Now That Montenegro Has Been Successfully Marooned...
Step Two: Albanian Muslims Proceed to Carve Out Montenegro
AP reports that Montenegrin authorities indicted 18 ethnic Albanians, including five living in the United States for plotting an insurgency to carve out an autonomous region in Montenegro, bordering with the Albanian KLA occupied Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija.
The criminal charges were filed after 14 of the people were arrested on the eve of Montenegro’s general elections three months ago, when they planned a series of terrorist attacks, prosecutor Stojanka Radović said.
Two U.S.-based Albanian Muslim members of the group, Vaselj Dedvukaj and Doda Ljucaj from the state of Michigan, are accused of funding the group, which intended to use explosives and weapons for terrorist acts aimed at controlling military posts, police precincts and other important facilities in an ethnic Albanian-populated eastern part of Montenegro, where Albanian Muslims represent an overwhelming majority.
Last month, four of the suspects were released pending trial, but 10 others remain in custody. They have accused the Montenegrin police of beating them during and after the arrest.
Among the five Albanian Muslims who came from the United States and helped arm the group with rifles, hand grenades and to rocket-propelled grenade launchers, two are on the run, Radović said.
“They illegally brought into Montenegro a large amount of various weaponry, ammunition, explosives and hid them in caves in the eastern region of Montenegro known as Malesija,” according to the prosecutor.
“Their intention was to use force to achieve a special status for the region populated by Albanian Muslim majority ... contrary to the constitution,” Radović said.
If convicted, the suspects face up to 15 years in jail each. No trial date has been set.
Cutting Montenegro Off Serbia was, Of Course, Step One
Albanian Muslims constitute a large segment of Montenegro’s 620,000 population, and whole regions of the small republic are populated entirely by ethnic Albanians who, supposedly, have “good relations with the [secessionist] government” of ex-communist Milo Djukanovic and have long had their lawmakers in Montenegro’s parliament.
Not only that, what AP has failed to mention is that Montenegro’s Albanians have overwhelmingly voted in favor of the tiny republic’s separatists, on a referendum held for Montenegro’s independence from much larger Serbia, which has strong historical and brotherly ties with “Montenegrins” (majority of whom consider themselves Serbs, and not a separate nation).
Right after it was announced that the separatists are likely to have won the slim majority needed for the secession, Albanian Muslims from both Serbian Kosovo province and Montenegro have underlined that it is thanks to them Montenegro’s secession has succeeded and that they expected to be rewarded for their “contribution” to cutting Montenegro off Serbia.
AP also notes that “unlike their fellow-ethnic Albanians in Serbia’s Kosovo province, the Montenegrin Albanians have not formed a separatist movement or disputed Montenegrin [secessionist] government rule in the past.”
Well, of course not, that would be rather stupid and Albanian terrorists do have smart advisers. First, they had to befriend, bribe and support the secessionists in order to sever miniature Montenegro from its brotherly Serbia. Now that that has been achieved (in May/June 2006), NOW they can proceed, by forming a separatist movement of their own, in order to carve up Montenegro too. One would think that’s fairly obvious by now, even to the notoriously blind Associated Press.
Cartoon by Ranko Guzina