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Being Friendless in the Balkans...
By Julia Gorin
Monday, 18 Oct 2010
A news item caught our Board Member Julia Gorin's attention recently: "Controversial French General Philippe Morillon was expelled from the Memorial Center in Srebrenica when ... he went to pay his respects to the Bosnian Muslims killed during the civil war that engulfed Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s..." There's more than meets the eye to the story, of course...
“Morillon knew he was not welcome here,” said Hatidza Mehmedovic, president of the Srebrenica Mothers Association. “He wouldn’t have dared to meet with us and he came here before it (the visit) was announced.”
“When we saw him at the memorial center, we expelled him. This is our pilgrimage, a place where those responsible for genocide should not come,” Mehmedovic stated.
Now, the obvious question here is: How can those responsible for genocide not come, when they’re the ones who are buried there? That is, the Muslims buried at the memorial center are the ones who allowed themselves to be used to create the appearance of the much longed-for Muslim “genocide,” which the Bosnian-Muslim government organized with help from its commanders inside Srebrenica.
I mean, there’s a reason that every Muslim who died in the Bosnian war was buried as a martyr. And there’s a reason that the wartime Bosnian president Alija Izetbegovic asked to be buried “next to the shahids.”
Mehmedovic said she considers Morillon responsible for not preventing the massacre of an estimated 8,000 men and boys when Bosnian Serb forces overran Srebrenica in 1995. Prior to the fall of the town, Morillon, who was responsible for delivering United Nations aid, was quoted as having said he would “never abandon you. ”
“We consider him responsible and that is why we acted this way towards him,” said Mehmedovic. “Basically, he cannot come here; neither can others who perpetrated this crime against the Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) of Srebrenica and BiH.”
Again, they’re already there. Not only that, but aren’t Bosnian-Muslim government officials always present at these ceremonies? Including those who served under the chief organizer of the “genocide” — Izetbegovic — and are still in power? Why were they allowed in, when they are far more responsible for the orchestration of this deliberate “massacre” than the UN folks who didn’t feel it was incumbent upon them to actually start shooting at the Muslims’ designated infidel enemy in that separatist, supremacist war of Islamic aggression? Or, alternately, didn’t feel it incumbent upon them to prolong the current situation in which the Srebrenica Muslims were raiding Serb villages and killing civilians while being kept safe from consequences by running back behind the UN’s skirts. The Bosniaks had their cake, ate it too — but wanted it ala mode. In fact, they did get their ice cream on top of it, except only vanilla was available, and that’s what they’re sore about.
Meanwhile, Morillon has been condemned by Bosnian Serbs for covering up details about how Bosnian Muslim forces provoked an attack on the Kosevo hospital in Sarajevo for television cameras, which resulted in the condemnation of the Serbs.
When asked by British politician Lord David Owen at the time why he failed to expose the actual perpetrators of the incident, Morillon was quoted as having said “We have to live here (Sarajevo) .”
So you see, General Morillon did make a valiant effort to do his part for the taqqiyah (Muslim deception of the infidel) — he did try to help build the Bosnian lie on the blood of Serbs — but it backfired when, rather than just withholding information and helping the cover-up, he didn’t take it to the next level and help to actually kill Serbs. Even worse, he subsequently misstepped again, by testifying honestly at the Milosevic trial and exposing the farce of the Bosnian-Muslim cause. He admitted that he never demilitarized Srebrenica, and that this is what allowed the Srebrenica Muslims to engage in their homicidal raids on Serb villages.
Apparently, all you need to do to be a “controversial” figure in the Balkans is stray just an inch and just once or twice from the Muslim agenda, by answering questions truthfully and relating what you actually observed in the events of that war. Just pointing out — even in the most morally-equivalent tones — that Srebrenica was a “circle of revenge” and that the fall of the enclave was actually a reaction to something, is enough to get you branded a Serbian apologist, which is the least of the slanders that Morillon has been subjected to. He even had his residence shelled by the Bosniaks to express their opposition to the UN-brokered agreements that were going on (though Morillon didn’t take the attempt on his life personally and seemed to still be cheering for the Muslim side).
Anyway, thanks to Morillon’s early acquiesence to playing the Bosnia game, he’s not in the good graces of the Serbs. More consequentially — as often happens to internationals when they hit their limit as to how much suppression of “pro-Serb” information and dissemination of false anti-Serb information they’re capable of — the old friends they made by initially playing the game turn on them. This ishappening to the anti - Serb - accredited former chief ICTY prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, and it happened to former US special envoyDaniel Serwer, as well as to former UN High Representative Paddy Ashdown and UN Deputy High Rep. Raffi Gregorian, and to Canadian UN General Lewis MacKenzie, who despite blaming Karadzic for the bombing of Sarajevo and saving Bosniak lives, one fine day discovered from the Bosnian press and public that not only was he Serbian and/or being paid by Serbs but he had raped Muslim women (this was after he uttered the Bosnian government’s admitted role in the “siege” of Sarajevo. And here it is happening to Serb-killer Richard Holbrooke.
Now, Holbrooke’s only crime was saying that if not for ‘his’ Dayton Agreement, 9/11 would have been planned from Bosnia instead of Afghanistan. I guess he didn’t get the memo that, in addition to five of the 19 hijackers having trained or fought in Bosnia, Bosnia did have a littlesomethingmoreto dowith 9/11 than our officials lead on. But as for the rest, they were part of the cover-up that led to the one-sidedness of how the region was viewed and dealt with, but they didn’t know how far they were meant to take the cover-up so when they veered off-course, occasionally answering something to the best of their knowledge and not how they’re supposed to, these people expose themselves along with the cover-up that they were initially part of.
Nebojsa Malic put it well in this sentence: Even the most outspoken pro-Muslim officials “are denounced as ‘Karadzic’s propagandists’ if they so much as suggest that the Muslims may not have been absolutely right about everything, always.”
About using the Kosevo Hospital in Sarajevo as a shield, here is the letter Morillon sent to Izetbegovic, reminding him that this was against the Geneva Conventions. When Morillion testified in the Milosevic trial, he said the Muslims “very frequently used mortars at Kosevo for provocation purposes.” (Feb. 12, 2004 transcript, Pg. 32047)
Fortuitously, just May of this year saw some testimony at the Karadzic trial about this very hospital. Andy Wilcoxson has an enormously entertaining read about it, in which a Muslim nurse “testifies.” It’s called Kosevo Hospital Nurse Has Selective Memory about Bosnian War, and here is what you’re missing, America (I swear, there should be a reality comedy series documenting The Hague):
On Wednesday, May 5, 2010 the trial of Radovan Karadzic heard testimony from Mrs. Fatima Zaimovic. Mrs. Zaimovic is a life-long Sarajevo resident and she was the head nurse at the Children’s Surgery Department of the Kosevo Hospital in Sarajevo from 1979 until she retired in 2007.
Testimony for the Prosecution
Mrs. Zaimovic kept a diary (exhibit P819) about the patients wounded during the war. Her diary contains a list of 331 wounded children treated in the Children’s Surgery Department of the Kosevo Hospital.
She said, “All children that were brought in and recorded in this diary were injured by shrapnel or sniper fire. A very small number of children were also injured by phosphorous shells, those that cause burns, and some were injured by gas explosions.”
Most of the children wounded in Sarajevo during the war came to Mrs. Zaimovic’s department…She described the effect of the war on the children saying, “All the children who came to our clinic were traumatized, first of all, because of the injuries they had sustained. After that, they were hospitalized. Shelling went on in town, and whenever a shell fell, they would jump out of bed, they would start screaming so hard, and they’d flee to the nurses, asking them for protection.”
Mrs. Zaimovic testified that the Kosevo Hospital buildings were shelled throughout the war and that a number of hospital staff were killed as a result of shelling. She said, “Shells were falling all over the place. Whenever you’d go to the hospital or wherever, you didn’t dare look. Somehow you’d keep your head down, and you’d be thinking that your turn had come, that you’d be the victim of such a shell or of a sniper. I was terribly frightened. I have to tell you that in all sincerity.”
The witness also described the shortage of utilities and medical supplies and conditions under which she and her colleagues operated in the hospital during the war, in particular the problems related to the lack of electricity and sufficient water.
Karadzic Lays Out His Case
For his part Radovan Karadzic set out to “prove and show that Sarajevo was a fortress and fulcrum, a military stronghold, and not a peaceful town that was attacked by some wild men.” He told the witness, “Mrs. Zaimovic, you said several times here that Serbs were firing at the city. So now we have to see whether they were firing at legitimate targets or whether they were randomly shooting all over town…”
A Personal Vendetta against the Accused
Mrs. Zaimovic clearly hated Radovan Karadzic. It was clear from her testimony that she harbored a great deal of personal animosity towards him. At one point she said, “Mr. Karadzic, you know full well what you did. You killed people whenever you wanted to.”
She told him, “You destroyed the city that provided you with your education and your life. Why don’t you repent and tell the truth before this Trial Chamber? You destroyed thousands of people and lives. Your people, our people, our ethnicities, you destroyed everyone.”
Mrs. Zaimovic’s personal hatred of Radovan Karadzic was obvious. She asked him, “Do you have a conscience, because you destroyed the Muslim children and the Croatian children and the Serbian children. That’s what you did. You destroyed them all.” She said, “You are a doctor and you killed patients. You took the oath and you did horrible things.”
When a witness is as obviously consumed with hatred [as] Mrs. Zaimovic, one can not discount the possibility that they would give false or misleading testimony in order to disadvantage the Accused. Throughout her testimony, Mrs. Zaimovic had a highly selective memory of events.
Muslims Used Hospital as Firing Position
When Karadzic began his cross-examination he asked the witness, “Now in the hospital, there were no soldiers or military installations or artillery or mortars or anything of that sort; isn’t that right?”
Mrs. Zaimovic answered saying, “Yes, that’s right.”
When Karadzic [asked] whether mortars had been fired at the Bosnian-Serbs from the Hospital grounds Mrs. Zaimovic said, “I’m sure that’s not true, I think that you’re making it all up, big time.”
It is a well known fact, confirmed by UN Military Observers on the ground in Sarajevo that the Bosnian-Muslims did fire at the Serbs from the Kosevo Hospital.
In his book Balkan Odyssey (Slobodan Milosevic trial exhibit C18), former British Foreign Secretary, David Owen described the Muslim artillery attacks emanating from the Kosevo Hospital as “the most flagrant and best-documented episode of Muslim army units provoking the Serbs to fire on their fellow Muslims.” He wrote that “An UNMO (United Nations Military Observer) team near Kosevo hospital in Sarajevo had witnessed a Bosnian government mortar crew set up in the grounds of the hospital and fire over the hospital into a Serb area. They had quickly packed up and gone, only for the UNMOs to see a television crew arrive and then record the retaliatory Serb shelling of the hospital.” (See page 112 of the book)
When Philippe Morillion, the French general commanding the UN force in Bosnia from 1992 to 1993, testified in the Slobodan Milosevic trial he said the Muslims “very frequently used mortars at Kosevo for provocation purposes” (See Milosevic trial transcript, February 12, 2004, Pg. 32047)
In fact Morillion was so outraged by the practice that he wrote a letter of protest to Alija Izetbegovic about it. (Slobodan Milosevic trial exhibit D147)
The fact that the Kosevo Hospital was shelled because the Bosnian-Muslims were using it as a base to attack the Bosnian-Serbs from greatly undermines the prosecution’s case that it was shelled in order to instill terror in the civilian population. Undoubtedly, the civilian population and the children in the hospital were terrorized, but the question is whether that was the Serbian goal or the unfortunate consequence of the Muslim decision to use the hospital as a firing position.
Playing Dumb: Military, What Military?
Karadzic asked Mrs. Zaimovic whether she had heard of the 105th Mountain Brigade of the ABiH [Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina], and her answer was “I have no knowledge of that.”
Karadzic later asked her, “Was your son in the army?” and the witness answered saying, “Yes, my son was in the army.” Karadzic asked, “In what unit?” and her answer was, “The 105th.” The very unit that she claimed not to have any knowledge of.
An astonished Karadzic asked her, “And you weren’t interested in the 105th Brigade at all? In the 105th Brigade of which your son was a member? Where was the brigade deployed?”
The witness answered, “I really don’t know that. I really don’t.”
Karadzic asked, “You don’t know that its area of responsibility was Breka (the very neighborhood in Sarajevo where she lived and where the Kosevo Hospital is located)?”
Zaimovic answered saying, “No.”
When asked about the soldiers she saw in her neighborhood during the war she said, “I have no idea about any of this. I have no idea about any of this. You have to realize that I don’t know anything about that. You know that. I have no idea.”
Karadzic showed Mrs. Zaimovic an intelligence document (exhibit D122) about the strength and composition of the 105th Mountain Brigade and said, “Well, see, Ms. Zaimovic, it says here number of men 5,500 to 6,000. That’s the number of soldiers that are in your neighborhood and around your neighborhood with all of the necessary infrastructure, logistics, with a rear command post, and you are saying that there was nothing there and that you don’t know anything about it? And your own son is on that unit … you see that it is written here that that’s where the command posts are, in day care centers, kindergartens, schools, and your son is fighting in that same unit. They are in uniform. They are passing by there, and you do not know anything about this very strong unit consisting of 6,000 men, a brigade, a proper brigade that is guarding your own neighborhood, and you are trying to say that you don’t know anything about that?”
The witness answered saying, “I don’t.” She said, “I don’t know about these military targets at all. I don’t know about this kind of thing at all.”
Playing Dumb Some More: Murder, What Murder? … Oh, that Murder!
Mrs. Zaimovic continued to play dumb when Karadzic asked her about the notorious murder of one of her colleagues at the Kosevo Hospital Dr. Milutin Najdanovic.
Dr. Najdanovic was a member of parliament before the war and a member of the Serbian Democratic Party. The last time he was seen alive he had been taken for questioning by the Muslim police in Sarajevo. His dead body was found in a dumpster on the grounds of the Kosevo sports stadium (within walking distance of the hospital). It was written up in the media throughout the Balkans and it was even reported in the July 29, 1993 edition of the New York Times. It was a very well known event involving a person the witness knew, one of her co-workers, in the very neighborhood where she lived and worked.
Karadzic asked her, “Did you know Professor Najdanovic, who was also at the thoracic surgery ward?” and she answered “Yes.” He asked, “Do you know what happened to him?” and she said, “No, I don’t.” – Which is a lie; because she later admitted that she knew he had been murdered.
Karadzic prodded the witness saying, “Mrs. Zaimovic, I have to doubt that, because it’s common knowledge what happened to him. So I can’t believe it when you say you don’t know what happened to him.”
Eventually she broke-down and confessed, “I don’t know what happened to him. All I know is that he was killed. That’s all I know, but I don’t know what actually happened to him.”
It seems difficult to believe that it wouldn’t be a topic of conversation among her co-workers that one of their colleagues was taken away by the police and the next time anyone saw him was when they found his bullet-riddled corpse in a dumpster a couple of blocks away from the hospital. If that happened at your workplace, don’t you think people would be talking about it? It got the New York Times’ attention over a thousand miles away, but it didn’t get hers? It’s difficult to believe that this witness was sincere in her testimony and living up to the oath she swore to “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
…A transcript of this hearing is available at: http://www.icty.org/x/cases/karadzic/trans/en/100505ED.htm.
And here is the following day’s conclusion of her testimony:
…
Fatima Zaimovic’s Cross-Examination Continues: An Invisible Sniper Nest at the Hospital
Fatima Zaimovic’s Cross-Examination Continues: An Invisible Sniper Nest at the Hospital
When Radovan Karadzic continued his cross examination Kosevo hospital nurse Fatima Zaimovic[, he] asked the witness, “Are you denying that Muslim soldiers sometimes used shells and sometimes sniper fire to kill people in Sarajevo, including children?”
The witness responded by saying, “I think that that did not happen, because their dignity would not allow them to do that kind of thing.”
Karadzic then [read out] a document issued by the BiH Ministry of the Interior of the Sarajevo Security Services Centre and sent to the 1st Corps of the BiH Army…There was a heading on the document which said “information about activities in the base of the 2nd Independent Battalion of the BiH Army.”
The document identified the headquarters of the so-called “Independent Battalion of the BiH Army” as being on Mosa Pijade Street on the ground floor at the Hospital. It said that the commander of the unit was Adnan Solakovic, and that Musan Topalovic AKA “Caco” (known to Serbs and Muslims alike as a notorious criminal) was frequently present at the headquarters.
The document said that Solakovic established a checkpoint at the entrance of Mesa Sademovic Road at the Kosevo Hospital and it gives detailed information about a bunker and two sniper nests that were located in the upper floors of one of the hospital buildings.
The document literally says, “At all these sentry points, there are mostly two men deployed in full combat gear. At the very entrance into the hospital, we noticed guards in blue flak-jackets, and we learned from some sources that on the third floor of the stomatology ward, there are temporarily two or three sniper nests which are distributed in such a way as to cover the plateau in front of the Kosevo gas station … members of the aforementioned units are bragging that they have 15 machine-guns, a ‘death sower’ and nitroglycerine rifles.”
Mrs. Zaimovic reacted to the document saying, “This was probably done by your own people, who were probably spies in our own units.”
Karadzic retorted by saying, “This was signed by Munir Alibabic, a high official and the chief in the Security Services Centre in Sarajevo; a Muslim, as you know.”
Again Mrs. Zaimovic reacted angrily: “You targeted everything; houses, hospitals,” she said, “I don’t know who made bunkers, who did this or that. What was done in the city, I really don’t know. My job for four years was to go from my house to my hospital. I rarely went into town. I was afraid of shelling and sniper fire and everything else. And that was my range, that’s what I did. I went to work and back home, and very often I did that under sniper fire and bullets.”
This comment of hers leads to an interesting observation. If she didn’t know what was going on in the city, and she didn’t know where the military targets were located, how can she comment on the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the shelling? Her comment also led to an interesting back-and-forth between her and Karadzic:
KARADZIC: Did you just say that you passed under sniper fire and through bullets?
ZAIMOVIC: Yes.
KARADZIC: Ms. Zaimovic, do you know what the sniper range is?
ZAIMOVIC: I don’t know any ranges. I don’t know what the shell range is. I don’t know what a sniper range is.
KARADZIC: Do you know what the range of a rifle is?
ZAIMOVIC: No.
KARADZIC: Will you accept if I told you that the range of an automatic rifle is less than a kilometer; of a sniper [rifle], a kilometer and a half at the most; and that the Serbian positions were never any closer than two to three kilometers from the area that you just described?
ZAIMOVIC: What do you want me to say?
KARADZIC: Whose bullets were those, if you had to pass through a torrent of bullets in the area where the Serb rifles couldn’t reach? And you see that there were snipers and there are bunkers in the middle of the town, and they were not turned towards the Serbs, but towards the citizens of Sarajevo! The bunkers were made in order to secure the gang from either the citizens or the police, and the police reported to the authorities that in the center of the town there was a bunker which was not within their control, there were sniper nests, there were APCs, and, madam, that was in the street. It was in Bolnicka Street or, rather, Mosa Pijade Street (at the very entrance to the hospital). How is it possible that you didn’t see that?
ZAIMOVIC: Of course I didn’t, and it is crazy — it would have been crazy for people living in town to open fire on their own people.
KARADZIC: Madam, you say that the entrance into the hospital, you were shot at from a sniper; is that correct?
ZAIMOVIC: Yes.
KARADZIC: Who was it who could open fire at you, since the Serbs were more than two and a half kilometers away from that place? Who could it have been that opened fire on you?
ZAIMOVIC: You armed all your Serbs in Sarajevo, and you gave all of them weapons. You know that. I suppose that somebody opened fire from their own window, and you know that also. I don’t know where, from, and how.
KARADZIC: Are you saying that there were Serb units in Sarajevo, within Sarajevo, which was under the control of the Muslim Army, the Muslim police?
In addition to testifying that she had been targeted by snipers at the hospital, the witness said she saw a “Serbian tank” 50 meters away from her house firing at civilian apartments, but the Serb lines were more than 3 kilometers away from her apartment.
Karadzic showed her the frontlines on a map and told her, “If you had seen a tank at a 50-metre distance [from your house], then [you] have to accept that it was a Muslim tank.” And the witness insisted, “No, it was not.”
According to Ms. Zaimovic, Serbian and Croatian doctors were treated better than Muslim doctors at the Kosevo Hospital. She said, “We took such good care of them. I think I can really say that we were so gentle to them that our own doctors were jealous because we took such care of them.”
Karadzic however, came to court armed with depositions from Croatian and Serbian doctors who fled from Sarajevo and the Kosevo Hospital in fear for their lives.
The first deposition was in the form of a video tape. Dr. Mirko Sosic, a Serbian doctor who had a practice at the Kosevo Hosptial said:
“It was in December 1991. While I was entering the hospital, some beardless man in berets, armed with Klashnikovs pointed the gun into me, and they asked me, Who are you? I said that I was a doctor and that I worked there. What are you carrying? I said that I was carrying my purse, my things. They started to search me. That was December, much before the war. It was a few months before the war. Then I came in and asked my colleagues, the doctors, what had happened over the night. I asked who it was who was terrorizing the doctors. And they told me that some measures of caution had to be put in place because the well-known leader of one paramilitary unit had been wounded and put on trauma, and his forces were controlling the whole hospital, who entered, who exited. But that was much before the war, you know. And we, the doctors, we were infuriated. We decided to call the police. We called the police, the commander of the police, Bjelave, and the police told us, there’s not anything we can do, and they hung up. The war actually started much before we could hear the first shots.
“[My decision] to leave the town happened on August the 14th when I came to work, two nurses told me that one of our colleagues was [found] dead and massacred that night. That man was Professor Dr. Milutin Najdanovic:
“His body was deformed. He had about 14 knife stabs. He was fired in the mouth, and he was found on the pavement in front of the Zetra [stadium] during the night. And because of all that, his body was not recognizable. They called one of the paramedics who were on duty that night, and that person identified him. That was the crucial moment when I realized that nothing was left for me there, that maybe I would be the next victim.
“This is just an example, illustrating that these men, these 400 doctors, were not fleeing because they thought that they were faring well, but because their lives were threatened. We as civilians couldn’t do anything.”
After seeing the videotape Zaimovic said, “What Professor Sosic is saying here, I really don’t know anything about that. He was a very nice gentleman. His wife worked at my ward. She had retired before the war started. And I have to tell you, honestly, that I was very surprised when he had left our country.”
Another statement came from Dr. Vladimir Simunovic, an ethnic Croat who worked as a neurosurgeon at the Kosevo Hospital. His statement was contemporaneous and it said:
"Doctors in hospital are being closely observed, and often they are being threatened with weapons, saying that they have to save some patients who had been brought in half dead. It is particularly difficult for doctors who are ethnic Serbs, and Croats as of late as well. We have also been informed that within the compound of the Kosevo Hospital, in the old laundry room and the restaurant above the ear department, there is the military police, consisting of about 200 men. They are commanded by Almir Husic, and he’s using the pseudonym ‘Kinez.’ Near the Civil Engineering Faculty, there are some artillery weapons that are often firing, and in the tunnel of Ciglane, two armored vehicles can be seen.
“Out of the doctors who are ethnic Muslim who are too extreme, the following should be mentioned: Dr. Faruk Kulenovic, Dr. Mufid Lazovic, Dr. Faris Gavrankapetanovic, Dr. Goran Dzinic, who are underrating Serbs in any way, and they are prepared to exchange for the ideas of Alija Izetbegovic their doctors’ clothes for military uniforms.”
Again, Zaimovic reacted with anger saying, “I say that these are lies, and I’m sure that a doctor who wanted to leave town under the pressure exerted by your machinery said all of this so that you would let him leave Bosnia. This is such a lie. I wish I could see him myself and tell him that to the face. This is a pure lie.” And because Zaimovic disagreed with the document it could not be admitted because of the new rules. Karadzic asked her, “Do you know that all those people left their apartments and all of their property in Sarajevo, and you’re still saying that it was because of me? Croats, Jews, everybody left their jobs, salaries, and apartments?” Zaimovic replied,
What are material things? Material things are nothing. During the war, the only thing that mattered was life. You destroyed everything. You expelled thousands upon thousands of people. You confiscated everything they had. Your warriors took gold from our women. You killed anybody, anywhere.
Karadzic dismissed the witness saying, “Madam, you are saying that 15 professors lied, 400 doctors left everything they had in Sarajevo because they loved me and my political ideas, and you’re the only person telling the truth.”
The prosecutor did not have any re-examination and the witness left. […]