US-led NATO — Serbia’s Judge, Jury and Executioner
An excerpt from the investigative report in a draft form, to be finalized following the Genocide Research Project symposium (Hiroshima City University), by Dr. Piotr Bein*. The report will be presented at the Columbia University’s Center for International Conflict Resolution in New York.
The Powers
The following powers have joined against the Serbs: [1]
- Slovenian, Croat and Albanian separatism, and religious extremism of the latter two;
- Balkan Muslim fundamentalism;
- US and international globalism and external national interests, notably German militarism and neo-colonialism;
- International radical Islam; and
- Vatican’s expansionism.
The first two, local power brokers could not succeed without external support, among which the US and the “international community” played a leading role. Alliances developed from confluence of goals and historical precedence, such as Vatican’s support to Croatia.
Kosovo Albanian extremists destroyed Christian churches in plain sight of NATO, UN and EU. A quest for Kosovo “independence” goes on, on lands of sovereign Serbia, for an ethnic group that already has a state (Albania) and harbours organized global crime.
Western powers have supported the same jihad in the Balkans that backfired on 9/11, and later in Madrid and London. A neo-fascist Croatia that cleansed several hundred thousand Serbs and denies returns of the expelees, is considered for membership in the EU, as is BiH “federation” run by Muslim radicals who deny rights to Bosnian Serbs and Croats.
Politicization of Justice: ICTY, the Victor’s “Justice”
In partitioning Yugoslavia and supporting the rights of the other groups, the actors violated basic human and self-determination rights of Serbs. NATO powers’ political creation, the ICTY invented rules, procedures and concepts (including re-definition of genocide) in trials of disproportionately more Serbs than the other civil war parties. But the USA has refused to recognize the International Criminal Court, allegedly because of its “politicization” threat. NYT portrayed ICTY as “the epitome of Western justice,” and the prosecutors’ point of view as largely that of the NATO bloc and “its American leadership.” [2] NATO spokesman said: “when Justice Arbour starts her investigation, she will because we will allow her to. NATO countries […] have provided the finance to set up the Tribunal, we are amongst the majority financiers […] we want to see war criminals brought to justice […] when Justice Arbour goes to Kosovo and looks at the facts she will be indicting people of Yugoslavia nationality and I don’t anticipate any others at this stage.” [3]
ICTY politicization included its initial organization, staffing, funding, and the vetting of top personnel by high NATO officials. NATO powers controlled information and served as ICTY’s police arm. ICTY actions filled NATO demands, even when it meant violation of judicial rules. US denied the ICTY access to satellite imagery of Croat actions and alleged Srebrenica mass graves.
According to former US state department lawyer, the ICTY was “little more than a public relations tool,” useful to “isolate offending leaders” and “fortify the international political will to employ economic sanctions or use force.”[4] ICTY rationale was to oppose the peace process and justify military intervention. [5] The state department branded Serb leaders war criminals just before the ICTY was created. US officials used alleged Serb criminality to subvert peace plans in 1992 and 1993, and “to justify their intention to go to war, collateral damage and all, by branding their proposed enemies as Nazis.”[6] The US and Izetbegovic scuttled the Lisbon peace agreement, and through the Vance-Owen and Owen-Stoltenberg initiatives jeopardized peace. [7]
In July 1995, the ICTY indicted Mladic and Karadzic, including the charge of “genocide” for the conduct of their subordinates at camps in 1992. In November, a second count of “genocide” at Srebrenica was added, effectively excluding these two officials from Dayton peace process, well before ICTY verified the facts. ICTY president Antonio Cassese acknowledged a political objective: “Let us see who will sit down at the negotiating table now with a man accused of genocide.” [8] At the expense of Bosnian Serbs, Milosevic complied with US demands out of fear of charges of genocide. Even after Srebrenica, the ICTY decided there was no evidence to warrant bringing charges for war crimes in Bosnia against Milosevic, the key participant in the Dayton Accords that ended the war.
Racak Hoax as an Excuse to Bomb Serbia
In June 1998, as US-NATO planned for the Kosovo campaign, the ICTY denounced Serb actions in Kosovo. [9] ICTY chief prosecutor Louise Arbour declared the Racak “killings” on 15.1.1999 that precipitated NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, a “war crime.” A week after the bombing began, Arbour publicized a sealed, September 1997 indictment of Arkan. On 22.5.1999, the indictment of Milosevic and four others was tabled, as if to draw attention from bombing Serbian civilians and infrastructure. Madeleine Albright stated that the indictments “make very clear to the world and the publics in our countries that [NATO policy] is justified because of the crimes committed.” [10]
Arbour assured that ICTY would not rely on “unsubstantiated, unverifiable, uncorroborated allegations.” [11] Yet, the indictment was prepared on unverified information supplied by the US and UK. Arbour indicated politicization: “the evidence upon which this indictment was confirmed raises serious questions about [the indictees’] suitability to be guarantors of any deal let alone a peace agreement.” [12] She immediately acted upon the unverified Racak crime, but it took her and successor Carla del Ponte a year to consider NATO war crimes. Del Ponte finally declared that there was no basis for opening an investigation. 495 dead victims of NATO were “no evidence of the necessary crime base for charges of genocide or crimes against humanity” but Racak 45 dead were.[13] Del Ponte’s expert in dropping the investigation had relied on press releases as “generally reliable,” [14] contrary to Arbour’s assurances.
Manipulations of forensic investigations of Racak served ICTY. NATO suppressed the Finnish forensic investigation as soon as it indicated a hoax. I called the head of the Finnish team, Dr. Helena Ranta, on 3.5.2000. She said she just returned from a meeting at NATO in Brussels that had told her to keep the report secret. The leaks from her suppressed report 15] hinted conclusions were near those she gave at an earlier press conference (17.3.1999), [16] where, as she told me, she had felt the same pressure to testify against Yugoslavia as she did at the NATO meeting.
Ranta’s team found the “executed” had been moved from elsewhere and had bullet holes from multiple directions, i.e. they had been combatants. The body mutilations, “a Serbian atrocity,” had been signs of animals feeding on the flesh of the dead. [17] The Serbian media and Serbian and Belorussian forensic teams [18], the OSCE observers [19] and Associated Press journalists [20] have been right about the “massacre,” but the interventionist legalistic campaign has not been about the truth.
In 2001, ICTY charged Milosevic for Bosnia and Croatia after the 1999 cooked-up indictment for Kosovo had misfired because of insufficient evidence. The new charges were introduced to keep him behind bars as a living proof of the need for “humanitarian interventions.” Critics concluded:
These evidences of ICTY political subordination, even facilitation of war crimes […] and its laughable basis for not even investigating NATO’s war crimes, would have discredited the ICTY as a supposedly judicial body, if we were not dealing with a well-oiled propaganda machine that can swallow anything in the cause of bringing “justice” to a demonized enemy. [21]
Death of Milosevic, a Case of “Medically Assisted Judicial Assassination”
The death of Milosevic (11.3.2006) further incriminated the ICTY. His defense proceeded well, having largely refuted the charges. He had no motive for a suicide. The August 2005 withdrawal of the Greater Serbia charge was a tacit acknowledgment that the case turned bad for the prosecution. [22] According to his family, Milosevic was poisoned by drugs that neutralized his medicine, leading to heart attack. [23] He has been under constant surveillance, which makes the claim in the UN report that the drugs found in the body were smuggled, ridiculous. The prosecution was losing the case against Milosevic and the remaining evidence implicated Wesley Clark, Bill Clinton, and other NATO country leaders. Milosevic’s knowledge of their war crimes became a threat:
An early death of a defendant like Milosevic makes the best of a difficult reality. Better yet […] would be killing the targeted demon long before a trial becomes necessary, leaving it to the reliable media to find the assassinated victim guilty in absentia. [24]
Del Ponte was almost gleeful when declaring that Milosevic’s death may have been a suicide, and speculated that he might have wanted to thwart the impending verdict in his trial. This fueled suspicions of foul play, but the establishment media and politicians duly picked up by and repeated the mantra “Milosevic cheating justice,” as if the trial was going well for the prosecution.
The ICTY interpreted the death of Milosevic in May 2006 on the technicalities, without exploring the motives of any party: “the ICTY report […] admits that Milosevic did not commit suicide, though that does not keep it from concluding that Milosevic caused his own death. The difference […] is an indication that the tribunal is doing its best to please everybody now that it got rid of its greatest enemy.” [25] Upon examining ICTY documentation on the subject, two French medical experts charged the ICTY doctors:
It is undeniable that this was a case of […] a medically assisted judicial assassination […] These are the facts, Madame Prosecutor and Doctors of the ICTY, and we challenge you to deny them and to bring us before the Tribunal. The confidential documents cited here as references were communicated to us by certain members of the Prosecutor’s Office who are indignant over the behavior of their chief. [26]
Milosevic’s death came a day after he wrote a letter to Rusia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov that his life was in danger. Milosevic informed Lavrov that his medical treatment in Russia was “denied on the motive of the fear that through careful examination it would be discovered that active, willful steps were taken to destroy my health throughout the proceedings of the trial […O]n January 12th […] an extremely strong drug was found in my blood, which is used, as they themselves say, for the treatment of tuberculosis and leprosy, although I never used any kind of antibiotic during these five years that I’ve been in their prison. Throughout this whole period, neither have I had any kind of infectious illness (apart from flu). Also the fact that doctors needed 2 months [to report this fact to me] cannot have any other explanation than we are facing manipulation.” [27]
Under its turn of EU presidency, Germany demonstrated a keen interest in expanding the politicization of justice to other conflicts when it proposed a European directive that would outlaw denial of mass crimes. [28] The draft refers to crimes of the last 20 years, including war crimes and alleged genocides in Yugoslavia and in Rwanda. Germany has stakes in both conflicts. [29] The law would extend the idea of Holocaust denial to “gross minimization of genocide out of racist and xenophobic motives.” Anti-war lawyer Christopher Black compared the tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia: “The propaganda campaign against the Hutu regime was and is exactly the same as that against the Serbs. The leaders of the former regime are labeled as war criminals so that they can justify Tutsi dictatorial rule and to cover up the real role of the United States, Britain, Belgium and Uganda […] the war crimes tribunal for Rwanda serves the same role as the Hague tribunal. Del Ponte runs it as well […] the events in Rwanda make Yugoslavia look like small potatoes ([…] possibly millions of dead and control of a whole continent). The tribunal itself is even worse than the Hague tribunal which is exacerbated by the lack of media attention or the attention of the left in the West or anyone at all.”
International Court of Justice Clears Serbia of Bosnian Muslim Genocide Charges
In another surprise development (26.2.2007), the International Court of Justice cleared Serbia of all five counts of the 1993, Bosnian Muslim charge of “committing, conspiring, helping, instigating and collaborating in genocide” in the Bosnian war (1992-1995): “Serbia has not committed genocide, through its organs or persons whose acts engage its responsibility under customary international law. Serbia has not conspired to commit genocide, nor incited the commission of genocide. Serbia has not been complicit in genocide, in violation of its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.”
The panel of judges has ruled so with 13 against two votes, after 14 years of deliberations. The ICJ standards applied to the case are “looser” than at the ICTY, which would make it easier to rule against Serbia. This makes the ruling even more valuable. The “looser” ICJ standards included rejection of Serbia’s case against NATO 1999 bombing, on the grounds of no jurisdiction over Serbia. The same didn’t stop this UN court from admitting the Bosnian Muslim case against Serbia. All parts of rump Yugoslavia were not UN members at the time. ICJ’s excuse in favor of NATO had formal grounds at least, unlike the ICTY’s exoneration of its sponsor, NATO.
The recent ICJ verdict removes Serbia’s responsibility for the Srebrenica massacre and war reparations to Bosnia, which implies that Serbia couldn’t be held responsible for any Bosnian Serbs’ war crimes. The ICJ ruling belies military interventions to stop genocide in the Balkans. The blame for the civil wars lands on the other actors. A professed failure of the “international community” to intervene tough enough in the Balkans has partly justified interventions in other regions; the ICJ ruling undermines the interventionist doctrines. The Nuremberg Trial court ruled: “To initiate a war of aggression […] is the supreme international crime deferring only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” A former Nuremberg prosecutor quoted justice Robert Jackson, the head of the American prosecution at that trial, that “launching a war aggression is a crime” and “no political or economic situation can justify it.” [30]
ICJ Exonerated Both Milosevic and Krajisnik
The ICJ effectively exonerates former president Milosevic who maintained until his death that neither Yugoslavia nor Serbia had commanded the Bosnian Serb army. Neither Yugoslavia nor Serbia have committed genocide in any of the the civil wars in a quest for “Greater Serbism” (a charge the ICTY dropped in 2005 for lack of evidence), which derails the rationale for ICTY’s show case against Milosevic. The ICJ ruled that the plaintiff hadn’t established “any facts in support of the allegation” that Serbia was responsible for acts of genocide outside BiH.
Further, according to the ICJ verdict, neither Bosnian Serb nor Serbia’s leaders intended to commit genocide over Bosnian Muslims or any other group in Bosnia or elsewhere. Having examined in this context the Decision on Strategic Goals (May 1992) by Momcilo Krajisnik, the president of the National Assembly of Republika Srpska, the court didn’t see the document “as establishing the specific intent.” It remains to be seen if the ICTY would revise its verdict on Krajisnik.
Redifining Genocide to Fit Srebrenica Opens a Pandora’s Box
Like the ICTY, the ICJ exhibited eagerness to blame Serbs, though. Based on ICTY convictions that required re-definition and relativization of the term “genocide,” the ICJ verdict blames the Serb Republic (BiH) and Karadzic and Mladic for “Srebrenica massacre”, i.e. “an act of genocide.” The ICJ verdict is as inconsistent as the ICTY convictions; according to the ICJ, Belgrade couldn’t have known that Bosnian Serbs would enter Srebrenica, but had “failed to prevent” Bosnian Serbs from overtaking Srebrenica.
ICJ’s “confirmation” of Srebrenica genocide opens Pandora’s box of negative revisionism. Most conflicts could now be reclassified as “genocide” or where “acts of genocide have occurred”. Regardless, the ICJ verdict incriminates the Western mainstream media that has been dishonest, irrationally Serbophobic and wrong since 1992, as numerous astute authors have been alarming all along.
Notes:
[1] Piotr Bein, NATO na Balkanach, self-published, 2006, ISBN 0-9780543-0-X. In Polish only, order from Dragan Bozovic
[2] Edward Herman and David Peterson, The New York Times on the Yugoslavia Tribunal, ColdType, 2004.
[3] Michael Scharf, in Washington Post, 3.10.1999.
[4] Michael Mandel, How America Gets Away With Murder, Pluto Press, 2004, p 152-160.
[5] Ibid, p 126.
[6] David Owen, Balkan Odyssey, Harcourt Brace and Company: New York, 1995, p 112-120.
[7] ANP English News Bulletin, 27.7.1995.
[8] Mandel, p 132-134.
[9] CNN, transcript 99052703V54, 27.5.1999.
[10] UK Ministry of Defense Briefing, 20.4.1999.
[11] ICTY, JL/PIU/404-E, 27.5.1999.
[12] ICTY, PR/P.I.S./510-e, 13.6.2000.
[13] Mandel, p 189-190.
[14] Berliner Zeitung, 17.1.2001.
[15] Helena Ranta, Report of the EU Forensic Expert Team, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland, 17.3.1999.
[16] J. Rainio, K. Lalu, A. Penttilä, Independent forensic autopsies in an armed conflict, in: Forensic Science International, No. 116, 15.2.2001.
[17] E.g.: LID (special edition); D. Dunjić, The (ab)use of forensic medicine, 26.4.1999 conference abstracts, Serbian Anthropological Society and Belgrade City Library.
[18] Guardian, 21.1.1999.
[19] Le Figaro, 20.1.1999; Le Monde, 21.1.1999.
[20] Herman and Peterson, op. cit.
[21] Jonathan Widell and Nico Steijnen, The ICTY Report On Milosevic’s Death, 20.6.2006.
[22] Milosevic was murdered, 14.3.2006.
[23] Edward Herman and David Peterson, Milosevic’s Death In The Propaganda System
[24] Ibid.
[25] Jacques Verges and Patrick Barriot, Open Letter to Madame Del Ponte, posted 3.5.2006.
[26] Quoted by Srdja Trifkovic, in: ChroniclesExtra!, 24.3.2006.
[27] EU plans far-reaching ‘genocide denial’ law, in: The Telegraph, 2.2.2007.
[28] See section Germany: into the world on the stakes in Africa.
[29] Jamie Shea, Daily NATO Briefing, NATO Headquarters, Federal News Service, 17.5.1999.
[30] Walter J. Rockler, in: Chicago Tribune, 23.5.1999.
Omissions of the Dutch Report Regarding the Truth About Srebrenica
Evidence of a [Bosnian Muslim Sarajevo regime] plan to abandon Srebrenica with losses:
- Oric’s troops retreated from Srebrenica a week before the massacre by Serb forces. French general Germanos: “Oric had widely declared that they had abandoned Srebrenica because they’d wanted Srebrenica to fall. The ‘they’ was Izetbegovic.“ [1]
- A massacre was plotted a year and a half in advance, when Kofi Annan’s UN report stated: “Izetbegovic had learned that a NATO intervention into Bosnia was possible. But it would happen only if the Serbs forced their way into Srebrenica and massacred at least 5,000 people.” [2]
- General Morillon: “It is Izetbegovic’s people who opposed the evacuation of all those who had asked to be taken out […] Mladic fell into a trap at Srebrenica.” [3]
- The Srebrenica Research Group found evidence that “Bosnian Muslim leaders, including Ibran Mustafic, founder of the ruling SDA party from Srebrenica, claimed that the Bosnian Presidency and Military High Command deliberately sacrificed the town in order to encourage NATO intervention.” [4]
- From the beginning Clinton administration referred to spy photos as evidence of Srebrenica massacre. When it was not forthcoming, the White House gave an excuse of “secrecy.” All files relevant to Srebrenica at the UN headquarters are not available to the ICTY, pursuant to a “secrecy of government documents” decision by the permanent members of the UN Security Council, USA, France and Great Britain. This is obstruction of justice to cover up own crimes.
- A BBC news item from the time of Srebrenica fall: “Bosnian government troops have accused the Serbs of trying to slaughter units of their army which fled after the fall last week of Srebrenica. The allegations have been made by some of the three thousand soldiers who reached Tuzla today after fighting their way through enemy lines. They say that the Serbs ambushed their retreating column killing hundreds if not thousands of soldiers. It’s not been possible to confirm their claims.” [5]
In this context, how do we know that other information in the Dutch report [6] is not biased to whitewash NATO country leaders and allies: radical international Islam, local Muslim, Croat and Albanian extremists, and the Vatican? I’d love to cite the Dutch report in my research on Srebrenica, but am reluctant for this reason.
Notes:
[1] French National Assembly, Srebrenica, Vol. 2, p 140-154. After Michel Collon, Milosevic: Test Your Media, 13.3.2006.
[2] UN Report of 28-29.11.1993. Quoted by: Collon, op. cit.
[3] French National Assembly, op. cit.
[4] Srebrenica Research Group, Srebrenica and the Politics of War Crimes, 11.7.2005; .PDF format of the report.
[5] www.yugofile.co.uk/qt/1995071-_22Bull.mov, date unknown, provided by Tim Fenton on 28.2.2007.
[6] Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (NIOD), Srebrenica, 16.8.2002.
*About the Author
Dr. Piotr Bein holds a master’s degree from the Technical University of Denmark and a doctorate in applied decision and risk analysis from the University of British Columbia. A member of the Institute for Risk Research, University of Waterloo, he served as a consultee on a recent report from the European Committee on Radiation Risk. His 30-year career of a licensed civil engineer, risk analyst, ecological economist, and researcher of socio-economic impacts of atmospheric change switched to an interest in information warfare after NATO attack on Yugoslavia. Dr. Bein is author of books and articles on information warfare on the Balkan conflict, Depleted Uranium and co-founder of du-watch@yahoogroups.com
Serbia Cleared: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
