Experts Predict Acquittal of Milosevic

theski · Post by **theski** » 2004-03-01 04:49pm

THE HAGUE, Netherlands - When U.N. prosecutors opened their case against Slobodan Milosevic (news - web sites) two years ago, they set out to get him convicted of genocide. The consensus today is, they failed.

AP Photo

Legal experts say prosecutors at the U.N. war crimes tribunal have assembled solid evidence on lesser charges against the former Yugoslav president. But acquittal on the genocide charge — the crime of all crimes, experts say — would have far-reaching implications.

Many Serbs would cheer it as vindicating their view that Serbia stands wrongly accused. Others likely will see it as a distortion of Europe's darkest chapter since World War II. And it may provide important lessons for those planning a trial for Saddam Hussein (news - web sites).

linky

Ok.. I didn't see this coming... I guess war crimes are harder to prove then normal lately

Post by **Gandalf** » 2004-03-01 10:44pm

Aren't there a ton of dead bodies somewhere that might be evidence?

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2004-03-01 10:51pm

Gandalf wrote:Aren't there a ton of dead bodies somewhere that might be evidence?

No actually, very few bodies that could be attributed to such things have been recovered in the former Yugoslavia. As I recall, the total for Bosnia and Croatia is just 550. It's become apparent that many of the reported genocides simply did not happen or where isolated incidents blown totally out of proportion. And that's ignoring the Kosovo crap.

BlkbrryTheGreat · Post by **BlkbrryTheGreat** » 2004-03-02 01:05am

And people wonder why I take information from the "mainstream" media with a grain of salt.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2004-03-02 01:08am

Oh yeah, because fringe sources are so much less biased...

BlkbrryTheGreat · Post by **BlkbrryTheGreat** » 2004-03-02 01:29am

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:Oh yeah, because fringe sources are so much less biased...

Wow, I wish I could be a idiot cocksucker who jumps to baseless conclusions just like you. Maybe you should take this into consideration I never stated that I trust "fring" sources either. I take ever piece of information with a grain of salt and I look at from where the information is coming, whether the issuer has any reason to have a bias.

BoredShirtless · Post by **BoredShirtless** » 2004-03-02 06:01am

Everyone who had the sense to read more then just CNN understood that there were two sides to the Kosovo conflict. And on Milosevic, don't you need many bodies and/or mass graves before charges of genocide can be taken seriously? Where are they?

Post by **Vympel** » 2004-03-02 06:24am

BoredShirtless wrote:Everyone who had the sense to read more then just CNN understood that there were two sides to the Kosovo conflict. And on Milosevic, don't you need many bodies and/or mass graves before charges of genocide can be taken seriously? Where are they?

In the imagination of the US State Department, but nowhere else. As for 'fringe' news sources, if the case against him really does fail (and I hope it does), it's just another example of how the mainstream media gets it wrong time after fucking TIME. It wasn't from fucking CNN back a year ago that I was arguing against this Iraq WMD load of steaming bullshit, I'll tell you that.

theski · Post by **theski** » 2004-03-02 07:53am

Vympel wrote

In the imagination of the US State Department, but nowhere else. As for 'fringe' news sources, if the case against him really does fail (and I hope it does), it's just another example of how the mainstream media gets it wrong time after fucking TIME

Let me get this straight...... The hundreds of reports of mass graves are made up..Cnn.... BBC .. NYtimes AbC.,Cbs, Times UK... all are wrong and you think he should be aquitted??

BoredShirtless · Post by **BoredShirtless** » 2004-03-02 07:56am

Vympel wrote:
BoredShirtless wrote:Everyone who had the sense to read more then just CNN understood that there were two sides to the Kosovo conflict. And on Milosevic, don't you need many bodies and/or mass graves before charges of genocide can be taken seriously? Where are they?
In the imagination of the US State Department, but nowhere else. As for 'fringe' news sources, if the case against him really does fail (and I hope it does), it's just another example of how the mainstream media gets it wrong time after fucking TIME. It wasn't from fucking CNN back a year ago that I was arguing against this Iraq WMD load of steaming bullshit, I'll tell you that.

Did you know that Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and the KLA hired a PR company called Ruder & Finn to demonise the Serbs? You should see what the Director of that company said in an interview back in 1993:
http://www.srpska-mreza.com/library/fac ... ml#Merlino

Part of the answer is provided by a REVEALING INTERVIEW by Mr. James Harff (director of Ruder & Finn Global Public Affairs) given to Mr. Jacques Merlino in Paris in October 1993. Ruder & Finn are public relations company, currently registered as foreign agents. Here are Harff's statements, slightly abbridged. [End of quote from the periodical and beginning of the quote from the book:]

Harrf: For 18 months, we have been working for the Republics of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as for the opposition in Kosovo. Throughout this period, we had many successes, giving us a formidable international image. We intend to make advantage of this and develop commercial agreements with these countries. Speed is vital, because items favourable to us must be settled in public opinion. THE FIRST STATEMENT COUNTS. The retractions have no effect.

Question: What are your methods of operation?

Harff: The essential tools in our work are a card file, a computer, and a fax. The card file contains a few hundred names of journalists, politicians, academicians, and representatives of humanitarian organizations. The computer goes through the card files according to correlated subjects, coming up with very effective targets.

The computer is tied into a fax. In this way, we can disseminate information in a few minutes to those we think will react (positively). Our job is to assure that the arguments for our side will be the first to be expressed.

Question: How often do you intervene?

Harff: Quantity is not important. You have to intervene at the right time with the right person... ...

Question: What achievement were you most proud of?

Harff: To have managed to put Jewish opinion on our side. This was a sensitive matter, as the dossier was dangerous looked from this angle. President Tidjman was very careless in his book "Wastelands of Historical Reality". Reading this writtings, one could accuse him of of anti- semitism.

In Bosnia, the situation was no better: President Izetbegovic strongly supported the creation of a fundamentalist Islamic state in his book "The Islamic Declaration". Besides, the Croatian and Bosnian past was marked by a real and cruel anti-semitism. Tens of thousands of Jews perished in Croatian camps. So there was every reason for intellectuals and Jewish organizations to be hostile towards the Croats and Bosnians. Our chalenge was to reverse this attitude. And we succeded masterfully.

At the beginning of August 1992, the New York Newsday came out with the affair of (Serb) concentration camps. We jumped at the opportunity immediately. We outwitted three big Jewish organizations - B'Nai Brith Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Committee, and the American Jewish Congress. We suggested to them to publish an advertisement in the New York Times and to organize demonstrations outside the U.N.

This was a tremendous coup. When the Jewish organizations entered the game on the side of the (Muslim) Bosnians, we could promptly equate the Serbs with the Nazis in the public mind.

Nobody understood what was happening in Yugoslavia. The great majority of Americans were probably asking themselves in which African country Bosnia was situated. But, by a single move, we were able to present a simple story of good guys and bad guys, which would hereafter play itself.

We won by targeting Jewish audience. Almost immediately there was a clear change of language in the press, with the use of words with high emotional content, such as "ethnic cleansing", "concentration camps", etc. which evoked images of Nazi Germany and the gas chambers of Auschwitz. The emotional charge was so powerful that nobody could go against it.

Question: But when you did all of this, you had no proof that what you said was true. You only had the article in Newsday!

Harff: Our work is not to verify information. We are not equipped for that. Our work is to accelerate the circulation of information favorable to us, to aim at judiciously chosen targets. We did not confirm the existence of death camps in Bosnia, we just made it known that Newsday affirmed it.

Question: Are you aware that you took on a grave responsibility?

Harff: We are professionals. We had a job to do and we did it. WE ARE NOT PAID TO BE MORAL.

Another source: http://www.nationalism.org/sf/Articles/a122.html

BoredShirtless · Post by **BoredShirtless** » 2004-03-02 08:01am

theski wrote:Vympel wrote
In the imagination of the US State Department, but nowhere else. As for 'fringe' news sources, if the case against him really does fail (and I hope it does), it's just another example of how the mainstream media gets it wrong time after fucking TIME
Let me get this straight...... The hundreds of reports of mass graves are made up

Looks like it. If they weren't made up, don't you think evidence of these mass graves would have been used by the Prosecution in the Milosevic trial?

..Cnn.... BBC .. NYtimes AbC.,Cbs, Times UK... all are wrong

Yep. All of them. Why is that so hard to swallow?

and you think he should be aquitted??

I think it's pretty clear what Vympel just said.

Col. Crackpot · Post by **Col. Crackpot** » 2004-03-02 08:16am

If that racist murdering pantload is aquitted the powers that be will be even less inclined to take the world court seriously, and more apt to take care of things themselves. I love how it is neatly and simply portrayed as an American fabrication as well. Shall we forget that this was a NATO operation led by a Spanish Secretary General and the operation forces consisted of American, British, Italian, Spanish, German (the first combat use of the Luftwaffe since WWII) ... even the French jumped on board that operation. Had the EU gotten it's collective ass in gear and worked effectively to solve the bloody racial war that was being fought in thier backyard, that war wouldn't have been needed in the firstplace. But noooooo. In true Chaimberlanesqe style it was allowed to fester. Blame the fucking Yanks, who gives a fuck about the facts, just blame the yanks. He guess what... remember how the Black Hand assinated Ferdinand? Yeah, that was us. Gary Cooper in diguise. Spanish Civil War? That ws us too. The Falklands? you guessd it!

BoredShirtless · Post by **BoredShirtless** » 2004-03-02 08:27am

Drivel.

theski · Post by **theski** » 2004-03-02 08:30am

ANd I guess you don't believe this either...

Serbia starts exhuming more mass graves

Friday, June 21, 2002 at 09:30 JST
BELGRADE — Serbia's judiciary said on Thursday new exhumations of mass graves had started at a police compound near Belgrade where around 300 bodies believed to be victims of the 1999 Kosovo conflict were unearthed last year.

A brief statement from the Belgrade district court said the unearthing and autopsies of a "large number of unidentified bodies" had begun three days earlier but gave no other details.

The exhumation of mass graves in June last year coincided with the handover of former president Slobodan Milosevic to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, where he now stands trial over the conflicts in Kosovo, Croatia and Bosnia.

The exhumations are widely believed to have helped soften public opinion over Milosevic's handover to the tribunal by the reformers who ousted him in 2000 after 13 years in power.

Investigators last year uncovered five mass graves in Serbia proper after launching a probe into a truck full of corpses dumped in the river Danube during NATO's 1999 bombing sparked by Milosevic's crackdown on Kosovo Albanians.

Two of the graves were located in the police compound in Batajnica, containing a total of 305 bodies, while the others were near lakes in the east and west of the republic.

Serbian criminal police chief Dragan Karleusa was quoted by B92 radio as saying last week that work would begin on exhuming previously unknown mass graves in Batajnica.

The London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) said in a report last week that Serb authorities were preparing to exhume four new mass graves, three of them in Batajnica and one in the southern town of Vranje.

So far police have uncovered 427 bodies in Serbia proper. They have accused Milosevic and his top aides of covering up traces of possible war crimes committed during military operations against Kosovo Albanian guerrillas in 1998-99.

But they have not yet revealed the identity of the bodies, the possible killers or who ordered the bodies to be moved from Kosovo to Serbia proper. About 4,000 bodies, mostly of ethnic Albanians, have been found in mass graves in Kosovo.

http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&id=220159

There is about 50 more pages of this if you want the whole list... HOw can you breathe with your head so jammed in the sand

Post by **Vympel** » 2004-03-02 08:31am

theski wrote:Let me get this straight...... The hundreds of reports of mass graves are made up..Cnn.... BBC .. NYtimes AbC.,Cbs, Times UK... all are wrong and you think he should be aquitted??

Uh ... YEAH. Considering Iraq, I don't see how this is so hard to believe. Or can you actually present evidence of this genocide? Because I'm sure the prosecutors would love to hear about it.

If that racist murdering pantload is aquitted

If there was no genocide, he's not guilty of genocide. Period.

the powers that be will be even less inclined to take the world court seriously

I think acquiting someone on the basis that there is no evidence to support the charges is the very thing that should take place to take the court seriously. I don't like kangaroo courts.

and more apt to take care of things themselves. I love how it is neatly and simply portrayed as an American fabrication as well. Shall we forget that this was a NATO operation led by a Spanish Secretary General

Oh? The Spanish started all this shit with Kosovo?

and the operation forces consisted of American, British, Italian, Spanish, German (the first combat use of the Luftwaffe since WWII) ... even the French jumped on board that operation.

So what? Who was responsible for the trumped up bullshit?

Had the EU gotten it's collective ass in gear and worked effectively to solve the bloody racial war that was being fought in thier backyard, that war wouldn't have been needed in the firstplace. But noooooo. In true Chaimberlanesqe style it was allowed to fester. Blame the fucking Yanks, who gives a fuck about the facts, just blame the yanks.

Racial war my arse. It was a civil war against a bunch of seperatist fucktards that the US State Department called narco-terrorists! NATO bombing *accelerated* the flight from Kosovo of the population due to the war., and Wesley Clark even admitted this, while still claiming ethnic cleansing with no evidence! Didn't you know that at Ramboulliet the Serbs agreed to every term of the peace treaty (including autonomy, IIRC) except for the provision that NATO occupy Kosovo with 28,000 troops. Considering it was a foreign military alliance, this was not an unreasonable sticking point. Instead of allowing the UN or OSCE (as the Serbs wanted) to do i (thereby placing the troops under a non-military command)t, the Serbs were dressed up and painted with the "intransigent" brush.

He guess what... remember how the Black Hand assinated Ferdinand? Yeah, that was us. Gary Cooper in diguise. Spanish Civil War? That ws us too. The Falklands? you guessd it!

Please. It was Madeline Halfbright who *insisted* that it must be a NATO force. It was the State Department started that bullshit about genocide, "ethnic cleansing", and over 100,000 dead, noone else. It's their responisibility. There could've been fucking peace and international troops in Kosovo if not for State Department intransigence.

The Kernel · Post by **The Kernel** » 2004-03-02 08:31am

May I point out that we really don't know why he may be aquitted of the Genocide charge? It may be that they know the mass murders took place, but they simply can't connect Milosevic to them. I don't know how the World Court works, but in a US courtroom if they wanted to convict the fucker they would need to prove that he either ordered the killings, or at the very least knew about them and failed to stop it. This isn't a very easy thing to prove.

Post by **Vympel** » 2004-03-02 08:34am

There is about 50 more pages of this if you want the whole list... HOw can you breathe with your head so jammed in the sand

Your *own article* shoots your BS in the foot. You think several hundred unidentified bodies from an unidentified time period with unidentified perpetrators, in fucking Belgrade (do you even know where Kosovo is in relation to Belgrade, theski- it's not even the same fucking province!), is enough to sustain a charge of genocide!?

How can you breathe with your head jammed so far up your arse?

Post by **Vympel** » 2004-03-02 08:37am

The Kernel wrote:May I point out that we really don't know why he may be aquitted of the Genocide charge? It may be that they know the mass murders took place, but they simply can't connect Milosevic to them. I don't know how the World Court works, but in a US courtroom if they wanted to convict the fucker they would need to prove that he either ordered the killings, or at the very least knew about them and failed to stop it. This isn't a very easy thing to prove.

There were undoubted killings in Kosovo, but they never found more than 2,000 bodies, total IIRC. In addition, who the people are (i.e. military age, Serb or Albanian, man or woman?) and how they died (battle or execution? I remember seeing a 'mass grave' on CNN with individual *crosses*- remember Albanians are Muslim) has never been released- it has all the hallmarks of an insurrection/civil war and none of the hallmarks of genocide.

theski · Post by **theski** » 2004-03-02 01:50pm

Vympel wrote

Your *own article* shoots your BS in the foot. You think several hundred unidentified bodies from an unidentified time period with unidentified perpetrators, in fucking Belgrade (do you even know where Kosovo is in relation to Belgrade, theski- it's not even the same fucking province!), is enough to sustain a charge of genocide!?

How can you breathe with your head jammed so far up your arse?

So I'm supposed to believe you insted of all of the Worlds major newsgathering departments??? Even though you have yet to site any counter evidence other what you say..???/ How about a little proof to back up your little speech

BoredShirtless · Post by **BoredShirtless** » 2004-03-02 01:57pm

theski wrote:So I'm supposed to believe you insted of all of the Worlds major newsgathering departments??? Even though you have yet to site any counter evidence other what you say..???/ How about a little proof to back up your little speech

Are you drinking? Your own opening post is the proof you're asking for! Bwahahaha!

BlkbrryTheGreat · Post by **BlkbrryTheGreat** » 2004-03-02 02:01pm

BoredShirtless wrote:
theski wrote:So I'm supposed to believe you insted of all of the Worlds major newsgathering departments??? Even though you have yet to site any counter evidence other what you say..???/ How about a little proof to back up your little speech
Are you drinking? Your own opening post is the proof you're asking for! Bwahahaha!

Ever heard of spitting into the wind theski?

theski · Post by **theski** » 2004-03-02 02:02pm

Yep... But the verdict is not in yet...

BlkbrryTheGreat · Post by **BlkbrryTheGreat** » 2004-03-02 07:41pm

theski wrote:Yep... But the verdict is not in yet...

The very fact that the outcome of the verdict is in question (due to lack of evidence) is more then enough to destroy the much of the credibility of the mainstream press.