Below is an AP Worldstream story that didn’t make it to the AP’s “A” stories that become available in the U.S. and AP Online. Let’s see if we can figure out why. Oh look — it must be because it concerns Bosnian-Muslim war criminals:

Police detain three former Bosnian Army soldiers suspected of war crimes (April 8th):

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) - Officials say police have detained three former Bosnian Army soldiers suspected of war crimes committed during Bosnia’s 1992-95 conflict.

The prosecutor’s office of the Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina says that Adil Ruznic, 41, Mehur Selimovic, 46, and Emir Mustafic, 47, were detained Tuesday in the western Bosnian town of Bihac on suspicion of having committed crimes against civilians and war prisoners in 1994 and 1995.

The Bosnian Army tried for more than three years to break the Serb siege of Bosniak-dominated Bihac before finally succeeding in 1995. Serbs have claimed the Bosnian Army committed crimes against the Serb population in surrounding villages during those attempts.

First, let’s note the use of the word “claim” — always employed when the subject is crimes against Serbs. Whereas the Srebrenica “genocide/massacre” is a fact beyond debate, such that if you question the circumstances of those deaths and the actual tally in this “worst atrocity since WWII,” you’ve joined the ranks of Holocaust deniers. But what happened to the Serbs in and around Srebrenica which precipitated the Srebrenica operation, can only ever be a Serbian claim. Especially since international investigators weren’t tasked with documenting dead Serbs. That’s why if a dead Serb is lying in front of you, it’s actually only a Serbian “claim.”

But getting to the point. Many a foreign “eyewitness” to the Bosnian war will tell you, as some have told me: “I saw the Siege of Sarajevo with my own eyes. There’s no defending the Serbs on that count.”

Andy Wilcoxson explains in his forthcoming book about the Milosevic trial that Fikret Abdic, a truly moderate Muslim Bosnian leader and therefore not the one to win American support, sided with the Serbs in the war against the creation of a secessionist Islamic Bosnia, and it was his forces that held northwestern Bosnia, with assistance from the Serb side. Canadian former ambassador to Yugoslavia James Bissett also gives us a glimpse into the infamous “Siege of Sarajevo”:

During the siege of Sarajevo it was not only the Muslim population that suffered. The Serbs who remained in Sarajevo and who were prevented from leaving not only were on the receiving end of the shelling and sniping but were also victims of retaliation by a hostile Muslim population. [Alija] Izetbegovic, the Muslim leader, decreed a policy of “self-organization” and this meant that local Muslim strongmen took command of certain neighborhoods and raised their own private armies. Many of them were former criminals and they adopted aliases such as: Juka, Caco, Celo, Puska etc. These local warlords broke into Serb homes, forced Serbs to leave their apartments, they looted and robbed and set up their own prisons for uncooperative Serbs, where many were killed and others simply “disappeared.” Serbian shops and businesses were prime targets and Serbs were forced to dig trenches in areas of extreme danger. Sarajevo became one large prison for the Serbian population. Later when the Muslims and Croats fell out and began to fight each other, the Croats in Sarajevo suffered the same fate as the Serbs. Of course the international media reported none of this and [so] only Muslims were victims. It is also commonly known that the Muslims frequently fired on their own people to show visiting media representatives how the dreadful Serbs in the hills above shot innocent civilians.

On that point, I’m looking at a February 8, 1994 letter from Bosnian-Serb President Radovan Karadzic to then Secretary-General of the UN Boutros Boutros Ghali:

Your Excellency,

You are of course aware of the tragic event that took place in the Sarajevo market place on Saturday. Ever since, there has been a torrent of world-wide accusations against the Serbs. The campaign has been unprecedented in its ferocity, the level of emotion involved, but most important in its blindness both to the wider circumstances of the incident in Sarajevo and to circumstances of [the] incident itself.

As you know, the UNPROFOR [UN Protection Force] report concluded that “the round could have been fired from either B&H [Bosnia-Herzegovina] or BSA [Bosnian-Serb Army] positions.” Our own indications, from sources in Muslim-held Sarajevo, are that a shell reinforced with plastic explosive was hurled at the market place from a neighbouring building. In any event, although the culprit has not been identified, the world media and many politicians have declared the Serbs the perpetrators of the atrocity.

We have been here before. A sense of deja vu is overwhelming for those who are familiar with Muslim tactics in Sarajevo. In the effort to generate world sympathy for its aims, the Muslim leadership is not above sacrificing innocent civilians to attain those aims. [Indeed, please note that this is what the sacrifice at Srebrenica was all about — coming up with the 5,000 bodies that Clinton said Izetbegovic would need to get an intervention.] The fundamental truth is that the Muslims are not interested in a peace settlement based on compromise. They want the whole of Sarajevo and the whole of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Nothing else will do for them. Hence, Your Excellency, there has been no significant progress in the peace talks. [See Kosovo.]

The day before yesterday we met the co-chairman of the ICFY [International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia] and agreed with them to start exploring the possibility of pacifying Sarajevo District in advance of an overall peace settlement. But we absolutely insist that the matter of the market place massacre be cleared up first. We demand a thorough and impartial investigation, to be carried out by UNPROFOR, with experts from the Serbian and Muslim sides taking part. Particular attention should be paid to ballistics and to pathological findings with regard to the victims. At stake here is the fate of a whole people as well as the fate of an entire region of Europe. I urge Your Excellency to exert your influence in order to allow the truth to emerge.

Yours Sincerely,
Dr Radovan Karadzic
President, Republic of Serbia

On June 6, 1996, Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) carried the following item:

“UN Admits Muslims Responsible for February 1994 Sarajevo Massacre”

New York - For the first time, a senior U.N. official has admitted the existence of a secret U.N. report that blames the Bosnian Muslims for the February 1994 massacre of Muslims at a Sarajevo market.

Yasushi Akashi, the Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and the former head of the U.N. mission in Bosnia, told the German Press Agency dpa that the secret report is “no secret.”

An international outcry over the massacre, in which 68 civilians perished at Markale marketplace, led directly to a toughening of Western policy towards the Serbs, who were widely blamed for the incident.

But there have been persistent rumors at the United Nations ever since that a U.N. report clearly blamed the Muslims for firing on their own people in order to create international sympathy and get the West to fight on their side against the Serbs.

Until Thursday, U.N. officials strongly denied the report existed, even after it was quoted in press reports. Akashi told dpa that not only did the first report exist, but that some journalists already had a copy. He said the details were in a 1995 story by U.S. journalist David Binder, who quoted from the confidential report.

According to Binder, the report said U.N. peacekeepers were prevented by Muslim police from entering the site in the aftermath of the explosion. No doctors were allowed on the scene and the 197 victims were carried away to a hospital within 25 minutes.

After studying the crater left by the mortar shell and the distribution of the shrapnel, the report concluded that the shell was fired from behind Muslim lines. U.N. monitors reported no Serbian shelling that day from points near the marketplace.

The official U.N. report that was subsequently released said the evidence as to who fired the shell was inconclusive, since it originated from an area where Muslim and Serb lines were very close. The two reports represented divergent views, but the United Nations chose to publish the neutral report and keep the other secret.

The incident led to a NATO ultimatum to Bosnian Serbs to withdraw their heavy weapons from around Sarajevo.

At the time, Madeleine Albright, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said: “It’s very hard to believe any country would do this to their own people, and therefore, although we do not exactly know what the facts are, it would seem to us that the Serbs are the ones that probably have a great deal of responsibility.”

Indeed, it is precisely this prototype — perpetually in disbelief of reality — that seems to gravitate toward professions in policymaking, all such clones eventually finding their way to the State Department and its equivalent abroad. The “expert” who debated author John Schindler on Voice of America several months ago used exactly the same language as Albright (a paraphrase): I refuse to believe that Muslims would kill their own.

And this is after decades of examples of what Palestinian Muslims do to their own, including the youngest children. Since then, of course, the Iraq war has provided us with plenty more examples of this self-killing tactic.

Just to get an added window into the Siege of Sarajevo, purportedly at the singular hands of those dastardly Serbs, there is my recent post about the experiences of Jews living in a Muslim-ruled Sarajevo (see last portion of this blog). Add to this the contents of a Jan. 28, 1994 communique from the Bosnian-Serb embassy in London:

Five doctors — three Serbs, a Jew and a Croat — were arrested by the Muslim authorities in Sarajevo, allegedly while trying to escape from the city. Several nurses were also arrested, on the same charge. [The doctors] had all worked in various Sarajevo hospitals throughout the present conflict, and saved many lives…The arrested doctors are being physically and [psychologically] mistreated. The representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross visited the arrested doctors and communicated with their families. The Serb Republic was not given any information pertaining to the location where the doctors and nurses are being held. Muslim sources report that the father of one of the arrested doctors committed suicide. The Serb Republic informs that he was killed after he visited his son in the prison.

The Serb Republic regards this case as added proof that life for non-Muslims under Izetbegovic’s Islamic regime is utterly unbearable. The fundamental question is why should people be stopped if they wish to leave? The Serb side regards free movement of civilians as a basic right and regrets that the Muslims in former Bosnia-Herzegovina treat non-Muslim under their control as hostages and prisoners…The Government of the Serb Republic does not accept that the arrested doctors and nurses be treated as POWs. They were targeted because of their ethnicity and religion. The fact that they include persons of Serb, Croat and Jewish background at least indicates that the Muslim regime in Sarajevo is indiscriminate in its persecution of non-Muslims.

In the current attempt by international mediators to effect confidence it is indeed imperative that the arrested medical personnel be set free and allowed to leave the Muslim sector of Sarajevo with their families. We also demand that all people, regardless of nationality, religion or profession, be allowed to leave areas under Muslim control if they so wish.

Finally, a rather graphic interview depicting life for Serbs in Sarajevo during the siege can be read here. (It appeared in the Serbian paper Vecernje Novosti (Evening News), and the interview subject is Milivoje Ivanisevic, Director of the Centre for the Investigation of Crimes Committed Against the Serbian People.

Below are two Serbs who lived in Sarajevo during the “Serbian” siege, from the Real Srebrenica Genocide website:

“The body of a Bosnian Serb from Sarajevo, who was killed, mutilated, and burned. His body was thrown in the Miljacka river by Bosnian Muslim forces.”

“Sarajevo: The body of Bosnian Serb Nenad Beribaka. The Bosnian Muslim forces mutilated his body after killing him by extracting his brain.”

But then, Serb suffering is officially irrelevant:

[Dragomir] Milosevic Defence Portray Serb Suffering
But judges repeatedly question testimony’s relevance to the case.
June 16, 2007

The defence in the trial of Bosnian Serb Dragomir Milosevic this week attempted to paint a picture of the suffering that both sides went through during the conflict in and around Sarajevo.

Witnesses gave detailed, emotional testimony, but the judges on several occasions intervened to ask about the testimony’s relevance to the case.

Milosevic, the former commander of the Bosnian Serb Sarajevo Romanija Corps, SRK, is charged with seven counts of crimes against humanity and violations of laws and customs of war for artillery and sniper attacks which are said to have terrorised the inhabitants of Sarajevo from August 1994 until November 1995.
…
Drazen Maunaga, a witness for the defence, testified about how the Serb population in the vicinity of Sarajevo lived in fear of Bosnian army guns - something the defence counsel called “a sure sign of sowing fear among one’s people”.

He said Serbs he encountered during his employment as head of the office for cooperation with UNPROFOR in the Ilidza municipality would ask him “since I had contact with foreigners, whether it was possible for me to get a visa for them so they could leave the area”.

Maunaga said that he had himself been seriously wounded by a Bosnian shell.

“I was injured in the stomach. Basically, I had my intestines in my hand,” he told the court.

The judges, who at one point enquired about the witness’s current health, nonetheless said that it was not enough for the defence to argue that the Serbs were also suffering.

The defence, however, continued their theme on Wednesday with the testimony of Zoran Samardzic. He was originally under protection - known as “T-47? - but the chamber granted his request for protective measures to be lifted.

Samardzic testified about how he went to visit a friend who had been hit by a shell while he was out in the streets, and returned to find that his son and his friend had been killed in a bombardment.

“When I returned to my apartment I found my child dead!” said Samardzic. “My only child, Sasha - 13 years old, he was, and his friend…he was 11 years old. I found them in pieces!”

After giving the witness a few minutes to compose himself, the judges again asked how his testimony was relevant to the charges in the indictment, and encouraged the defence to move on.

It was the third time that judges enquired about the relevance of defence testimony that day.

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