Weapons confiscated at the Wahabi terror camp in Serbia

A Serbian court on Friday sentenced 12 Muslims from a tense southern region of the Balkan country who planned attacks on police and Muslim officials to up to 13 years in prison for planning terrorist attacks, including the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade.

Sentenced wahabis in the courtroom

The Special Court in Belgrade ruled that the defendants, alleged adherents of the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam followed by Osama bin Laden and many al-Qaida members, also planned terrorist attacks on different targets in the Serbian capital, including the downtown American embassy building in 2007.

The sentences ranged from six months to 13 years in jail on charges of terrorism, illegal possession of weapons and alleged links with unidentified foreign terrorist groups.

They were arrested in police raids in 2007 in the tense Sandzak region bordering Kosovo. The raids uncovered large caches of ammunition and bomb-making material. Police said then they had discovered a mountain cave that served as a terrorist training ground.

During the trial that started in January last year, the main defendant, Senad Ramovic, and all other defendants had pleaded not guilty to charges that they planned terrorism attacks.

“We did not want to attack anyone; we are just Muslims devoted to Allah,” Ramovic, who was sentenced to 13 years in prison, told the three-judge panel.

Several incidents have taken place recently in Sandzak within the Muslim community, but no terrorist attacks have been reported.

Another two people were acquitted Friday, while the case against another will go to a separate trial. Initially, the judges said 11 men were sentenced, but later corrected the number to 12.

DUSAN STOJANOVIC
Associated Press Writer
Friday, July 03, 2009

Mirsad Bektasevic was born in the Balkans but later obtained Swedish citizenshipHe was convicted with three other people in 2007 for planning to blow up an unidentified target in Europe to force the pullout of foreign troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

His defence lawyer said Saturday that Bektasevic arrived in Sweden last month after Swedish and Bosnian courts approved his transfer.

A Bosnian court sentenced Bektasevic to eight years and four months in prison. According to Swedish law he can be granted conditional release after he has served two-thirds of his sentence.

Saturday, July 04, 2009
Associated Press

We’re deep in the mountains of Albania, driving slowly up a very bumpy mud track.

Looking up the valley ahead, we can see a pretty white farmhouse, built of stone, surrounded by trees, and fields full of grazing sheep.

It’s an idyllic setting, and it’s hard to believe that this house is at the centre of allegations about some of the most grotesque crimes of the Kosovan war.

That war ended a decade ago, but hundreds of missing people — ethnic Serbs and Albanians — have never been accounted for.

We came to this valley to see if there were any links between the farmhouse, and some of the missing people.

It was Carla Del Ponte, the former United Nations war crimes prosecutor, who drew attention to this farmhouse in her recently published memoir, looking back at her time in the former Yugoslavia.

She describes how “credible” sources had told her that, during the war, Kosovan ethnic Albanian fighters had taken hundreds of prisoners over the mountains, into the neighbouring country of Albania.

Macabre stories

The sources said that some of these prisoners had been taken to the farmhouse, which had been turned into a makeshift operating theatre.

Here, so the story goes, their organs were removed, and then carried to an airport near Tirana, to be flown out of the country.

Meanwhile, the terrified prisoners were killed.

Del Ponte goes on to describe how a UN team was sent to the house, to see if there was any truth to the macabre stories.

Al Jazeera has obtained a copy of their report which was written in 2004.

The investigators could find “no conclusive evidence” of criminal acts in the farmhouse.

But they did find traces of blood in two rooms, and, in a stream that runs nearby, they found syringes, plastic intravenous bags, material that looked as if it had come from surgical overalls, and empty bottles of medicine.

These included one used as a muscle relaxant during surgical operations.

Angry villagers prevented them from digging at the local cemetery, where victims had purportedly been buried.

The report was never acted on, and, until the publication of Del Ponte’s memoirs, the whole story would probably have been forgotten.

‘Groundless accusations’

We approached the farmhouse with some trepidation, but the owner, Mersin Katoci, agreed to talk to us.

Katoci’s parents built this house more than 50 years ago and the family lived here throughout the war.

They say they never saw any sign of fighters from the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).

Katoci denied that his house had ever been used for atrocious crimes, and dismissed the findings of the UN team.

“They found absolutely nothing here; we live here with our family and they were just provoking us, looking for groundless accusations,” he said.

I asked about the equipment found in the nearby stream.

“There are no doctors in this area, so we just throw away our drugs and needles, but we are not capable of doing transplants here,” replied Katoci.

His elderly mother, her head covered in the traditional Albanian headscarf, watched the interview with a stony stare.

Katoci was becoming increasingly agitated as I persisted, but his real fury was directed towards Del Ponte, whom he would like to take to court for causing his family such trauma.

PM dismissive

Katoci was perplexed why the former United Nations war crimes prosecutor has bought the case to public attention through her book so many years after she had first investigated the claims and reached no conclusive results.

Katoci is a farmer, who suddenly has the international media at his door, asking him bizarre questions. His exasperated protestations of innocence struck me as genuine.

In Tirana, the Albanian capital, government officials are vehement in their statements that these alleged crimes never took place on their soil.

Ina Rama, the state prosecutor, refused to talk to us, but she has said there is insubstantial evidence to merit an investigation.

In Pristina, the Kosovan capital, there are more furious denials.

After all, the alleged crimes would constitute a terrible “original sin” by the former KLA fighters who now govern Kosovo — an area still struggling to gain acceptance as an independent state.

Hashim Thaci, Kosovo’s prime minister and a former KLA fighter, was dismissive when I asked him about the allegations during an interview late last year.

Criminal gangs

Meanwhile, in Serbia, not surprisingly, the reaction to Del Ponte’s book has been very different.

Serbs are used to being cast as the villains of the Balkan wars. Here, for once, they are being portrayed as amongst the victims.

Vladimir Vukcevic, Serbia’s war crimes prosecutor, is a man of integrity who has received death threats from hard-line Serbs, unhappy with some of his investigations into atrocities committed during the wars of the 1990s.

He told me that he believes there are “between 300 and 540 people still missing” from the time of the 1999 Kosovo war, who had been kidnapped and taken to Albania.

Vukcevic has built up a file of evidence, which he would not show me in detail, but which links the supposed body organ smugglers with wealthy recipients in Western Europe, and criminal gangs involved in prostitution, drug smuggling and human trafficking.

Late last year, Vukcevic flew to Tirana to meet Rama and discuss his findings.

The meeting was cordial, but Vukcevic says that, thereafter, the Albanians would not co-operate with him.

New investigation

Vukcevic is frustrated, but now pinning his hopes on a new investigation into the disappeared of the Kosovo war, being carried out by the Council of Europe, an organisation which lays particular emphasis on legal standards, human rights and democratic development,

The investigation is led by Dick Marty, a Swiss prosecutor, who made his name with a report on extraordinary renditions and alleged secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe.

Marty likes to operate in a secretive, low-key way and his office will only say that his investigation is making progress.

Del Ponte is now the Swiss ambassador to Argentina, and will not talk about the alleged body-organ trading.

We left Matoci in his farmhouse still cursing Del Ponte, and hoping that Marty will clear his name.

Driving back down the valley, the clouds were closing in, and it had started to rain.

It is difficult to imagine that such complex crimes could have taken place out here, and that such a beautiful place could have witnessed such horrors.

By Barnaby Phillips
Al Jazeera
Doha, Qatar
July 04, 2009

The protocol was signed by Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Bozidar Djelic and IAEA Director-general Mohamed El Baradei.

Addressing a press conference after the signing ceremony, Djelic said that once the Serbian parliament ratifies the protocol, the IAEA would carry out detailed inspections across Serbia, similar to the ones that were made at Vinca Institute of Nuclear Sciences, which was founded in 1948 and lies some 17 km southeast of Belgrade.

“Serbia is willing for the inspections to be carried out at any point in time anywhere in the country so that it is verified that it has no nuclear proliferation plans,” said Djelic, adding that developing nuclear weapons was neither a policy of the former Yugoslavia nor of Serbia.

He said that by signing the protocol, Serbia has shown that it is part of the international efforts for controlling the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Djelic said that one of the important subjects discussed with El Baradei was the transfer of used nuclear fuel from the research reactor at Vinca.

He said that 23 million out of 25 million U.S. dollars necessary for the transfer of used nuclear fuel from the Vinca Institute of Nuclear Sciences have already been provided, adding that nuclear waste is expected to be sent to Russia by the end of 2010.

In a 2009 report, IAEA officials said there were 8,030 used rods at Vinca Institute’s spent fuel pool, only 2 km from the River Danube, stored in rusty and leaking containers.

El Baradei voiced his satisfaction with the cooperation between Serbia and the IAEA.

He said that the Vinca Institute has been posing a security threat for a while and therefore used nuclear fuel must be transferred to Russia as soon as possible.

The two officials also discussed the possibility of using nuclear technologies for the development of science, agriculture and the protection of cultural heritage.

El Baradei pointed to the importance of the usage of nuclear energy in medical diagnostics and therapy, particularly when it comes to cardiology and oncology, announcing that the IAEA will soon send an expert team to Serbia to estimate Serbia’s needs concerning nuclear medicine.

Friday, July 03, 2009
Xinhua

Damir Ivankovic, who admitted he was guilty of war crimes charges, was sentenced by the Bosnia-Herzegovina court in Sarajevo for taking part in the shooting of more than 200 Bosnian Muslim and Croat civilians on Mount Vlasic, near Prijedor in northwest Bosnia, on Aug. 21, 1992, the Nezavisne daily reported Friday.

On June 22, Ivankovic made a deal with Bosnia-Herzegovina prosecutors, agreeing to testify at the trials of others accused of war crimes in the large region in northwestern Bosnia-Herzegovina controlled by Bosnian Serb military and police units during the 1992-95 Bosnia war.

In return, the prosecutors agreed to seek for Ivankovic a prison term from eight to 15 years, instead of a maximum of 20 years in jail.

Judge Minka Kreho pronounced Ivankovic guilty of the crime against humanity and persecution against Muslims and Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Nezavisne said.

Friday, July 03, 2009
United Press International

“Ms. Kosor has presented evidence showing that in the present make-up of the Sabor (national parliament) she has the backing of the required majority,” Mesic was quoted as saying by the Croatian news agency HINA.

Mesic said that it was now up to the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) and parties which have decided or will decide to be its coalition partner to make next moves.

Mesic said he expected the new cabinet led by Kosor to continue pursuing an unequivocal and resolute pro-European policy.

He also urged for the continuation of reforms, anti-corruption struggle and full cooperation with the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, as well as for commitment to the full respect of human and ethnic minorities’ rights and to enabling all refugees to return to their prewar homes.

At a ceremony televised by the national broadcasting company, Kosor said she hoped that the new government would be appointed on Monday and announced a revision of the state budget as her first move as the country’s first female prime minister since Croatia gained independence in 1991.

Thanking Mesic for his confidence in her as the PM-Designate, Kosor said that all what he said would be in the program of her cabinet.

The 56-year-old Kosor voiced hope that Croatia’s European Union accession negotiations, blocked by Slovenia due to a border dispute, would resume by the end of this year.

Kosor announced the revision of the coalition agreement as regards the current situation.

The outgoing Prime Minister and HDZ head Sanader on Wednesday withdrew from his government and party duties as well as from active politics, but would not clearly explain the reasons for this decision at an extraordinary news conference.

Sanader only said he had made the decision after deep consideration, and recalled that he had been in politics 20 years, and at the helm of the HDZ for 10 years. Sanader said that Kosor would succeed him at the helm of the government and as their party ’s chief.

In the meantime the HDZ ensured the support of a majority of members of parliament for Kosor’s appointment as the new PM and Mesic held consultations with all parliamentary parties, as envisaged by the law on the government.

The parliament is expected to approve Kosor’s cabinet on Monday.

Friday, July 03, 2009
Xinhua

Albania joined NATO in April and has been under intense international pressure to ensure the June 28 vote was free of the fraud that marred the first six elections held after the Balkan country’s communist regime fell in 1990.

But the Socialists threatened to hold street protests after election authorities declared late Friday that Prime Minister Sali Berisha’s Democrats had won enough seats to form a government.

The country’s electoral commission is re-counting ballots from some polling stations following complaints about irregularities and the Socialists insist it cannot declare that the Democrats won 71 seats while recounts are still pending. They accuse Berisha of trying to sway the electoral commission.

“I appeal to Berisha to abandon the idea of imposing himself on the Albanian people … unless he wants to meet and face the people in the street,” said Gramoz Ruci, a senior Socialist politician.

Both main parties ran on similar platforms, pledging to lift Albania out of poverty and secure its goal of joining the European Union.

Election monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe issued preliminary findings saying there were improvements and fewer irregularities in this year’s voting, but that some violations such as family voting and the late opening of polling centers persisted.

Election officials said late Friday that Democrats won 46.69 percent, giving them 71 seats in the 140-seat parliament, the exact number needed to form a government.

Tirana Mayor Edi Rama’s opposition Socialists won 45.36 percent, or 65 seats, with a former prime minister’s coalition in third place, the Central Elections Commission said.

Berisha, acknowledging that he could at best form a weak government if the current results are upheld in the re-count, invited the third-place SMI to join him in a coalition. Its head, former Prime Minister Ilir Meta, was to give a news conference Saturday afternoon.

Full final results are now expected in days, after all disputed ballots are counted.

Based on the partial count, the election commission said 50 percent of Albania’s 3.1 million registered voters had cast ballots.

LLAZAR SEMINI
Associated Press Writer
Saturday, July 04, 2009 7:34 AM

Police said the bomb went off at 4:37 a.m. (0147 GMT) in the central Ambelokipi district, when the fast food restaurant was closed. Anonymous warning calls made to two Athens newspapers before the attack allowed officers to cordon off the area before the explosion, and there were no injuries.

The blast shattered windows in nearby shops and apartment blocks, leaving broken glass and dead pigeons on pavements.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but police spokesman Panagiotis Stathis said police suspect a group that calls itself Revolutionary Struggle.

The group, which the U.S. designated as an international terrorist organization in May, has carried out more than a dozen bomb and shooting attacks since 2003, including a bloodless 2007 rocket attack on the U.S. Embassy in Athens.

In January, the group claimed responsibility for a shooting attack that severely wounded a riot policeman guarding a ministry building in central Athens.

Stathis said Friday’s attack was clearly aimed at the McDonalds restaurant.

“The McDonalds restaurant was definitely the target,” Stathis said. “The bomb was placed under a wheelchair ramp outside it. The warning call also named the restaurant.”

Shortly afterwards, an incendiary device consisting of camping gas canisters exploded outside an Athens immigration policy center, while a similar device went off outside the office of former public order minister Sifis Valyrakis. Neither of those attacks caused any injuries.

Greek militants have stepped up attacks following the fatal police shooting of an Athens teenager in December, which sparked the country’s worst rioting in decades.

In the bloodiest incident so far, gunmen shot dead an anti-terrorist officer guarding a witness in Athens on June 17.

Small anarchist groups have also intensified arson attacks on symbols of wealth and state power, to protest government social and economic policies.

NICHOLAS PAPHITIS
Associated Press Writer
Friday, July 03, 2009

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AFP. The chief prosecutor of the U.N.’s Yugoslav war crimes court visited Serbia Monday to assess the country’s cooperation with the tribunal, a key issue in Belgrade’s bid to join the European Union. Serge Brammertz will meet President Boris Tadic and Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic, officials said. He will also hold talks with Rasim Ljajic, a minister in charge of cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, a court spokeswoman told AFP. The visit is to last two days.

In addition, the prosecutor was to meet officials from Serbia’s intelligence services who have been searching for two remaining suspects, Bosnian Serb wartime military chief Ratko Mladic and former Croatian Serb leader Goran Hadzic.

Both Mladic and Hadzic are believed to be hiding in Serbia.? Ljajic said he was confident the two “could not hide forever.”

“If they were in Serbia it would be impossible not to find them before the end of the year, considering ongoing activities” to track them down, Ljajic said.

The arrests of Mladic and Hadzic are key conditions for Serbia to activate a Stabilization and Association Agreement, considered to be a first step on its way towards E.U. membership.? The SAA has been frozen since last May due to Serbia’s failure to capture the fugitives.

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AFP. Twenty-six people, most of them police officers, were injured in a violent protest against power cuts, police and officials said Monday. About 300 protesters blocked the main road connecting eastern Kosovo to Serbia late Sunday to protest against the Kosovo Electric Company cutting electricity over unpaid bills, officials said. A police statement said that after security forces were ordered to remove a blockade, the protesters “threw rocks, bottles and Molotov cocktails.”

Twenty one police were injured, one with serious injuries, said the statement. Five Serbs were also treated in the eastern village of Ranilug, Zoran Maksimovic, a local doctor, told reporters.? Police arrested four men and one woman, the police statement said.

Serbs in Ranilug, some 50 kilometers (30 miles) east of Pristina, said they would hold new protests on Monday.

Kosovo Serbs have refused to pay electricity bills, saying KEK represents independent Kosovo, which isn’t recognized by Serbia.

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The crisis in relations between Switzerland and Serbia, which developed in 2008 when Bern recognized the independence of Kosovo, is now overcome, the Swiss ambassador in Belgrade, Erwin Hofer said. Hofer pointed out that a meeting will be held in autumn, of the Swiss voting group in the IMF and the World Bank, of which Serbia is a member. Swiss experts are advising the Serbian government about membership in the World Trade Organization.

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Serbian and Iranian Ministers of Trade agreed to expand bilateral economic cooperation, especially in the agriculture and oil and petrochemical industries. The visit of the Iranian delegation to Serbia and the talks on fostering trade will help boost all-round economic cooperation Serbia’s trade minister said.

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A delegation of the Serbian Defense Ministry visited Portugal to discuss prospects for fostering cooperation in the defense sector. The two delegations signed the regulations for the work of the joint commission and coordinated plans for bilateral military cooperation for 2009, including exchange of experiences in education and medicine, professionalization of armed forces, activities of special forces and participation in peace operations.

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Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Mladjan Dinkic said on May 7 that Kosovo would have to assume the payment of more than USD1 billion in foreign debt if it wanted to be accepted into the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.? “If Kosovo were to be accepted into the IMF and the World Bank, which by all accounts seems likely, it would have to take on the payment of more than USD1 billion in debt, taking into account that Serbia has hardly had a single dinar of fiscal revenue from the area of Kosovo and Metohija in the last 10 years,” he said. Dinkic emphasized that the debt repayment issue should not be connected to that of sovereignty because, as he said, “the repayment of debts can be connected to customs territories, that is, areas which aren’t sovereign countries and which aren’t members of the United Nations.”

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State Secretary at the Ministry for Kosovo and Metohija Oliver Ivanovic warned that Kosovo Serbs should “expect a real invasion of Kosovo Albanians in the north” and said that such plans are made by the ethnic Albanian separatist government. “Huge funds have been allocated for this,” Ivanovic said.

“I also think they have an open support of certain international representatives who are unaware of the fact that in helping them, they are actually jeopardizing the already fragile stability in the north, and therefore in the whole of Kosovo and Metohija as well,” he underlined.

US Ambassador to Serbia Cameron Munter has accused Serbs of fomenting violence in Kosovo and warned the government in Belgrade that it is their duty to to control the Kosovo Serbs. He did not specify any countermeasures. NATO has said that the situation in Kosovo is delicate.

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Croatian PM Ivo Sanader said that Croatia will not give Slovenia “of a centimeter” of its territory. Croatia says that a city which Slovenia claims belongs to Croatia.

May 11, 2009
SERBIANNA

“I am not a supporter of that idea because there is no readiness for an agreement inside Bosnia so that such agreement cannot be forced from the outside and I don’t think that it is good for the international community to divide itself on the question of Bosnia,” said Miroslav Lajcak, chief of Slovakia’s foreign policy and a former administrator of Bosnia.

Instead of new international conferences, Lajcak says that Brussels, Washington and Moscow should send Bosnia clear signals to “deal with questions of European integration and that is what we expect of you”.

Lajcak’s comments came after he met with high officials with the US State Department.

In a conversation to Hillary Clinton, Lajcak said that he told her that US should engage together with the EU on the issue of Balkans.

Lajcak said that Hillary Clinton is completing her team at the State Department that will deal with the question of Balkans.

In her recent Congressional testimony, Clinton said that US has unfinished business in the region.

Lajcak said that during his meeting with Clinton, they’ve spent substantial amount of time on the on the issue “how should the American engagement in the Balkans be”.

“Of course the key has to be a European perspective for the Balkans. I expect the EU to play the dominant position but to have a coordinating support from the US,” said Lajcak.

Lajcak says that the issue of naming a new envoy for the western Balkans is not the key issue. Rather, Lajcak says, defining policy, goals, vision and the strategy should be paramount.

“I clearly said that it is incorrect to name an envoy and then seek a definition what his role should be. First the policy then the instruments,” said Lajcak.

Lajcak also said that Slovakia will not recognize Kosovo.

“This government has no intentions to recognize Kosovo because for that there are two critical elements missing – fist is the agreement between Serbia and Kosovo and second is a unified position of the international community as expressed through the UN Security Council resolution,” said Lajcak.

May 11, 2009
SERBIANNA