Leaving out of account whether there really was "genocide" or even large-scale massacre of non-combatants at Srebrenica by Bosnian Serb forces, the fact that the liberal psychiatrist Karadjic came to prominence in the unlikely role of the political leader of a
nationalist army can be explained only by the way that the media, in the form of journalists such as Glennie (and many other Glennies) made it impossible for the Croatian and Serbian leaders Tudzman and Milosevic to succeed in the deal they attempted to negotiate after the breakup of Yugoslavia, which would have been similar to that made between Venizelos and Kemal after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, and would have made it possible to handle questions of borders and
population exchange in a way that could have minimized death and suffering.

How did the media do this?? By demonising the would-be architects of the Tudzman-Milosevic solution. Tudzman was easy to demonise, being a Jew-hater, a supporter of the same Ustasha politics that even the German Nazis had found extremist during World War II. But Tudzman was assigned the role of the lesser demon, because it was absolutely compulsory, ALWAYS, to say that Milosevic's "dreams of a greater Serbia" made him "even worse than Tudzman."

But in any case, because these guys were "new Hitlers", or rather
Milosevic was the new Hitler while Tudzman was almost as bad as the new Hitler, their reasonable ideas for managing the dissolution of Yugoslavia in as civilized a manner as possible were excluded from the outset, leaving bloody war as the only "solution".

What guarantee do we have that we are not now facing a NEW round of this kind of politics, in which Greece will be directly implicated?

With both Serbia and Croatia being forbidden to make the territorial claims on Bosnia-Herzegovina that could have facilitated the task of managed breakup of Yugoslavia, the Muslim population of Bosnia-Herzegovina were now dubbed "Bosnians", meaning that the Croatian and (particularly) Serbian populations of that province were now intruders in their own country, and the Yugoslavian army that was naturally there anyway.... was now an invading army. . .

The Titoite constitution for Bosnia-Herzegovina, which made it
necessary for all legislation to have the consent of all three
national groups as well as a numerical majority was changed by fiat into a simple majority system making the Serbs an unrepresented minority.

All these developments transformed Radovan Karadjic from being an unsuccessful politician trying to construct a Green Party in Bosnia-Herzegovina into the intellectual head of a nationalist movement. Was he naive to accept this role? It certainly looks like it. But he may also have seen it as his civic duty.

In any case, should we now lift a finger for Karadjic??? I would not attempt to if my only audience were Leftists, the Synaspismos, ecologists etc. On this particular front they themselves are part of the problem. And I do not have anything to do with the Greek Communist Party, who are part of almost EVERY problem, if only through their incurable spiritual and intellectual inertia. They may have a better understanding of this particular problem, but they have no understanding of what the possibilities are for constructive action.

[Wayne Hall]

www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=65316§ionid=351020606

Karadzic-Holbrooke deal confirmed
Fri, 01 Aug 2008 06:18:24

Mohammad Sacirbey,Radovan Karadzic
Mohammad Sacirbey, former Bosnian foreign minster says that US diplomat, Richard Holbrooke made an unambiguous political deal with Serb leader Radavan Karadzic.

Sacirbey pointing out that he has been telling this story for more than a decade now, said the Holbrooke-Karadzic pact called for Karadzic to give up leadership of his political party and to drop out of public life in return for his already existing war crimes indictment being scrapped.

In an exclusive interview with a Press TV correspondent, Sacirbey confirmed that a top US diplomat, Robert Frowick, head of the OSCE mission in Bosnia in 1996 was his source for the information of the Holbrooke-Karadzic deal. Sacirbey described Frowick as an unimpeachable point of reference.

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic made his first appearance at the UN's Yugoslav war crimes tribunal on Thursday charged with genocide.

Karadzic alleged in his remarks to the court that he had made a deal in 1996 with then top US negotiator Richard Holbrooke to drop out of public life in return for his war crimes indictment being dropped.

The US has always denied the Karadzic family's claims that a deal was made. Now the straightforward statements of former foreign minister Sacirbey raises an obvious contradiction to American claims and heightens the tensions around the Karadzic trial, as no one knows what other potential bombshells he might drop next or whether the court will allow him to speak.

In a July 26 interview with Germany's Spiegel Online International, Holbrooke was asked about rumors that he had told Karadzic that if he retired from politics, he wouldn't be sent to the war crimes tribunal. "Those are lies I do not comment on any longer," Holbrooke said at the time.

Elsewhere, Holbrooke, who was the architect of the Dayton peace agreement that belatedly ended the Bosnian conflict and the ethnic cleansing and genocide against Europe's only indigenous Muslim population, said in an interview aired on CNN on Thursday, that he won a commitment from Karadzic in July 1996 to step down from his political positions.

"I negotiated a very tough deal. He had to step down immediately from both his posts as president of the Serb part of Bosnia and as head of his party. And he did so," Holbrooke said in a recorded interview. Apparently Karadzic provided the quid pro quo of the agreement in his statements on Thursday.

SG/HAR

[Wayne Hall]

--- In [e-mail], M.J wrote:

M.
>
> Thanks for that background information. I am not so sure about the
last part. How do you accurately analyze the level of understanding
of KKE?

W.
The KKE has a better level of understanding of some aspects of the
breakup of Yugoslavia than does, for example, the Synaspismos. But
they see it through an understanding of history that cannot confront
the possibility that the creation of Yugoslavia (both royalist and
Titoist) might have been a terrible mistake in the first place. Tito
was won over to Bolshevism by his experience in Russia at the time of
the revolution as an Austrian prisoner-of-war. We can't make sense of
the modern world if we cannot relativise the Soviet Revolution and
see it not just as an "advance" for humanity but also as something
whose consequences, in conjunction with the reaction to it, have been
very unfortunate for Europe and the world as a whole.


M.
> In view of your knowledge, I would like to hear what you know
about .the fate of former Communists, Baathists, cooperators with the
former Soviet Union, etc., via-a-vis the US, the EU, Nato etc. What
would have happened if Mr. M had simply abandoned Communism and
hugged Mr. Holbrooke? Or Mr. Saddam for the matter, or Fidel, or
Arafat . . . the list goes on. The punishment seems fairly severe to
me.

W.
It was Karadjic, not Milosevic who did the deal with Holbrooke and
Karadjic was never a Communist. And Karadjic DID "hug" Mr.
Holbrooke. He abandoned politics, and his own supporters.

Milosevic, unlike his wife, "broke" with Communism well before the
wars broke out in Yugoslavia. He was a banker and architect of
liberalising economic reforms as well as a would-be reformer of the
Titoist system who thought that Tito's Yugoslavia was biased against
Serbs. These are ideas that are associated with the "right", not with
Communism. They were taboo in Tito's Yugoslavia.

The general public in the West sees the situation in Yugoslavia very
inaccurately in terms of the "East-West" division, with the Serbs as
the Communists and the Croats as the capitalists, and fascists. That
is not how it ever has been. The Comintern during the Stalin era was
Croatia-based: it utilized Croatian national resentments, targeting
the Serbian dominated Royalist government.

Tito's Communism was "Western". There were a lot of Serbs in his
army, but they were desperado Bosnian and Croatian Serbs driven into
Tito's arms by the Ustashi massacres. They were too ruined and low-
class to influence Tito's politics much, and Tito's politics were
always Croatian-centred. Tito's army entered Serbia like an invading
army, encountering a lot of opposition from the "rightist" and
royalist Mihailovic and his supporters, but also from public opinion
generally.

Milosevic's break from Titoism was not only a break from Communism
but also a break in the direction of tabooed (by Tito) Serbian
nationalism. This is why it has been plausible to sell the idea of
him being responsible for the break-up of Yugoslavia, when really his
politics were just reactive: the politics of "realism", (always
however limited by the influence of his wife, who remained a Titoist
and a Communist to the bitter end.)

As for Baathists, etc. Saddam Hussein started his career as an anti-
Communist hatchet man (i.e. a murderer of Communists). How could he
have been more "accommodating"?

I don't think it is possible to understand what has gone on by seeing
it as a struggle of Communism against anti-Communism where if the
Communists give up and stop being Communists they will be allowed to
surrender.

Karadjic once compared the fate that faced Serbs with the fate of the
American "Indians" and this does not seem to be an exaggeration or a
metaphor. And it is not just America's doing "Die Serben muessen
sterben" (The Serbs must die) is a German slogan from way back.

But all of us are now candidates for American "Red Indian" status.
International law is now being treated with about as much respect
as were the treaties with the "native Americans".

Here is some more from John Laughland's book "Travesty":

"On the day Milosevic died, Zdenko Tomanovic, one of Milosevic's
three Serb legal assistants, released a handwritten letter from
Slobodan Milosevic to Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister,
dated 8th March 2006. In this letter Milosevic had alleged that
someone at The Hague was taking "active, wilful steps to destroy my
health", and that it was in order to cover that up that the judges
had refused to let him leave (for medical treatment in Moscow):
Milosevic said that the manipulation of his health would inevitably
be discovered by Russian doctors. He adduced as proof for his claim
that a substance had been discovered in his blood on 12th January but
that he had inexplicably not been told about its presence until 7th
March. Milosevic wrote: "An extremely strong drug was found in my
blood, which is used, as they themselves say, for the treatment of
tuberculosis and leprosy." He concluded, "I am addressing you in the
expectation that you will help me defend my health from the criminal
activities in this institution."

The drug in question was rifampicin, which would have had the effect
of neutralising the other medicines he was taking to keep his blood
pressure and heart condition under control…."

But what was the strategy of the Tribunal??

"….The Prosecutor had alleged at various times throughout the trial
that Milosevic was manipulating his own health by refusing to follow
his prescribed medical regime, and this theory was again leaked to
the press after Milosevic's death. The claim was that Milosevic
himself was taking the rifampicin in order to neutralize the effects
of other medicines so that his health would worsen and the case
would be strengthened for allowing him to go to Moscow. Dr. Donald
Uges, appointed by the Tribunal, said that Milosevic was secretly
taking the medicine to secure a `one-way ticket to Moscow' (although
it is impossible to see how a responsible toxicologist can say
anything more than that he had found this or that substance in a
person's blood.)"

Academician Leo Bokheria, the Russian cardiologist who wanted to
treat Milosevic, put the matter very clearly: "If Milosevic had been
taken to any specialized Russian hospital, the moreso to a …medical
institution such as ours…he would have lived for many long years to
come."

As I said, I would not even try to campaign directly on these
questions, simply because of the way that public opinion is massaged
by the media to seeing everything in terms of a distorting "West vs
East" or "Communist vs anti-Communist" or "West vs Islam" schema (or
sometimes all of these simultaneously).

But if a repetition of the procedure used with Milosevic can be
prevented in the case of Karadjic, this will be not just to his
advantage but to the advantage of us all, because it will signify a
successful defence of legal propriety against criminality.

[Wayne Hall]

THE 'KARADŽIÆ-GATE' - August 3, 2008

www.europeancourier.org/105.htm

Radovan Karadzic appearing, for the first time on July 31, 2008, before the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague, made a shocking (or perhaps not) statement that the Clinton Administration made a secret deal with him to prevent his arrest and obstruct the indictment at the ICTY, if he withdrew from the politics in 1996. According to Karadzic, the offer was conveyed to him by Richard Holbrooke, who acted on behalf of the U.S. government. Karadzic was cut short by Justice Orie, who said that there will be time later on for such kind of statements. Following up the next day, Karadzic submitted a letter to the Tribunal with some more details pertaining to his allegations.

A REVENGE FOR KOSOVO

What happened just a few days ago gives you only a taste of how interesting this trial may be. One can risk a statement that Karadzic's process will perhaps become the trial of the century. The prosecutor will seek justice for the victims, while the defense will attempt to redefine and reinterpret the Balkan history and make Karadzic a national hero. Karadzic has already directly attacked the legacy of the Clinton Administration and will attempt to undermine U.S. position in the Balkans and its moral standing among the Muslim countries shortly.

The Bosnian genocide was cited as one of the motives why the terrorists conducted the London bombings on July 7, 2005. We may expect that allegations about the U.S. making secret deals with the war criminals responsible for murdering hundreds of thousands of Muslims will not help to improve America's image among the Muslim countries, already strained by the Iraq war.

If Serbia was to take revenge on America for recognizing Kosovo's independence, it could have been done only through the handover of Karadzic to the ICTY. Enormous dirt will be thrown at the United States, American politicians, diplomats and their methods of conducting diplomacy during that trial, what may only weaken the U.S. political leadership and trustworthiness in the region. I do not relate it merely to Karadzic's statements but rather their public aftermath because the media will be thoroughly investigating his every allegation. The EuropeanCourier.org has already received requests for information how to contact some of our contributors to obtain more clues for investigating the Karadzic's statements. Among those, which contacted us is, for example, a premier TV station in the Middle East and Europe.

There is no doubt that the Karadzic's trial will be a journalistic fiesta. Perhaps even a Pulitzer Prize and other prestigious awards are waiting for those investigative historians, who uncover and describe the depths of the "Karadzic-gate".

A NOT-SO-SECRET DEAL

What Karadzic said this week are only allegations, which still need to be explained in detail and confronted with other facts and evidence available. However, this is not a new discovery. The theory of a secret deal has been growing and gaining supporters for a couple of years already. Many prominent politicians, diplomats and writers came to this conclusion independently of Karadzic's statements.

Richard Holbrooke commenting on the Karadzic's allegations tried to undermine their importance by saying "why would anyone believe one of the most dangerous and awful mass murders in modern history?" Well, the problem is that it is not only Radovan Karadzic who says that.

Last year, Mrs. Florence Hartmann, a former spokesperson for the ICTY, published a book, "Peace and Punishment: the Secret Political War and International Justice", in which she presented circumstantial evidence showing that the deal was really made. The book compiled interviews, transcripts of meetings between the Western officials as well as documents in possession of the ICTY and NATO's headquarters, which clearly indicated that Karadzic and Mladic were not arrested for the past 13 years because there was a direct political will not to do so.

Holbrooke counterattacks by saying that these are Karadzic's friends, who have been spreading the information about the deal. But that's not entirely true. According to Hartmann, on August 27, 1997, Gen. Wesley Clark during a meeting with Louise Arbour (then a Chief Prosecutor at ICTY), said that "if Karadzic was brought to the Hague, he would allege that a deal was made in Dayton with Warren Christopher that Karadzic would never end up in the Hague". It's hard to imagine that Gen. Clark would be one of Karadzic's friends, but still he had some information and knowledge of the deal. I spoke to Mrs. Hartmann personally and she confirmed that she faithfully quoted the official transcript of said conversation, which has been in ICTY's possession. What's even more interesting is that the aforementioned conversation took place in 1997, while the Karadzic's family came out with the idea of the deal 5 years later, this is on June 4, 2002, when they sent a letter to SFOR's Commander that Karadzic has been adhering to the terms and conditions of the deal, therefore the indictment at ICTY should be dropped.

Additionally, Holbrooke's statements that NATO was authorized, since the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords, to capture Karadzic are very inconsistent with statements of other high officials and also his own. Holbrooke clearly contradicts himself because in his April's op-ed for the Washington Post, he wrote that the Dayton Agreement authorized NATO to track down Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden in Bosnia and kick their butts out. And according to Holbrooke they did so. They tracked down a very little known (at that time) terrorist group and got rid of them. But did they track down and capture "one of the most dangerous and awful mass murderers in modern history?" No they didn't! They didn't even try to capture him when he was frequently seen giving interviews to foreign journalists. So was NATO really authorized to arrest Karadzic as Holbrooke presently claims? In his interview with Charlayne Hunter-Gault on July 22, 1996, he expressly said that despite Dayton they could not use NATO forces to capture Karadzic or Mladic. Muhamed Sacirbey, the former foreign minister of Bosnia, says that the Bosnian delegation to the Dayton peace negotiations in 1995 officially demanded that IFOR forces be authorized to capture Karadzic and Mladic. However, he was told by Gen. Wesley Clark that the Pentagon would not agree to such a request. Moreover, on March 23, 2000, Gen. Clark communicated to Carla Del Ponte that any attempt to arrest Karadzic or Mladic has to be directly approved by President Clinton himself. This statement is reflected in an official transcript as well.

So there was no political permission given to NATO's forces to go after Karadzic and Mladic, what fully explains why those two enjoyed freedom for the last 13 years not being seriously troubled by anybody.

A WITNESS "SINE QUA NON"

Once I heard that Karadzic made an official allegation that he had a deal with the Clinton Administration, I telephoned Muhamed Sacirbey to ask for comments. He said that he has known about the deal for a while already and that his knowledge does not come from the Karadzic's camp. According to Sacirbey, the existence of the deal was confirmed to him personally by at least two high level, credible sources in the U.S. administration, by diplomats who were intimate to the substance of the contacts with Karadzic and Mladic at that time. Additionally, his subsequent discussions with the U.S. officials, including Richard Holbrooke, led him to believe that the reason why the U.S. wanted Karadzic and Mladic to disappear for so many years was because the U.S. government deliberately allowed the Bosnian Serbs to take over Srebrenica enclave in 1995, what resulted in a mass murder of 8,000 innocent people. All of the above is making Sacirbey a witness "sine qua non", a somebody whose testimony is needed to discover all the facts for the purpose of reaching a proper verdict.

Unfortunately, Richard Holbrooke and other U.S. officials refused to testify as witnesses before the ICTY.

Sacirbey presented a different approach toward justice and agreed to testify in Slobodan Milosevic's and Mamcilo Perisic's cases. And henceforth started his trouble. A few days after he spoke to the prosecutors in Milosevic's trial he was arrested based on an extradition request immediately filed by Bosnia for allegedly "abusing the office". The extradition request has been handled since inception by American lawyers (the Dayton Peace Accords give power to foreign officials to control judicial and legal system of Bosnia). The legal situation became very curious: American lawyers in Bosnia tried to extradite an American citizen (Sacribey has U.S. citizenship) for crimes allegedly committed on the U.S. territory, moreover with all the evidence being in possession of the U.S. financial institutions over which the Bosnian judicial system has no jurisdiction whatsoever and therefore has no means to subpoena their records. The judge presiding over this case in the U.S. Federal court called it the most bizarre extradition request he ever dealt with. There are no any official charges brought against him in Bosnia up to present day, although Sacirbey urged the prosecutors to do so, because that would open a path of challenging them. As of now there is still an ongoing investigation only. Nonetheless, the extradition request prevents him from testifying at ICTY and his passport was taken away. He does not agree to be extradited to Bosnia because he challenges the legality of the request in the first place. He offered to be interviewed by the prosecutors in the U.S., a third country or even in Bosnia, but was denied.

I am curious how this situation will develop later on, and what impact it may have on the Karadzic's trial, as it is quite obvious that there is no use for the Bosnian government to pursue this extradition. Sacirbey's testimony before the ICTY may provide evidence directly linking the U.S. government and the Serbia's former leadership with the greatest atrocities in Bosnia in the 90's, what would open a legal path for thousands of victims to be financially compensated for their losses and suffering by the United States and Serbia.

Furthermore, there is the ICTY's credibility involved as well. Presently, there is no even one person on this planet, who believes that Karadzic could be acquitted. It downplays the role of the ICTY to being merely an executioner, not the provider of fair trial and justice. Karadzic should have an opportunity to support his allegations by independent evidence and testimony (even though this may be inconvenient for individuals like Richard Holbrooke). If he is denied to do so, then, as a result, the international justice system could become a farce.

What people expect from this trial is not only a life sentence for Karadzic (what is almost certain) but also the information about what really happened in the Balkans in the 90's.

HOLBROOKE'S OWN WORDS

Karadzic's allegations have been unintentionally supported (to some extent) by Richard Holbrooke himself. For example, in an
interview with a French journalist, Sylvie Matton, he asserted
that he had received "instructions to sacrifice Srebrenica, Zepa
and Gorazde" prior to the assault on those enclaves by Gen.
Mladic in July of 1995. The other time, he said during an
interview with a Dutch TV, Twan Huys of Nova, that he warned
the Dutch Queen prior to the Srebrenica massacre that it would
be assaulted and overrun by Gen. Mladic. During an interview
for French "Match" he was asked: "Did the sacrifice you
mentioned mean the territories alone or both the territores and
their population?". He answered: "Both". The journalist followed
up: "Who gave you the instructions?". Holbrooke answered: "Tony Lake" (Bill Clinton's National Security Advisor). These
statements perplexed even the most faithful supporters of the
U.S. in the region, because the official position of the Administration was that they never knew and could not have anticipated that Srebrenica would be overrun.

The Karadzic's story has been confirmed by Dr. Aleksa Buha, the former foreign minister of Republika Srpska, who claims that he was personally present when Holbrooke made the infamous offer to Karadzic. It is hard to establish how credible this witness is and we will have to wait for his testimony once he is summoned to testify. Aleksa Buha also implicates Madeleine Albright, but that seems quite unlikely to me to be true. Moreover, the information about the deal between Karadzic and Holbrooke has been revealed before the ICTY in the testimony of Milovan Bjelica on April 7, 2006, in the case of the Prosecutor vs. Mamcilo Krajisnik. However, the information itself is laconic.

LEGAL CONSEQUENCES

If you recall, the International Criminal Court has just recently indicted an acting head of a state - the Sudanese President, and a precedent has been established that politicians and diplomats may be brought to justice for the results their actions produce, especially if it causes mass atrocities and genocide (as of now the ICC does not have any jurisdiction over U.S. citizens and as Samantha Power indicated previously - Barack Obama, if elected the next President, would be hesitant to sign the Rome Statute).

The confirmation of Karadzic's allegations, would, most importantly, open a legal path for many genocide victims in Bosnia to be reimbursed by the U.S. government for their losses and suffering. If the U.S. government really allowed the Bosnian Serbs (prior to July 11, 1995) to take over Srebrenica, Gorazde and Zepa it would mean that the U.S. government was jointly responsible for the genocide that followed and that it was complicit to the crimes against humanity. The reimbursements would probably reach billions of dollars.

Reuters reported on July 31 that the Bosnians want the Karadzic's trial to shed light on history and they hope it will help them understand better what happened during the 1992-95 war. But perhaps the best way to find out the entire truth would be through filing of a civil lawsuit by the genocide victims against Bill Clinton, Richard Holbrooke and Tony Lake in the United States. All of them could be subpoenaed to the courtroom to give a sworn testimony under the penalty of perjury about the substance of their dealings with Karadzic and Mladic during the crisis and afterwards (as it was mentioned before, those dignitaries refused to testify about it at the ICTY). It would supplement the evidence at the Tribunal and would be beneficial for the proper interpretation of history. If Karadzic is lying it should be disclosed beyond reasonable doubt, if he is saying the truth those who are co-responsible should be brought to justice as well.

Sebastian Aulich

[Wayne Hall]

Karadjic trial blog

www.europeancourier.org/Karadzic_Trial_Blog.htm

[Wayne Hall]

KEEP HIM ALIVE!!! - July 21, 2008

www.europeancourier.org/103.htm
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The European Courier issues a statement in connection with the arrest of Radovan Karadzic. You may put your name under it by sending an email to [e-mail] with a word “Karadziæ’s arrest” and providing us with your personal information (first and last name, country of origin etc.).

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The arrest of Radovan Karadziæ is no doubt a
great news for the entire international community.
It is also a big step for Serbia toward its membership
in the European Union, with President Boris Tadiæ
emerging as a true statesman.

Recently, there have been a lot of independent
voices heard that current interpretation of events,
which lead to the Srebrenica genocide and other
ethnic cleansing in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995, perhaps does not accurately describe the facts.

Pieces of circumstantial evidence were discovered, which pointed out that the Bill Clinton Administration
and other Western powers, might have coined a
secret deal with Radovan Karadziæ, Ratko Mladiæ and
Slobodan Miloseviæ, to persuade them to join the Dayton peace process, by awarding them the territory of Srebrenica (what resulted in a mass murders of over 8,000 innocent people) and secondly by preventing their arrest. It is pertinent that those allegations be explained by Radovan Karadziæ himself as he has a first hand knowledge of all the facts and the substance of the negotiations which preceded the Srebrenica tragedy.

Uncovering the truth is important not only for the international community but also for the American political process because many of those, who were dealing personally with Radovan Karadziæ in the 90's are presently advising Barack Obama or took active part in Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

We hope and urge the international community to do whatever it can to prevent Radovan Karadziæ from following the fate of Slobodan Miloseviæ, who died in suspicious circumstances. We count on the Serbian authorities and the ICTY’s authorities that Karadziæ is successfully prevented from committing a suicide in his cell, overdosing medicine or misusing it.

While we await the trial of Radovan Karadziæ impatiently, we call upon President Boris Tadiæ to continue the search for Ratko Mladiæ, the most wanted criminal in Europe.

EuropeanCourier.org
Muhamed Sacirbey (Former Foreign Minister of BiH)

[Wayne Hall]

Locating Mladiæ “thankless task”
21 August 2008 | 09:13 | Source: B92
BELGRADE -- Rasim Ljajiæ says that it is difficult to claim that Hague fugitive Ratko Mladiæ is in Serbia.

www.b92.net/eng/news/politics-article.php?yyyy=2008&mm=08&dd=21&nav_id=52862

“Until he is located, it will be very thankless to claim that he is in Serbia or not,” said the president of the National Council for Cooperation with the Hague Tribunal in an interview with B92, adding that no one could say any longer that Serbia was not prepared to meet its obligations to the Tribunal.

He said that it appeared to him that “many in the international community who are ill-disposed” to Serbia took the news of Radovan Karadžiæ’s arrest with some reservation, and that others feared that Serbia would improve its international position and possibly “endanger some of their actions.”

Asked who had arrested Karadžiæ, Ljajiæ said that it had been carried out by security service officials, and that this was no secret.

He said that investigations were ongoing to see who had come into contact with Karadžiæ’s bag and laptop.

“This is not a propaganda headquarters which makes things up to amuse the public or to deceive them. We state to the public what we receive as official information, of course, in the scale and detail that we are able to at that precise moment. Analyses are under way, they are not all complete. In a few days’ time, we will know exactly how many people came into contact with the bag and the items inside it,” the National Council president said.

He said that he would be visiting Brussels in early September to meet with officials of the European Parliament.

“We wish to honestly state everything that has been done and what the current problems are,” Ljajiæ said, speaking of Serbia’s cooperation with the Tribunal.

He said that it was “realistic that there is no support for what we are doing from the public, but on the other hand, we have a very cold attitude from many EU officials as well.”

Ljajiæ said that “the majority of the public is against cooperation with the Tribunal, not because people support war criminals, but because the Tribunal is very often unprincipled and because it has delivered very strange verdicts.”

[Wayne Hall]

Karadzic refuses war crimes pleas

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7587623.stm

Radovan Karadzic alleges there is a conspiracy against him

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has refused to enter a plea to charges of war crimes at the United Nations tribunal in The Hague.

A tribunal judge entered a plea of not guilty to all charges on his behalf, in line with the rules of the court.

Mr Karadzic faces 11 counts, including genocide, relating to the 1990s Bosnian civil war.

He was arrested in the Serbian capital Belgrade in July after 13 years on the run, living under a false name.

Facing the tribunal for the second time since his arrest, and looking calm and composed, Mr Karadzic said it was a "court of Nato" which had as its aim his "liquidation".

"I've stopped using a false name so I think that all parties should do the same," he said.

The charges against Mr Karadzic include what is regarded as Europe's worst massacre since World War II - the killing of up to 8,000 men and youths in the enclave of Srebrenica.

There will be a further hearing on 17 September. No trial date has been set.

'I will not plead'

Judge Iain Bonomy entered the plea of not guilty after the defendant declined to hear all the charges against him individually.

THE INDICTMENT
Eleven counts of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and other atrocities
Charged over shelling Sarajevo during the city's siege, in which some 12,000 civilians died
Allegedly organised the massacre of up to 8,000 Bosniak men and youths in Srebrenica
Targeted Bosniak and Croat political leaders, intellectuals and professionals
Unlawfully deported and transferred civilians because of national or religious identity
Destroyed homes, businesses and sacred sites


Karadzic rolls out delaying tactics

"As to count one of the indictment," the judge had begun.

"You're charged with genocide... How do you plead, guilty or not guilty?"

"I will not plead, in line with my standpoint as regards this court," Mr Karadzic replied.

"I shall therefore enter a plea on your behalf of not guilty," the judge said.

"Is that the position you're going to take in relation to each of the other 10 charges on the indictment?"

"Absolutely, yes," Mr Karadzic confirmed.

As Judge Bonomy entered the not guilty pleas, the former Bosnian Serb leader asked: "May I hold you to your word?"

"Which word?" asked the judge.

"That I'm not guilty," replied Mr Karadzic.

"We shall see in due course, Mr Karadzic," the judge said.

Friday's hearing also saw some friction between the judge and prosecutor Alan Tieger over work on drafting a streamlined version of the indictment.

When Mr Tieger said he hoped to have a new charge sheet ready by the end of September, Judge Bonomy snapped: "I sincerely hope you are not serious about that date."

Deal claim

The indictment includes genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.


The remains of those killed at Srebrenica continue to be found

The alleged crimes include Mr Karadzic's involvement in an attempt to destroy in whole or in part the Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) and Bosnian Croat ethnic groups.

That included the killings at Srebrenica and the shelling of Sarajevo, killing and terrorising the city's civilians.

The indictment says Mr Karadzic knew about the crimes that were being committed by Bosnian Serb forces, but failed to take action to prevent them.

Since his first appearance before the court 30 days ago, Mr Karadzic has filed several motions including one contesting the appointment of presiding Dutch judge Alphons Orie, who he claims is biased against him.

The judge was replaced.

Mr Karadzic argues that the trial against him is illegal because under the terms of a deal made with former US peace envoy Richard Holbrooke, he was offered immunity from prosecution. The claims have been ridiculed by Mr Holbrooke.

[Wayne Hall]

Some garbage from "Open Democracy"
www.opendemocracy.net/heather-mcrobie/difficult-week-for-international-criminal-tribunal-for-former-yugoslavia

A difficult week for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia

Heather McRobie, 5 March 2010
Subjects:ConflictDemocracy and governmentInternational politicseuropeconflictsjustice?

The ICTY's struggle to prosecute war criminals causes a further decline in credibility in times when progress is vital for Croatia and the relation between Serbia and Bosnia.

It seems strange to think now that, until recently, the ICTY was intended to be closed by December 2010; the UN Security Council recently extended its mandate to December 2012, meaning that the work of the court will continue past the milestone of twenty years since the start of the devastating wars in the former Yugoslavia. Yet the events of the past week seem to indicate that even two more years is not long enough for the ICTY to fulfil its goal of prosecuting those responsible for war crimes and genocide—high profile war crimes fugitives Ratko Mladic and Goran Hadzic have still not been arrested, whilst Radovan Karadzic managed to hide from justice for twelve years between his ICTY indictment and his arrest in 2008. Meanwhile, as Karadzic is now busy making a mockery of the ICTY’s process, Britain has found itself in a divisive diplomatic row with Bosnia over the arrest of University of Sarajevo professor Ejup Ganic, whilst last week saw the announcement of a concert to raise money for those indicted by the ICTY in Croatia.

While war crimes were committed by all sides during the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, the 44 month siege of Sarajevo—estimated to have killed 10,000 and injured 56,000—stands out as one of the most shocking. One of the 11 indictments against Radovan Karadzic is his role in the siege as Bosnian Serb leader during the 1992-1996 assault on the city. On Tuesday, a day after Karadzic’s trial reopened, the former Bosnian leader—as defiant as Milosevic at the start of his trial in 2001—claimed that Bosnian Muslims orchestrated the siege of Sarajevo in order to engineer a Nato attack on Bosnian Serbs, whilst dismissing the 1995 massacre of over 7,000 men and boys in Srebrenica as a “myth.” Then, just as these old wounds were being reopened, Karadzic’s trial was postponed once more, so that the Appellate Chamber could decide on Karadzic’s appeal against a previous decision in which the Trial Chamber rejected his request for postponement. Like a bad parody of Kafka, the court has postponed Karadzic’s trial in order to rule on an earlier postponement. In the meantime, witnesses who came to The Hague to testify have been turned away a second time, and the traumas of those affected by the siege and by Srebrenica have been forced to the surface without any chance to respond.

Whilst Karadzic has been allowed to make a mockery of the ICTY’s process, there was nonetheless a glimmer of hope this week that, despite Karadzic’s theatrics, the process of bringing war criminals to justice was functioning at least as well as normal. The arrest of alleged Montenegrin war criminal Veselin Vlahoiv Batko, known as the ‘Monster of Grbavica’, in Spain on Tuesday had little of the drama and myth-making that Karadzic has brought to the justice process: Batko claims he is “tired of running” from the arrest warrants against him and seems likely to co-operate with the judicial process. Spanish newspaper El Pais quoted police sources saying that Batko confessed to his role in raping, torturing and killing civilians in the Grbavica area of Sarajevo during the war. Both Montenegro and Bosnia requested his extradition to their countries after his arrest in Spain; Serbia’s Ministry of Justice later added their own extradition request for crimes they claim Batko has committed in Serbia. While the question of which country will succeed in extraditing Batko largely rests on the still unresolved question of whether he has a Bosnian passport, his confession and Bosnia and Serbia’s mutual desire to see him brought to justice, could have signalled a return to the grim normality of prosecuting war criminals.

However, Batko’s arrest has been quickly overshadowed by that of Ejup Ganic at London’s Heathrow airport, provoking a diplomatic row to rival the dispute in late 2009 in which Britain failed to guarantee that Israeli politician Tzipi Livni would not be arrested for war crimes. It seems fair to say that Britain has not yet given a consistent answer as to why they arrested Ganic without bail, yet quickly attempted to make amends with Israel after ‘universal jurisdiction’ was very briefly invoked in relation to Livni. () A source of particular grievance to many Bosniaks this week has been that Ganic was arrested in Heathrow after an extradition appeal that came directly from Serbia to Britain: the ICTY has already investigated allegations made against Ganic and has refused to issue an indictment for war crimes.

An academic by profession, Ganic was President of Bosnia for around 48 hours in 1992, whilst Alia Itzetbegovic was held hostage by the JNA in Sarajevo airport as he returned from peace talks in Portugal. During this period, Serbian officials claim that Ganic ordered an ambush of a UN-sponsored evacuation, leading to the deaths of 42 soldiers. That Ganic’s arrest came just as Karadzic’s trial commenced in The Hague has strained tensions between Serbia and Bosnia, as Bosnian officials have seen the arrest of Ganic as ‘retaliatory’ and an attempt to make an equivalence between Ganic and Karadzic. As of Thursday, a Facebook fan page calling for the release of Ganic has reached over 17,000 members, and the Bosniak member of BiH’s three-seat Presidency has vowed to “fight to defend the rights of our citizens and the dignity of war resistance to the aggression that was launched on Bosnia.”

It remains to be seen how the ICTY will respond to this escalation of accusations and counter-accusations. It is, however, becoming clearer that citizens from all countries involved in the 1990s conflicts are losing faith in the processes of prosecuting those responsible for war crimes. Last week, it was announced that a concert of Croatian musicians will be held in Split to raise funds for the defence of three we crime indictees accused of the deportation and murder of Serb civilians in 1995—another indication that the UN Tribunal can no longer ignore the issue of its declining credibility in the region, and that allowing Karadzic to turn his trial into a farce is further exacerbating the issue.

Of course, the ICTY’s credibility has often been disputed. In her 2004 book ‘They Would Never Hurt A Fly’, journalist Slavenka Drakulic describes how, in the early days of the Tribunal, nationalist politicians—often the same politicians as had been in power in the early 1990s—created a powerful rhetoric equating defiance of the ICTY with patriotism, and evidence of its alleged bias were widely disseminated. As Drakulic notes, Serbia’s experience of sanctions and the NATO bombings in the 1990s also lent weight to feelings that Serbia has been disproportionately targeted or portrayed as the sole aggressor, as did the comparative lack of public acknowledgement of the war crimes committed against Serb civilians. In Bosnia, meanwhile, post-Dayton institutional entrenchment of ethnic divisions means that children from the three official ‘constituent nations’ now study different curricula based on their official ethnic identity: history classes attended by Bosnian Croat and Bosnian Serb children use textbooks from the neighbouring states, while lessons for Bosnian Muslims use textbooks created for their purposes. All three curricula explain the 1990s wars in terms of a struggle for independence and self-defence against the aggressors of the other ethnic groups: the ICTY prosecutions betray these official histories.

With Karadzic’s mocking theatrics, a concert for war crime indictees in Croatia, and a diplomatic row over Ejup Ganic’s arrest in London, it is hard to see how the ICTY will recover legitimacy amongst the communities to whom it is intended to bring justice, whilst in the time since the Tribunal was established the compulsory ethnic-identification has become increasingly institutionalised and entrenched. Relations between Bosnia and Serbia had recently been improving—the Sarajevo-Belgrade railway had symbolically re-opened in late 2009—yet Ganic’s arrest could easily set back this normalisation. Moreover, the election of the moderate Jospovic in late 2009 in Croatia had been seen as a sign of hope that the country could fully move on from the Tudjman era. The events of this week unfortunately seem to indicate that there is much further to go than had recently seemed possible.