SCONFINAMENTI


Per verificare che truppe della Armata Jugoslava non avessero
"sconfinato" portandosi troppo vicino al confine amministrativo della
provincia jugoslava del Kosmet, soldati provenienti dalla Gran Bretagna
(sita tra l'Oceano Atlantico ed il Mare del Nord), guidati dal
Brigadiere Generale Richard Shirreff, hanno sconfinato lo scorso 29
marzo al di fuori dei confini del Kosmet, nella zona-cuscinetto di tre
chilometri posta tra la provincia jugoslava ed il resto della RF di
Jugoslavia.
Poco dopo, il 3 aprile 2000 la Turchia, che e' impegnata in Kosmet con
propri soldati ed armamenti ad impedire una presunta "pulizia etnica"
attraverso l'appoggio ai gruppi dei terroristi irredentisti dell'UCK, ha
sconfinato in uno Stato vicino (l'Iraq) con circa 1000 soldati e jet
F-16 per inseguire i "terroristi irredentisti" curdi, gia' scappati dal
territorio turco a causa delle continue operazioni di pulizia etnica
dell'esercito turco.

(Per la cronaca, in passato gli aerei turchi sono arrivati fin sopra il
territorio iraniano per bombardare. Inoltre, la Turchia occupa
illegalmente una parte dell'isola di Cipro da piu' di venti anni).

(Fonti: Reuters 31/3/2000, AP 3/4/2000)


--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------

LA NATO INDAGATA ALL'AIA? MA QUANDO MAI...

- Due lettere di Michael Mandel (l'avvocato presentatore delle denunce a
Carla dal Ponte)

- l'opinione di Jesse Helms: "La `legalita' internazionale' e' stata
troppo spesso usata come giustificazione per bloccare la marcia della
liberta'... Ogni tentativo di mettere sotto accusa i comandanti della
NATO significherebbe la morte della Corte Internazionale... Nessuna
istituzione ONU - non il Consiglio di Sicurezza, non il Tribunale sulla
Jugoslavia, non una futura Corte Internazionale - e' competente a
giudicare la politica estera e le decisioni che investono la sicurezza
nazionale degli Stati Uniti..."

- Louise Arbour, criminale in attesa di giudizio: analisi della genesi e
degli appoggi di cui gode il Tribunale dell'Aia per i crimini commessi
sul territorio della ex-RFSJ


---

LETTERE DI MICHAEL MANDEL


-----Original Message-----
From: Snezana Vitorovich [mailto:zana@...]
Sent: Thursday, March 16, 2000 8:27 PM
To: sn-vesti@...
Subject: M.Mandel sends another letter to Carla Del Ponte !
Importance: High


Justice Carla Del Ponte,
Chief Prosecutor,
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia,
Churchillplein 1, 2501 EW,
The Hague,
Netherlands


SENT BY COURIER

March 15, 2000


Dear Justice Del Ponte:

Re William J. Clinton et al.

We write to you for two reasons.

First, we wish to draw your attention to the Human Rights Watch Report,
Civilian Deaths in the NATO Air Campaign (February 2000). In our
submission this is yet another clear indication of crimes committed
within
your jurisdiction. Giving every benefit of the doubt to NATO, Human
Rights
Watch has confirmed approximately 500 civilian deaths as a direct result
of
NATO bombing practices in violation of the norms of international law:
in
deliberate attacks on illegitimate targets, in the refusal to take the
necessary, often elemental, precautions to protect civilian life and in
the
use of cluster bombs. Human Rights Watch has also confirmed that leading
NATO officials lied about the nature and extent of these incidents. We
are
quite aware that Human Rights Watch has chosen to characterize these
incidents as "violations of international humanitarian law" and not as
"war
crimes." But the report does not attempt to defend making this
distinction
and it is not, in this context, defensible. As you know, Articles 1 and
16
of your governing Statute oblige you to prosecute "serious violations of
international humanitarian law" of the four types described by Articles
2
("grave breaches of the Geneva conventions of 1949), 3 ("violations of
the
laws and customs of war"), 4 ("genocide") and 5 ("crimes against
humanity").
The evidence in the Human Rights Watch Report is factual evidence (to be
added to the massive evidence already in your possession), of clear
violations of Articles 2, 3 and 5. By definition, these are "serious"
violations - if the massacre of innocent children, women and men is not
"serious" enough - and therefore "war crimes" as far as your tribunal is
concerned. No legal conclusion to the contrary of Human Rights Watch
could
relieve you of your duty to prosecute the individual NATO leaders
responsible for the crimes against civilians factually confirmed in the
report.

Secondly, we feel we must protest your recent statements and those of
your
spokesman, which, combined with your failure to act on the thousands of
complaints against NATO that have reached your office over the past
year,
are turning this investigation into more of a farce than a judicial
proceeding. We regret to say that, for all the faith that has been put
in
your Tribunal by the people of the world, it continues to conduct itself
as
if it were an organ of NATO and not of the United Nations.

In December you told the press that you would indict those responsible
if
you concluded NATO had violated the Geneva Conventions. You said "If I
am
not willing to do that, I am not in the right place: I must give up the
mission". However, following NATO and American protests, you hastily
issued
a statement on December 30, 1999 stating that "NATO is not under
investigation" and that there was "no formal inquiry."

On January 3, we wrote to you asking you to clarify the status of the
inquiry and you said you would respond in due course. But on January 19
you
went to NATO headquarters to meet in private session with NATO Secretary
General George Robertson, himself the subject of numerous war crimes
complaints to you. At that time you assured the press that you had not
even
raised the questions of crimes committed by him and other NATO leaders.
Next
(February 1), you met in London with British Foreign Secretary Robin
Cook,
also the subject of many war crimes complaints, and when asked about
them,
you said "Our work is not done but what we can say is that up until now
we
have no indications that we should open an inquiry." We wrote to you
again
on February 4 asking you to confirm this statement and explain it. Your
special assistant replied on your behalf on February 8, 2000 saying that
the
statement "meant exactly what it said. Up to this point, there is
nothing to
indicate that a full investigation is required, but the Office is
continuing
to study the material that you and others have submitted." As recently
as
March 9, your official spokesman declared to the press that NATO armies
"respect the rule of law" and that "a prosecution is very unlikely,"
while
you repeated that your "work" was continuing.

This is nothing short of a disgrace. If, despite all the evidence that
has
been provided to you since the first complaint reached your office in
April
1999, followed by thousands more from lawyers, legislators and citizens
around the world, you have still seen "nothing to indicate" that even an
investigation is required, the only possible conclusion to draw is that
you
are not serious about your duties, and perhaps never were. If you cannot
apply the law to NATO as well as to NATO's enemies, it seems that you
are
not, in your own words, "in the right place" and should, indeed, "give
up
the mission."

The fact is, as you well know, that the NATO leadership, from the
Presidents
and Prime Ministers on down, including those you have recently been
meeting
and collaborating with, have committed crimes of the utmost seriousness
that
the Statute creating your tribunal absolutely obliges you to prosecute.
In
violation of international law, the Charter of the United Nations, and
the
Geneva Conventions, these NATO leaders ordered a bombing campaign that,
in
attacking Yugoslavia with more than 25,000 bombs and missiles:

- directly killed between 500 and 1800 civilian children, women and men
of
all ethnicities and permanently injured as many others;

- indirectly caused the death of thousands more, by provoking the
retaliatory and defensive measures that are entirely predictable when a
war
of this kind and intensity is undertaken, and by giving a free hand to
extremists on both sides;

- directly and indirectly caused a refugee crisis of enormous
proportions,
with about 1 million fleeing Kosovo during the bombing;

- caused 60 to100 billion dollars worth of damage to an already
impoverished
country; and

- left in its wake a Kosovo of lawlessness and ethnic violence, under
the
direct supervision of NATO, in which hundreds have been murdered and
hundreds of thousands driven out.


Not only was this anti-humanitarian war illegal in itself, it was, as
you
well know, carried out in flagrant and direct violation of the Geneva
Conventions, norms of international law that it is your duty to enforce.
According to admissions made in public throughout the war and after it,
according to eye-witness reports and according to powerful
circumstantial
evidence displayed on the world's television screens during the bombing
campaign - evidence good enough to convict in any criminal court in the
world - these NATO leaders deliberately and illegally made targets of
places
and things with only tenuous or slight military value or no military
value
at all, such as city bridges, factories, hospitals, electricity plants,
marketplaces, downtown and residential neighbourhoods, and television
studios, all such targets being strictly prohibited by the Geneva
Conventions. The same evidence shows that, in doing this, the NATO
leaders
aimed to demoralize and break the will of the people, not to defeat the
army.

You know that one reason these civilian targets are illegal is that
civilians are very likely to be killed or injured when such targets are
hit.
And all of the NATO leaders knew that, too. They were carefully told
that by
their military planners. And they still went ahead and did it. Indeed,
there is persuasive evidence in your hands that, in some circumstances
at
least, NATO not only knowingly killed civilians, but deliberately set
out to
do so: for example on the Grdelica and Varvarin bridges (April 12 and
May
30) and the NIS marketplace (May 7).

This strategy was carried out without any risk to the NATO soldiers and
pilots, much less the leaders themselves, once again in direct violation
of
the Geneva Conventions. This was a war fought against civilians of all
ethnicities with bombing from altitudes so high that the civilians bore
all
the risks of the "inevitable collateral damage".

Far from a "humanitarian intervention" - not that this could ever excuse
the
wholesale killing of innocent civilians - this was a coldly strategic
enterprise. It exploited as well as exacerbated a tragedy for which the
NATO
countries' themselves must bear a large share of the responsibility: in
more
than a decade of beggaring Yugoslavia for motives of sheer greed, in
encouraging the KLA in its deliberate provocations, in throwing aside
every
opportunity for peace at Rambouillet and elsewhere, in undermining and
ultimately withdrawing the OSCE observer force. As you know, most of
the
world rejects NATO's humanitarian claims and we feel that we must remind
you
once again that you are a United Nations organ, not a NATO organ. In
fact,
we believe that this war must be understood as an attempt by the United
States, through NATO, to overthrow the authority of the United Nations
and
to replace it with NATO's military might, to be used wherever
strategically
advantageous and whatever the human consequences.

It is no secret that the Americans sponsored the creation of your
tribunal
to advance their own strategic ends. Despite these questionable origins
we
have given your tribunal every opportunity to vindicate itself. We have
given it every benefit of the doubt even in the face of mounting
evidence
that it did not deserve it:

- when, in January, 1999, then prosecutor Judge Louise Arbour made her
dramatic for-the-press appearance at the border of Kosovo, hastily
lending
unwarranted credibility to contested American accounts of atrocities at
Racak, a major precipitating justification of the war;

- when, only days after the bombing had commenced, she announced the
indictment of "Arkan," an indictment that had been kept secret since
1997;

- when, as the civilian casualties began to mount, Justice Arbour made
television appearances with NATO leader Robin Cook, already the subject
of
numerous complaints, so that he could make a great show of handing over
war
crimes dossiers against NATO's enemies;

- when, soon after, she met with Madeleine Albright, herself by then the
subject of well-grounded complaints before the Tribunal, and Albright
took
the opportunity to announce that the United States was the major
provider of
funds to the Tribunal;

- when, two weeks later, in the midst of the bombing, Judge Arbour
announced
the indictment of Slobodan Milosevic, on the basis of undisclosed
evidence,
for Racak and events which had occurred only six weeks earlier in the
middle
of a war zone, on what, in other words, must have been very flimsy and
suspicious evidence;

Compare this to your inability to even "open an investigation" after one
year of being provided with overwhelming evidence in the public domain
of
NATO leaders' crimes which, on the most conservative estimates, resulted
in
the deaths of far more civilians than those for which the Serb
leadership
was so quickly indicted;

- and when, at the conclusion of the bombing, Judge Arbour handed over
the
investigation of war crimes in Kosovo to the NATO countries' own police
forces. notwithstanding that they had every motive to falsify the
evidence.

These could not be regarded as the acts of an impartial prosecutor. Not
when NATO was in the midst of a controversial war in flagrant violation
of
international law.

We sincerely hoped for better things from you, coming as you did from a
country outside of the NATO alliance. But immediately upon taking up
your
post you declared that your priorities were in the prosecution of the
Serb
leadership - a de facto immunity for the NATO leaders which we tried,
evidently in vain, to persuade you was a violation of your legal and
moral
duties to all the victims, present and future, of aggressor states. And
now
these contradictory declarations, this unseemly consorting with the
people
you should be investigating, and this inexcusable failure to even open
an
investigation. It is clear to us that you suffer from the same judicial
deficit as did your predecessor.

We hope that you realize the implications of what you are doing:
that you
are irreparably discrediting the work of your tribunal - or do you
expect
anyone to put any faith in the findings of a biased judicial institution
or
to co-operate with it? - that you are dealing blows to international
law
from which it will be difficult for it ever to recover; that your
actions
and inactions have encouraged NATO in its violence against the civilian
population of Yugoslavia and in the cruel sanctions it continues to
impose
upon it; and that you, too, must therefore bear a share of the blame for
all
this suffering.


Yours very truly,




Michael Mandel
Professor,
for myself and for
David Jacobs, Shell Jacobs, Lawyers, 672 Dupont street, Suite 401,
Toronto,
Canada M6G 1Z6;
Glen Rangwala, Movement for the Advancement of International Criminal
Law,
Trinity College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1TQ, United
Kingdom;
and
André Savik, The Balkan Charter, Schoningsgt. 43, 0362 Oslo, Norway.

cc. His Excellency Mr. Anwarul Karim Chowdhury (Bangladesh), President
of
the Security Council, Room 3520, The United Nations, New York, New York,
U.S.A. 10017;
Mr. Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations, Room 3800, The
United Nations, New York, New York, U.S.A. 10017;
Judge Claude Jorda, President, The International Tribunal for the Former
Yugoslavia, Churchillplein 1, 2501 EW, The Hague, Netherlands.





Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 08:37:08 -0600 (CST)
From: rrozoff@... (Rick Rozoff)
Reply-To: "STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN!" <STOPNATO@...>
To: Activist_List@..., stopnato@...

STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.HOME-PAGE.ORG

Michael Mandel's response to W.Pfaff's article
Dear Friends,
For all those who have kindly forwarded me the Herald Tribune Article of
January 24 by William Pfaff, I just want to assure you that I did not
remain silent, but actually submitted an article in reply on January 26.
I have since called the Tribune many times trying to ascertain their
intentions about publishing it. The opinion page editor has asked me to
be patient, and I have been. I will continue to be, but in the meantime,
I see no reason why I should not send you the reply to circulate as you
see fit.
Best wishes, Michael Mandel
Our Case Against NATO.
By Michael Mandel
Starting in April of last year and continuing to the present day, dozens
of lawyers and law professors, a pan-American association representing
hundreds of jurists, some elected legislators, and thousands of private
citizens from around the world, have lodged formal complaints with the
International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague charging NATO leaders with
war crimes for their 79 day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.
The particular complaint I am involved in was filed in May, 1999 and
names 68 individuals, including all the heads of government, foreign
ministers and defense ministers of the 19 NATO countries (including US
President Clinton, Secretaries Cohen and Albright, Canadian Prime
Minister Chretien, Ministers Axworthy and Eggleton and so on down the
list), and the highest ranking NATO officials, from then Secretary
General Javier Solana, through Generals Wesley Clark, Michael Short, and
official spokesman Jamie Shea.
We have been in frequent contact with the Tribunal, travelling to the
Hague twice to argue our case with Chief Prosecutors Louise Arbour and
Carla Del Ponte and their legal advisers, filing evidence, legal briefs
and arguments in support of the case.
Recently, Justice Del Ponte disclosed that she was studying an internal
document analyzing the many claims that have been made against NATO.
This has been followed by a number of claims and counter-claims in the
media that have not always been helpful to people genuinely interested
in understanding the issues.
In particular, two recent articles in the International Herald Tribune
("Professors Pursue War-Crimes Case Against NATO" by Charles Trueheart,
January 21, and "NATO Committed No War Crimes in Bombing Yugoslavia" by
William Pfaff on January 24) have sought to minimize the seriousness of
the complaints and to cast doubt on their credibility in a way that, I
believe, does a disservice to the Tribune's readership.
For instance, Mr. Trueheart writes that "most legal scholars say the
professors have a pretty weak case", but the only scholar he actually
cites is Paul Williams of the American University in Washington. Mr.
Williams claims the fact that the Tribunal would even consider our case
shows it is politically motivated. But Mr. Williams might have his own
motivations. On his web-site he lists his "specific accomplishments in
the field of international law" to include "serving as legal advisor to
the government of Kosova" and "serving as co-counsel for the Department
of State's Serbian Sanctions Task Force." Mr. Trueheart would have been
more helpful to his readers if he had mentioned this.
Perhaps if I tell Tribune readers something about the nature of our case
and what we actually know, they (legal scholars and others, partisans
and non-partisans) can judge for themselves if the case is as weak or
incredible as Mr. Williams, Mr. Trueheart and Mr. Pfaff would like them
to think.
In the first place, we know that these individual NATO leaders each
"planned, instigated, ordered, committed or otherwise aided and abetted
in the planning, preparation or execution of" (to use the words of the
Statute) a bombing attack that directly caused the death of between 600
and 1800 civilian children, women and men. (The first figure has been
announced by Human Rights Watch, about to launch its own complaint to
the Criminal Tribunal; the second is the government of Yugoslavia's
figure). We also know that the attack permanently injured as many as it
killed. The NATO leaders have all admitted that they caused these deaths
and injuries knowingly – every last one of them said they regretted
it, but that such things were "inevitable" in this kind of bombing
campaign. And when the deaths and injuries ("collateral damage")
occurred, these NATO leaders continued their bombing and their killing
and their injuring.
They did all this without any lawful excuse. The war was illegal from
start to finish. That's not just my opinion. It's the opinion of the
vast majority of legal scholars and all the leading ones – even those
who had some sympathy for the war, for example, the former president and
current judge of the Hague Tribunal itself, distinguished Professor
Antonio Cassese of Italy, in an article published in the European
Journal of International Law (Volume 10, No. 1).
But most people in the world had no sympathy for this war. That may irk
Americans, but it is true. According to published opinion surveys done
inside and outside of NATO, it appears that most people did not believe
the claims that the NATO was killing and maiming for humanitarian
motives. And it's no good for Mr. Pfaff to invoke the OSCE Report,
because if you read the introduction to that Report you find that it was
paid for and drafted only by NATO members. There are many more credible
accounts of what moved NATO (we have provided several to the Tribunal),
besides the obvious fact that, as a humanitarian enterprise, the
campaign was a predictable disaster. Many people, at least, agree with
Mr. Pfaff, that "the intensified Serbian campaign of terror and
eviction" was "provoked by the bombing". Mr. Pfaff says that would
constitute "a better charge" against NATO. Better or not, it is one of
the many we have specifically made in our complaint.
So we know that a lot of innocent people were violently killed as a
direct or indirect result of these NATO leaders' intentional violation
of the most fundamental tenets of international law and the Charter of
the United Nations (which the NATO Treaty itself binds the NATO
countries to uphold).
Killing hundreds or thousands of people knowingly and without lawful
excuse makes these leaders mass murderers. The minimum estimate of their
victims vastly outnumbers the total attributed to the 98 people executed
for murder in the United States last year. It's also a lot more than the
385 victims for which the Tribunal charged the Serbian leadership with
murder in May, 1999.
Not only that, according to admissions made in public throughout the war
(for instance during NATO briefings), and according to eye-witness
reports of such distinguished journalists as Dana Priest and Michael
Dobbs in this very newspaper, and according to powerful circumstantial
evidence displayed on the world's television screens throughout the
bombing campaign -- evidence good enough to convict in any criminal
court in my country or yours – these NATO leaders deliberately and
illegally made targets of places and things with only tenuous or slight
military value or no military value at all. Places such as city bridges,
factories, hospitals, marketplaces, downtown and residential
neighbourhoods, and television studios. The same evidence shows that, in
doing this, the NATO leaders aimed to demoralize and break the will of
the people, not to defeat the army.
Mr. Pfaff concedes as much. He seems to think the Serbians deserved it
for electing Milosevic, though it's hard to see how even this bizarre
reasoning would justify the killing, maiming and terrorizing of all
those children who were ineligible to vote, not to mention the people
who voted against the current Serb leadership.
But one reason these targets are illegal is that civilians are very
likely to be killed or injured when such targets are hit. And all of the
NATO leaders knew that. They were carefully told that by their military
planners. And they still went ahead and did it.
And they did it without any risk to themselves or to their soldiers and
pilots. That's where the "cowardice" comes in. It's not a matter of
being "unfair, unchivalrous or dishonorable" as Mr. Pfaff seems to
think. The cowardice lies in fighting the civilian population and not
the military, in bombing from altitudes so high that the civilians,
Serbians, Albanians, Roma, and anybody else on the ground, bore all the
risks of the "inevitable collateral damage" (and other atrocities).
That's a crime under the Geneva Conventions, too. And it should be.
NATO dropped 6 to 10 billion dollars worth of bombs, including cluster
bombs and bombs using poisonous depleted uranium. The bombing did 60 to
100 billion dollars worth of damage, primarily to non-military targets.
Perhaps readers would find it helpful to read the words of the Hague
Tribunal Statute, drafted, voted for and signed by the United States.
Remember that these are the very crimes that have been used to indict
the Serbian leaders:
Article 2: "persons committing or ordering to be committed grave
breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, namely the
following acts against persons or property protected under the
provisions of the relevant Geneva Convention: wilful killing; wilfully
causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health; extensive
destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military
necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly"
Article 3: "persons violating the laws or customs of war. Such
violations shall include, but not be limited to: employment of poisonous
weapons or other weapons to cause unnecessary suffering; wanton
destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified
by military necessity; attack, or bombardment, by whatever means, of
undefended towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings; destruction or
wilful damage done to institutions dedicated to religion, charity and
education, the arts and sciences, historic monuments and works of art
and science.
Article 5: "The following crimes when committed in armed conflict,
whether international or internal in character, and directed against any
civilian population: murder … other inhumane acts."
Article 7: "The official position of any accused person, whether as Head
of State or Government or as a responsible Government official, shall
not relieve such person of criminal responsibility or mitigate
punishment. The fact that any of the acts referred to in articles 2 to 5
of the present Statute was committed by a subordinate does not relieve
his superior of criminal responsibility if he knew or had reason to know
that the subordinate was about to commit such acts or had done so and
the superior failed to take the necessary and reasonable measures to
prevent such acts or to punish the perpetrators thereof.
Evidently the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law have
become inconvenient to the armies and the leaders of the big powers. But
if the Hague Tribunal is only going to enforce the law against their
small power enemies -- if it's only going to be strong with the weak and
not with the strong -- Justice Del Ponte is right in saying that it
should pack up and go home. Because, in that case, the Tribunal is doing
far more harm than good, only legitimating NATO's violent lawlessness
against people unlucky enough to be ruled by "indicted war criminals",
as opposed to the un-indicted kind that govern the NATO countries.
Mr. Pfaff's essential error is the common one in the media of taking all
NATO's claims at face value. "Causing unintended civilian casualties in
the course of legitimate acts of war" is the way Mr. Pfaff describes it.
But do we really need to be told that there might be a difference
between NATO's claims and what actually happened? NATO's claims are, in
fact, the claims of the most notorious war criminals in history. Have we
not learned by now to distinguish between "plausible (or implausible)
deniability" and sophisticated or clumsy cover-ups on the one hand, and
the truth on the other? That's what independent criminal courts are for,
whether in The Hague or any other town.
This would not be the first time that military and political leaders
have lied to us. These military and political leaders. Forget "I did not
have sexual relations with that woman". What about the claim by Jamie
Shea that it was the Serbs who bombed the Albanian refugee convoy (until
the independent journalists found bomb fragments "made in U.S.A.")? What
about the claim by a NATO general, with video up on the screen, that the
passenger train on the Grdelicka bridge was going too fast to avoid
being hit (until somebody pointed out that the video had been speeded up
to three times its real speed)? What about the claim that the Chinese
Embassy was bombed because NATO's maps were out of date? Let alone the
claims by Mr. Clinton (and Mrs. Clinton) and Mr. Cohen that a
"Holocaust" was occurring in which perhaps 100,000 Kosovar men had been
murdered (until the bombing was over and the numbers dwindled to 2,108
– and we have yet to be told who they were or how they died).
So readers can see for themselves that there is far more than meets the
eye here and an awful lot at stake. Judge Del Ponte is making no error
in taking these complaints very seriously indeed. That's what's required
by her sworn and sacred duty to the innocent victims on all sides of
this war, and the many victims that will follow if she fails to do it.
Michael Mandel is Professor of Law at Osgoode Hall Law School of York
University in Toronto

---

L'OPINIONE DI JESSE HELMS

>> -----Original Message-----
>> From:
>> 03.04.2000 08:26
>>
>>
>> Not so much a witty one-liner, but an eye opener,
>> in my opinion, nonetheless. The following is taken
>> from an address by Senator Jesse Helms, chairman
>> of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Realtions,
>> made before the UN Security Council. He's a
>> lovable old man and I highly recommend you visit
>> his website: http://www.senate.gov/~helms/
>>
>> So, without further delay, I give you the Senator:
>>
>>
>> It is my intent to extend to you my hand of
>> friendship and convey the hope that in the days to
>> come, and in retrospect, we can join in a mutual
>> respect that will enable all of us to work
>> together in an atmosphere of friendship and hope -
>> the hope to do everything we can to achieve peace
>> in the world.
>>
>> Having said all that, I am aware that you have
>> interpreters who translate the proceedings of this
>> body into a half dozen different languages.
>>
>> They have an interesting challenge today. As some
>> of you may have detected, I don't have a Yankee
>> accent. (I hope you have a translator here who can
>> speak Southern - someone who can translate words
>> like "y'all" and "I do declare.")
>>
>> It may be that one other language barrier will
>> need to be overcome this morning. I am not a
>> diplomat, and as such, I am not fully conversant
>> with the elegant and rarefied language of the
>> diplomatic trade. I am an elected official, with
>> something of a reputation for saying what I mean
>> and meaning what I say. So I trust you will
>> forgive me if I come across as a bit more blunt
>> than those you are accustomed to hearing in this
>> chamber.
>> ...
>>
>> Most Americans do not regard the United Nations as
>> an end in and of itself - they see it as just one
>> part of America's diplomatic arsenal.
>>
>> ...
>>
>> And when the oppressed peoples of the world cry
>> out for help, the free peoples of the world have a
>> fundamental right to respond.
>>
>> As we watch the UN struggle with this question at
>> the turn of the millennium, many Americans are
>> left exceedingly puzzled. Intervening in cases of
>> widespread oppression and massive human rights
>> abuses is not a new concept for the United States.
>> The American people have a long history of coming
>> to the aid of those struggling for freedom. In the
>> United States, during the 1980s, we called this
>> policy the "Reagan Doctrine."
>>
>> In some cases, America has assisted freedom
>> fighters around the world who were seeking to
>> overthrow corrupt regimes. We have provided
>> weaponry, training, and intelligence. In other
>> cases, the United States has intervened directly.
>> In still other cases, such as in Central and
>> Eastern Europe, we supported peaceful opposition
>> movements with moral, financial and covert forms
>> of support. In each case, however, it was
>> America's clear intention to help bring down
>> Communist regimes that were oppressing their
>> peoples, - and thereby replace dictators with
>> democratic governments.
>>
>> The dramatic expansion of freedom in the last
>> decade of the 20th century is a direct result of
>> these policies.
>>
>> In none of these cases, however, did the United
>> States ask for, or receive, the approval of the
>> United Nations to "legitimize" its actions.
>>
>> It is a fanciful notion that free peoples need to
>> seek the approval of an international body (some
>> of whose members are totalitarian dictatorships)
>> to lend support to nations struggling to break the
>> chains of tyranny and claim their inalienable,
>> God-given rights.
>>
>> ...
>>
>> But, some may respond, the U.S. Senate ratified
>> the UN Charter fifty years ago. Yes, but in doing
>> so we did not cede one syllable of American
>> sovereignty to the United Nations. ... no treaty
>> or law can ever supercede the one document that
>> all Americans hold sacred: The U.S. Constitution.
>>
>> ...
>>
>> The effort to establish a United Nations
>> International Criminal Court is a case-in-point.
>> Consider: the Rome Treaty purports to hold
>> American citizens under its jurisdiction - even
>> when the United States has neither signed nor
>> ratified the treaty. In other words, it claims
>> sovereign authority over American citizens without
>> their consent. How can the nations of the world
>> imagine for one instant that Americans will stand
>> by and allow such a power-grab to take place?
>>
>> The Court's supporters argue that Americans should
>> be willing to sacrifice some of their sovereignty
>> for the noble cause of international justice.
>> International law did not defeat Hitler, nor did
>> it win the Cold War. What stopped the Nazi march
>> across Europe, and the Communist march across the
>> world, was the principled projection of power by
>> the world's great democracies. And that principled
>> projection of force is the only thing that will
>> ensure the peace and security of the world in the
>> future.
>>
>> More often than not, "international law" has been
>> used as a make-believe justification for hindering
>> the march of freedom. When Ronald Reagan sent
>> American servicemen into harm's way to liberate
>> Grenada from the hands of a communist
>> dictatorship, the UN General Assembly responded by
>> voting to condemn the action of the elected
>> President of the United States as a violation of
>> international law - and, I am obliged to add, they
>> did so by a larger majority than when Soviet
>> invasion of Afghanistan was condemned by the
>> same General Assembly!
>>
>> Similarly, the U.S. effort to overthrow
>> Nicaragua's Communist dictatorship (by supporting
>> Nicaragua's freedom fighters and mining
>> Nicaragua's harbors) was declared by the World
>> Court as a violation of international law.
>>
>> Most recently, we learn that the chief prosecutor
>> of the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal has compiled a
>> report on possible NATO war crimes during the
>> Kosovo campaign. At first, the prosecutor declared
>> that it is fully within the scope of her authority
>> to indict NATO pilots and commanders. When news of
>> her report leaked, she backpedaled.
>>
>> She realized, I am sure, that any attempt to
>> indict NATO commanders would be the death knell
>> for the International Criminal Court. But the very
>> fact that she explored this possibility at all
>> brings to light all that is wrong with this brave
>> new world of global justice, which proposes a
>> system in which independent prosecutors and
>> judges, answerable to no state or institution,
>> have unfettered power to sit in judgement of the
>> foreign policy decisions of Western democracies.
>>
>> No UN institution - not the Security Council, not
>> the Yugoslav tribunal, not a future ICC - is
>> competent to judge the foreign policy and national
>> security decisions of the United States. American
>> courts routinely refuse cases where they are asked
>> to sit in judgement of our government's national
>> security decisions, stating that they are not
>> competent to judge such decisions. If we do not
>> submit our national security decisions to the
>> judgement of a Court of the United States, why
>> would Americans submit them to the judgement of an
>> International Criminal Court, a continent away,
>> comprised of mostly foreign judges elected by an
>> international body made up of the membership of
>> the UN General Assembly?
>>
>>
>>


---

LOUISE ARBOUR CRIMINALE DI GUERRA


> > Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 20:55:01 -0800
> > To: peace@...
> > From: Eric Fawcett <fawcett@...> (by way of Rycroft &
> > Pringle <emerald@...>)
> > Subject: Peace/Justice Canada-- sfp-46: ICTY a kangaroo court?
> >
> > The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)
> > is examined critically by Christopher Black in a companion paper that is
> > available on request and will be posted on the SfP web site as sfp-46b.
> >
> > (As Eric did not include the URL, I am guessing that it may
> > be available at
http://helios.physics.utoronto.ca/mailman/listinfo.cgi/
> > or http://helios.physics.utoronto.ca/mailman/listinfo.cgi/sfp-46b)
> >
> > Its genesis, procedures and funding are all suspect.

>-----Original Message-----
>Date: Wednesday, February 16, 2000 6:46 PM
>Subject: [] Louise Arbour: unindicted war criminal
>
>
>Louise Arbour: unindicted war criminal
>
>by Christopher Black,
>Toronto defense lawyer and writer and one of the lawyers who made the
>request to the War Crimes Tribunal to indict NATO leaders for war crimes;
>and Edward Herman, economist and media analyst
>>>his most recent book is The Myth of the Liberal Media: An Edward Hermam
>Reader
>(Peter Lang, 1999)
>
>Among the many ironies of the NATO war against Yugoslavia was the role of
>the International Criminal Tribunal and its chief prosecutor, Louise
>Arbour, elevated by Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien to Canada's
>highest court in 1999. It will be argued here that that award was entirely
>justified on the grounds of political service to the NATO powers, but a
>monumental travesty if the question of the proper administration of justice
>enters the equation. In fact, it will be shown below that as Arbour and her
>Tribunal played a key role in EXPEDITING war crimes, an excellent case can
>be made that in a just world she would be in the dock rather than in
>judicial robes.
>
>Arbour To NATO's Rescue
>
>The moment of truth for Arbour and the Tribunal came in the midst of NATO's
>78-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, when Arbour appeared, first, in
>an April 20 press conference with British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook to
>receive from him documentation on Serb war crimes. Then on May 27, Arbour
>announced the indictment of Serb President Slobodan Milosevic and four of
>his associates for war crimes. The inappropriateness of a supposedly
>judicial body doing this in the midst of the Kosovo war, and when Germany,
>Russia and other powers were trying to find a diplomatic resolution to the
>conflict, was staggering.
>
>At the April 20 appearance with Cook, Arbour stated that "It is
>inconceivable...that we would in fact agree to be guided by the political
>will of those who may want to advance an agenda." But her appearance with
>Cook and the follow-up indictments fitted perfectly the agenda needs of the
>NATO leadership. There had been growing criticism of NATO's increasingly
>intense and civilian infrastructure-oriented bombing of Serbia, and Blair
>and Cook had been lashing out at critics in the British media for
>insufficient enthusiasm for the war. Arbour's and the Tribunal's
>intervention declaring the Serb leadership to be guilty of war crimes was a
>public relations coup that justified the NATO policies and helped permit
>the bombing to continue and escalate. This was pointed out repeatedly by
>NATO leaders and propagandists: Madeleine Albright noted that the
>indictments "make very clear to the world and the publics in our countries
>that this [NATO policy] is justified because of the crimes committed, and I
>think also will enable us to keep moving all these processes [i.e.,
>bombing] forward" (CNN, May 27). State Department spokesman James Rubin
>stated that "this unprecedented step...justifies in the clearest possible
>way what we have been doing these past months" (CNN Morning News, May 27).
>
>Although the Tribunal had been in place since May 1993, and the most
>serious atrocities in the Yugoslav wars occurred as the old Federation
>disintegrated from June 1991 through the Dayton peace talks in late 1995,
>no indictment was brought against Milosevic for any of those atrocities,
>and the May 27 indictment refers only to a reported 241 deaths in the early
>months of 1999. The indictment appears to have been hastily prepared to
>meet some urgent need. Arbour even mentioned on April 20 that she had
>"visited NATO" to "dialogue with potential information providers in order
>to generate unprecedented support that the Tribunal needs if it will
>perform its mandate in a time frame that will make it relevant to the
>resolution of conflict...of a magnitude of what is currently unfolding in
>Kosovo." But her action impeded a negotiated resolution, although it helped
>expedite a resolution by intensified bombing.
>
>Arbour herself noted that "I am mindful of the impact that this indictment
>may have on the peace process," and she said that although indicted
>individuals are "entitled to the presumption of innocence until they are
>convicted, the evidence upon which this indictment was confirmed raises
>serious questions about their suitability to be guarantors of any deal, let
>alone a peace agreement." (CNN Live Event, Special, May 27). So Arbour not
>only admitted awareness of the political significance of her indictment,
>she suggested that her possible interference with any diplomatic efforts
>was justified because the indicted individuals, though not yet found
>guilty, are not suitable to negotiate. This hugely unjudicial political
>judgement, along with the convenient timing of the indictments, points up
>Arbour's and the Tribunal's highly political role.
>
>Background of the Tribunal's Politicization
>
>Arbour's service to NATO in indicting Milosevic was the logical outcome of
>the Tribunal's de facto control and purpose. It was established by the
>Security Council in the early 1990s to serve the Balkan policy ends of its
>dominant members, especially the United States. (China and Russia went
>along as silent and powerless partners, apparently in a trade-off for
>economic concessions.) And its funding and interlocking functional
>relationship with the top NATO powers have made it NATO's instrument.
>
>Although Article 32 of its Charter declares that the Tribunal's expenses
>shall be provided in the general budget of the United Nations, this proviso
>has been regularly violated. In 1994-1995 the U.S. government provided it
>with $700,000 in cash and $2.3 million in equipment (while failing to meet
>its delinquent obligation to the UN that might have allowed the UN itself
>to fund the Tribunal). On May 12, 1999, Judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald,
>president of the Tribunal, stated that "the U.S. government has very
>generously agreed to provide $500,000 [for an Outreach project] and to help
>to encourage other states to contribute." Numerous other U.S.-based
>governmental and non-governmental agencies have provided the Tribunal with
>resources.
>
>Article 16 of the Tribunal's charter states that the Prosecutor shall act
>independently and shall not seek or receive instruction from any
>government. This section also has been systematically violated. NATO
>sources have regularly made claims suggesting their authority over the
>Tribunal: "We will make a decision on whether Yugoslav actions against
>ethnic Albanians constitute genocide," states a USIA Fact Sheet, and Cook
>asserted at his April 20 press conference with Arbour that "we are going to
>focus on the war crimes being committed in Kosovo and our determination to
>bring those responsible to justice, " as if he and Arbour were a team
>jointly and co-operatively deciding on who should be charged for war
>crimes, and obviously excluding himself from those potentially chargeable.
>Earlier, on March 31, two days after Cook had promised Arbour supportive
>data for criminal charges, she announced the indictment of Arkan.
>
>Tribunal officials have even bragged about "the strong support of concerned
>governments and dedicated individuals such as Secretary Albright," further
>referred to as "mother of the Tribunal" (by Gabrielle Kirk McDonald). The
>post-Arbour chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte at a September 1999 press
>>>conference thanked the US FBI for helping the Tribunal, and expressed
>>>general thanks for "the important support the U.S. government has
provided
>>>the Tribunal." Arbour herself informed President Clinton of the
>forthcoming
>indictment of Milosevic two days before the rest of the world, and in 1996
>the prosecutor met with the Secretary-General of NATO and its supreme
>commander to "establish contacts and begin discussing modalities of
>co-operation and assistance." Numerous other meetings have occurred between
>prosecutor and NATO, which was given the function of Tribunal gendarme. In
>the collection of data also, the prosecutor has depended heavily on NATO
>and NATO governments, which again points to the symbiotic relation between
>the Tribunal and NATO.
>
>Serb-Specific Focus
>
>The NATO powers focused almost exclusively on Serb misbehavior in the
>course of their participation in the break-up of Yugoslavia, and the
>Tribunal has followed in NATO's wake. A great majority of the Tribunal's
>indictments have been of Serbs, and those against Croatians and Muslims
>often seemed to have been timed to counter claims of anti-Serb bias (e.g.,
>the first non-Serb indictment [Ivica Rajic], announced during the peace
>talks in Geneva and bombing by NATO in September 1995).
>
>Arbour herself did state (April 20) that "the real danger is whether we
>would fall into that [following somebody's political agenda] inadvertently
>by being in the hands of information- providers who might have an agenda
>that we would not be able to discern." But even an imbecile could discern
>that NATO had an agenda and that simply accepting the flood of documents
>offered by Cook and Albright entailed advertently following that agenda.
>Arbour even acknowledged her voluntary and almost exclusive
>"dependencies...on the goodwill of states" to provide information that
>"will guide our analysis of the crime base." And her April 20 reference to
>the "morality of the [NATO's] enterprise" and her remarks on Milosevic's
>possible lack of character disqualifying him from negotiations, as well as
>her rush to help NATO with an indictment, point to quite clearly understood
>political service.
>
>In a dramatic illustration of Arbour-Tribunal bias, a 150 page Tribunal
>report entitled "The Indictment Operation Storm: A Prima Facie Case,"
>describes war crimes committed by the Croatian armed forces in their
>expulsion of more than 200,000 Serbs from Krajina in August 1995, during
>which "at least 150 Serbs were summarily executed, and many hundreds
>disappeared." This report, leaked to the New York Times (to the dismay of
>Tribunal officials), found that the Croatian murders and other inhumane
>acts were "widespread and systematic," and that "sufficient material" was
>available to make three named Croatian generals accountable under
>international law. (Raymond Bonner, "War Crimes Panel Finds Croat Troops
>'Cleansed' the Serbs," NYT, March 21, 1999). But the Times article also
>reports that the United States, which supported the Croat's ethnic
>cleansing of Serbs in Krajina, not only defended the Croats in the Tribunal
>but refused to supply requested satellite photos of Krajina areas attacked
>by the Croats, as well as failing to provide other requested information.
>The result was that the Croat generals named in the report on Operation
>Storm were never indicted, and although the number of Serbs executed and
>disappeared over a mere four days was at least equal to the 241 victims of
>the Serbs named in the indictment of Milosevic, no parallel indictment of
>Croat leader Tudjman was ever brought by the Tribunal. But this was not a
>failure of data gathering--the United States opposed indictments of its
>allies, and thus the Tribunal did not produce any.
>
>Tribunal's Kangaroo Court Processes
>
>Arbour has claimed that the Tribunal was "subject to extremely stringent
>rules of evidence with respect to the admissibility and the credibility of
>the product that we will tender in court" so that she was guarded against
>"unsubstantiated, unverifiable, uncorroborated allegations" (April 20).
>This is a gross misrepresentation of what John Laughland described in the
>Times (London) as "a rogue court with rigged rules" (June 17, 1999). The
>Tribunal violates virtually every standard of due process: it fails to
>separate prosecution and judge; it does not accord the right to bail or a
>speedy trial; it has no clear definition of burden of proof required for a
>conviction; it has no independent appeal body; it violates the principle
>that a defendant may not be tried twice for the same crime (Article 25
>gives the prosecutor the right to appeal against an acquittal); suspects
>can be held for 90 days without trial; under Rule 92 confessions are
>presumed to be free and voluntary unless the contrary is established by the
>prisoner; witnesses can testify anonymously, and as John Laughland notes,
>"rules against hearsay, deeply entrenched in Common Law, are not observed
>and the Prosecutor's office has even suggested not calling witnesses to
>give evidence but only the tribunal's own 'war crimes investigators.'"
>
>As noted, Arbour presumes guilt before trial; the concept of "innocent till
>convicted" is rejected, and she can declare that people linked with Arkan
>"will be tainted by their association with an indicted war criminal" (March
>31). Arbour clearly does not believe in the basic rules of Western
>jurisprudence, and Laughland quotes her saying "The law, to me, should be
>creative and used to make things tight." And within a month of her
>elevation to the Canadian Supreme Court she was a member of a court
>majority that grafted onto Canadian law the dangerously unfair Tribunal
>practice of permitting a more liberal use of hearsay evidence in trials.
>The consequent corruption of the Canadian justice system, both by her
>appointment and her impact, mirrors that in the Canadian political system,
>whose leading members supported the NATO war without question.
>
>NATO's Crimes
>
>In bombing Yugoslavia from March 24 into June 1999, NATO was guilty of the
>serious crime of violating the UN Charter requirement that it not use force
>without UN Security Council sanction. It was also guilty of criminal
>aggression in attacking a sovereign state that was not going beyond its
>borders. In its defense, NATO claimed that "humanitarian" concerns demanded
>these actions and thus justified seemingly serious law violations. Apart
>from the fact that this reply sanctions law violations on the basis of
>self- serving judgements that contradict the rule of law, it is also called
>into question on its own grounds by counter-facts. First, the NATO bombing
>made "an internal humanitarian problem into a disaster" in the words of
>Rollie Keith, the returned Canadian OSCE human rights monitor in Kosovo.
>Second, the evidence is now clear that NATO refused to negotiate a
>settlement in Kosovo and insisted on a violent solution; that in the words
>of one State Department official, NATO deliberately "raised the bar" and
>precluded a compromise resolution because Serbia "needed to be bombed."
>These counter-facts suggest that the alleged humanitarian basis of the law
>violations was a cover for starkly political and geopolitical objectives.
>
>NATO was also guilty of more traditional war crimes, including some that
>the Tribunal had found indictable when carried out by Serbs. Thus on March
>8, 1996, the Serb leader Milan Martic was indicted for launching a rocket
>cluster-bomb attack on military targets in Zagreb in May 1995, on the
>ground that the rocket was "not designed to hit military targets but to
>terrorize the civilians of Zagreb." The Tribunal report on the Croat
>Operation Storm in Krajina also provided solid evidence that a 48 hour
>Croat assault on the city of Knin was basically "shelling civilian
>targets," with fewer than 250 of 3,000 shells striking military targets.
>But no indictments followed from this evidence or for any other raid.
>
>The same case for civilian targeting could be made for numerous NATO
>bombing raids, as in the cluster-bombing of Nis on May 7, 1999, in which a
>market and hospital far from any military target were hit in separate
>strikes--but no indictment has yet been handed down against NATO.
>
>But NATO was also guilty of the bombing of non-military targets as
>systematic policy. On March 26, 1999, General Wesley Clark said that "We
>are going to very systematically and progressively work on his military
>forces...[to see] how much pain he is willing to suffer." But this focus on
>"military forces" wasn't effective, so NATO quickly turned to "taking
>down...the economic apparatus supporting" Serb military forces (Clinton's
>words), and NATO targets were gradually extended to factories of all kinds,
>electric power stations, water and sewage processing facilities, all
>transport, public buildings, and large numbers of schools and hospitals. In
>effect, it was NATO's strategy to bring Serbia to its knees by gradually
>escalating its attacks on the civil society.
>
>But this policy was in clear violation of international law, one of whose
>fundamental elements is that civilian targets are off limits; international
>law prohibits the "wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages or
>devastation not justified by military necessity" (Sixth Principle of
>Nuremberg, formulated in 1950 by an international law commission at the
>behest of the UN). "Military necessity" clearly does not allow the
>destruction of a civil society to make it more difficult for the country to
>support its armed forces, any more than civilians can be killed directly on
>he ground that they pay taxes supporting the war machine or might some day
>become soldiers. The rendering of an entire population a hostage is a
>blatant violation of international law and acts carrying it out are war
>crimes.
>
>On September 29, 1999, in response to a question on whether the Tribunal
>would investigate crimes committed in Kosovo after June 10, or those
>committed by NATO in Yugoslavia, prosecutor Carla del Ponte stated that
>"The primary focus of the Office of the Prosecutor must be on the
>investigation and prosecution of the five leaders of the FRY and Serbia who
>have already been indicted." Why this "must" be the focus, especially in
>light of all the evidence already assembled in preparing the favored
>indictments, was unexplained. In late December, it was finally reported
>that Del Ponte was reviewing the conduct of NATO, at the urging of Russia
>and several other "interested parties" ("U.N. Court Examines NATO's
>Yugoslavia War," NYT, Dec. 29, 1999). But the news report itself indicates
>that the focus is on the conduct of NATO pilots and their commanders, not
>the NATO decision-makers who made the ultimate decisions to target the
>civilian infrastructure. It also suggests the public relations nature of
>the inquiry, which would "go far in dispelling the belief...that the
>tribunal is a tool used by Western leaders to escape accountability." The
>report also indicates the delicate matter that the tribunal "depends on the
>military alliance to arrest and hand over suspects." It also quotes Del
>Ponte saying that "It's not my priority, because I have inquiries about
>genocide, about bodies in mass graves." We may rest assured that no
>indictments will result from this inquiry.
>
>An impartial Tribunal would have gone to great pains to balance NATO's
>flood of documents by internal research and a welcoming of rival
>documentation. But although submissions have been made on NATO's crimes by
>Yugoslavia and a number of Western legal teams, the Tribunal didn't get
>around to these until this belated and surely nominal inquiry that is "not
>my priority," as the Tribunal "must" pursue the Serb villains, for reasons
>that are only too clear.
>
>Beyond Orwell
>
>NATO's leaders, frustrated in attacking the Serb military machine, quite
>openly turned to smashing the civil society of Serbia as their means of
>attaining the quick victory desired before the 50th Anniversary celebration
>of NATO's founding. Although this amounted to turning the civilian
>population of Serbia into hostages and attacking them and their means of
>sustenance--in gross violation of the laws of war--Arbour and her Tribunal
>not only failed to object to and prosecute NATO's leaders for war crimes,
>by indicting Milosevic on May 27 they gave NATO a moral cover permitting
>escalated attacks on the hostage population.
>
>Arbour and the Tribunal thus present us with the amazing spectacle of an
>institution supposedly organized to contain, prevent, and prosecute for war
>crimes actually knowingly facilitating them. Furthermore, petitions
>submitted to the Tribunal during Arbour's tenure had called for prosecution
>of the leaders of NATO, including Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien,
>for the commission of war crimes. If she had been a prosecutor in Canada,
>Britain or the United States, she would have been subject to disbarment for
>considering and then accepting a job from a person she had been asked to
>charge. But Arbour was elevated to the Supreme Court of Canada by Chretien
>with hardly a mention of this conflict of interest and immorality.>In this
>post-Orwellian New World Order we are told that we live under the
>rule of law, but as Saint Augustine once said, "There are just laws and
>there are unjust laws, and an unjust law is no law at all."
>
>

--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------

* Anziana partigiana serba difende la sua casa (AP)

* Il mercato dei narcotici in Svizzera e' controllato dall'UCK (AP)
* Boom delle droghe leggere in Kosmet (Blic)
* Dal "Kosova" liberato si puo' finalmente esportare droga ovunque
(The Guardian)

* HEROIN HEROES (Mother Jones Magazine)


---

Una donna serba difende la sua casa

Di DANIKA KIRKA, Associated Press 23/3/2000

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Jugoslavia (AP) -- A chiunque possa pensare di
poterla costringere ad uscire dalla sua casa, Jelisaveta Raganovic manda
un messaggio: Prima dovrete passare sul mio corpo!
Potrebbe non sembrare una gran minaccia venendo da una donna di 80 anni,
l'ultima serba che si ritiene sia ormai da sola nella zona di etnia
albanese della citta' divisa di Kosovska Mitrovica.
Ma comunque, la Sig.ra Raganovic ha un piano. Ogni notte, questa
veterana della guerriglia comunista di Josip Broz Tito, durante la II
Guerra Mondiale, prende la sua posizione di sentinella fuori dalla sua
casa. Stando seduta in una poltrona vicino ad una scatola di pietre,
aspetta tutta la notte, pronta a colpire qualsiasi invasore che salga le
sue scale.
"Lo so che sto per morire", ha detto durante un'intervista mercoledi'.
"Ma moriro' da uomo. Non voglio morire da codarda".
Il problema della Raganovic mostra proprio a quanta pressione
debbano essere sottoposti i serbi che vivono in Kosovo, specialmente
in un luogo come la pietrosa citta' industriale di Kosovska Mitrovica,
dove gli scontri fra le etnie albanesi e serbe sull'altra sponda del
fiume Ibar esplodono con regolarita'.
La zona sud in effetti e' tranquilla, in parte perche' la popolazione
e' praticamente omogenea. L'agenzia ONU per i rifugiati stima che non
piu' di 19 serbi vivano qui ora. Tutti, tranne la Raganovic, vivono in
una chiesa sotto protezione NATO.
Anche alla Raganovic fu data la possibilita' di partire per andare in
posto piu' sicuro, che le avrebbe permesso una vita piu' normale. Tutta
la sua famiglia l'ha ripetutamente pregata di andare a vivere con loro
in Vojvodina, una provincia nel nord della Serbia.
Lei ha rifiutato, scegliendo invece di confidare nei soldati francesi
che facevano la guardia alla sua casa.
Per lei loro sono piu' che peacekeeper, essi sono compagni, uomini con
cui sente di poter trattare da soldato a soldato. I soldati le portano
la carne e le pentole con la marmellata. La portano a far la spesa, le
fanno compagnia.
Il Maggiore Nicolas Naubin (portavoce francese) ha detto che i
peacekeepers capiscono che la sua situazione e' precaria e pertanto
hanno fatto uno sforzo speciale per prendersi cura di lei.
Dovranno lavorare piu' duramente. Sino ad ora la Nato ha fallito nella
creazione di un ambiente sicuro in Kosovo, in particolare per i serbi
che stanno abbandonando la regione a causa degli attacchi per vendetta
degli albanesi.
Migliaia di albanesi morirono durante gli scontri tra Milosevic e le
milizie che combattevano per l'indipendenza del Kosovo. Poi vi e' la
oppressione di 10 anni sotto il regime di Milosevic per la quale molti
vogliono una sorta di risarcimento.
In un posto come Kosovska Mitrovica, 25 miglia a nord della capitale
della provincia, Pristina, i pericoli sono molti. Appena attraversato il
fiume, sulla riva nord rimane uno degli ultimi gruppi di serbi del
Kosovo, un fatto che ha reso tutta la citta' instabile.
I serbi nella zona sbagliata della suddivisione sarebbero obbiettivi
molto facili per la vendetta. Recentemente un'altro serbo dalla parte
albanese, sotto stretto controllo NATO, e' stato ucciso con una scure.
La Raganovic comprende questa situazione ed ha affrontato la sua razione
di violenza. Alcuni hanno invaso la sua casa saccheggiandola.
Hanno preso i suoi libri di storia, la sua biancheria, i suoi piatti.
La sua linea telefonica non funziona - anche se sembra che lei sia
l'unica inquilina del suo palazzo con un tale problema.
Cosi' grande e' il pericolo che deve affrontare, che le organizzazioni
che si occupano dei diritti umani conoscendola non permettono che
la si fotografi o che si fotografi la sua casa. Permettono interviste
a condizione che la posizione della sua casa non sia rivelata.
Anche cosi', la Sig.ra Raganovic non mostra di essere nervosa, saluta
chi la viene a trovare con un abbraccio ed un bacio. Offre del caffe'
generosamente ed insiste a regalare dei dolci da portar via.
E' lei a dare consigli su come stare sicuri, ricordando le parole di un
vecchio comandante dei partigiani, i guerriglieri che combatterono il
nazismo.
Dice: "Noi eravamo abituati a mantenere le posizioni nella neve.
(Il mio comandante) mi diceva: 'Se ti addormenti, sei morta'.
Io non ho mai dimenticato quella lezione."


http://www.newsday.com/ap/international/ap640.htm

> March 23, 2000
>
> Serb Woman Defends Her Home
> By DANICA KIRKA / Associated Press Writer
>
> KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Yugoslavia (AP) -- To anyone who
> might think of driving her from her home, Jelisaveta
> Roganovic has a message: You' ll have to get past me
> first.
>
> It might not seem like much of a threat coming from
> a
> woman who is 80 years old, the last Serb believed to
> be living alone on the ethnic Albanian side of the
> divided city of Kosovska Mitrovica.
>
> But then again, Roganovic has a plan.
>
> Every night, this veteran of Josip Broz Tito' s
> World
> War II communist guerrilla army takes up her
> position
> as a sentinel outside her home. Sitting in a lawn
> chair beside a box of rocks, she waits all night
> long,
> ready to pelt any intruder coming up her stairs.
>
> " I know I' m going to die, " she said during an
> interview Wednesday. " But I' m going to die like a
> man. I don' t want to die like a coward."
>
> Roganovic' s dilemma shows just how much pressure
> Serbs living in Kosovo face right now, especially in
> a
> place like the gritty industrial city of Kosovska
> Mitrovica, where riots between ethnic Albanians and
> Serbs on the other side of the Ibar River break out
> with some regularity.
>
> On the south side though, things are usually quiet
> --
> in part because the population is almost completely
> homogenous. The U.N. refugee agency estimates that
> no
> more than 19 Serbs live here now. All but Roganovic
> live together under NATO protection at a church.
>
> Roganovic was given a chance to leave, too, to go to
> a
> place that was safer and would allow her a more
> normal
> life. Her family has been begging her to come live
> with them in Vojvodina, a province in northern
> Serbia.
>
>
> She refuses, choosing instead to trust the French
> soldiers who guard her home. To her they are more
> than
> peacekeepers, they are comrades, men she feels she
> can
> deal with, soldier to soldier. They bring her tins
> of
> meat and pots of jam. They take her shopping. They
> keep her company.
>
> The peacekeepers, though, realize that her situation
> is precarious and have made a special effort to take
> care of her, said French Maj. Nicolas Naubin, a
> spokesman for French troops.
>
> They are going to have to work harder.
>
> NATO has failed so far to create an overall
> environment of security in Kosovo, particularly for
> Serbs, who have been fleeing the province because of
> revenge attacks by ethnic Albanians.
>
> Thousands of ethnic Albanians died during Yugoslav
> President Slobodan Milosevic' s 18-month crackdown
> on
> militants fighting for independence for Kosovo. Then
> there is the 10 years of oppression under the
> Milosevic regime for which many want recompense.
>
> In a place like Kosovska Mitrovica, 25 miles north
> of
> the provincial capital, Pristina, the dangers are
> intense. Just across the river on the north bank
> lies
> one of Kosovo' s only substantial remaining Serb
> population, a fact that has made the entire city
> unstable.
>
> Serbs on the wrong side of the divide would be
> particularly singled out for revenge. Another Serb
> on
> the ethnic Albanian side and under strict NATO
> protection was hacked to death recently by an
> attacker
> with an ax.
>
> Roganovic realizes this, and has faced her share of
> harassment. Intruders have ransacked her home,
> taking
> her history books, her bed linens, her dishes. Her
> telephone line doesn' t work -- even though she
> seems
> to be the only person in the building with such a
> problem.
>
> So great is the danger she faces that human rights
> workers familiar with her situation refused to
> permit
> photographs of her and her home, allowing an
> interview
> only on condition that her home' s location not be
> revealed.
>
> Even so, Roganovic doesn' t let on if she' s
> nervous,
> greeting her visitors with a hug and a kiss,
> offering
> her last bit of coffee in friendship, insisting that
> a
> few candies be carried away for later. She offers
> advice on staying safe, recounting the words of an
> old
> commander in the Partisans, the guerrilla fighters
> who
> fought the Nazis.
>
> " We used to have positions in the snow. (My
> commander) told me, ' If you fall asleep, you are
> dead, " ' she said. " I never forgot that lesson."
>

---



http://fr.news.yahoo.com/000330/2/antu.html


jeudi 30 mars 2000, 18h48



Suisse: près de 400 kilos d'héroïne et environ 290 kilos de
cocaïne saisis en 1999


BERNE (AP) -- L'an passé, ''toutes les drogues courantes étaient, comme
toujours,
disponibles à profusion et à bas prix en Suisse'', selon l'Office
fédéral de la police (OFP).
Pas moins de 397 kilos d'héroïne et 287 kilos de cocaïne ont été saisis,
le nombre des décès
dus à la drogue a une nouvelle fois régressé, passant de 210 à 181.
Quant aux trafiquants,
86% étaient des étrangers.


La diminution du nombre des décès dus à la consommation de stupéfiants
enregistrés par les polices cantonales s'est
poursuivie en 1999 avec 181 morts, contre 210 l'année précédente. Le
nombre record de 419 morts en 1992 a pu être
réduit de moitié grâce aux thérapies introduites, à la distribution de
drogue sous contrôle médical et aux diverses mesures
d'aide à la survie. Les spécialistes en matière de dépendance estiment
toutefois qu'il faudrait ajouter 200 décès
supplémentaires de toxicomanes ayant succombé à des maladies
infectieuses.

La police a saisi l'an dernier 397 kilos d'héroïne contre 403 kilos en
1998. Les saisies de cocaïne ont augmenté de 15%,
passant à 287,9 kilos.

L'héroïne consommée en Suisse arrive de Turquie, en empruntant les
différentes routes des
Balkans.

Le trafic est en grande partie contrôlé par des Albanais originaires du
Kosovo et de
l'Albanie, selon l'OFP.

Et en dépit du conflit du Kosovo, le marché n'a pas connu de problème
d'approvisionnement.

Le canton de Zurich est resté la plaque tournante du trafic: on y a
saisi 239 kilos d'héroïne, ce qui représente 60% de
l'ensemble des saisies effectuées l'an passé. Zurich est aussi demeurée
la porte d'entrée en Suisse pour la cocaïne, importée
en grande partie d'Amérique latine par voie aérienne. Près des trois
quarts de la cocaïne interceptée en Suisse ont été
découverts dans le canton de Zurich. Bien que le trafic soit toujours
aux mains de ressortissants d'Afrique noire et
d'Amérique du Sud, des Italiens et des Espagnols, ainsi que des groupes
de l'ex-Yougoslavie et de Turquie ont désormais
pris pied dans ce trafic.

La plupart des plantations de chanvre en Suisse ont servi à alimenter le
marché des stupéfiants. Selon les estimations de la
police, entre 1,5 et 10 tonnes de haschisch et de 50 à 200 tonnes de
marijuana sont ainsi produites annuellement en Suisse.
Les produits stupéfiants à base de chanvre ''made in Switzerland''
trouvent également preneur à l'étranger. La police a saisi
quelque 8,4 tonnes de produits cannabiniques en 1999, soit 6,5 tonnes de
moins que l'année précédente.

Après avoir connu un véritable boom dans les années 90, les saisies
d'ecstasy ont à nouveau diminué: 67.342 pilules ont été
confisquées contre 73.914 en 1998. Elle provenaient en majorité des
Pays-Bas.

En 1999, le nombre de violations de la loi sur les stupéfiants a diminué
de 3%, passant à 44.336. On a enregistré 3.715
plaintes pénales pour trafic de drogue, ce qui représente 8,4% du total
de plaintes. S'agissant des trafiquants, 86% étaient
des étrangers, selon l'Office fédéral de la police.

---

BLIC - Belgrade independent daily,
March 31, 2000

Kosovo narcotic dealers have five-time larger budget than the
international mission in the province

IN KOSOVO MARIHUANA IS NOT TREATED AS A NARCOTIC SINCE IT IS IN GENERAL
USE AND HAS THE PRICE AS CIGARETTES

Kosovska Mitrovica - Albanian narcotic dealers, called "fis" are
currently occupying the top of the world narcotic smugglers. More
frequently they are the cause of headache of Interlope. In relatively
short time they managed to take the leading position in the control of
world narco market. Arrival of KFOR changed nothing, so at the moment
the southern Serb province is a center for distribution of narcotics to
the Western Europe and North America.

Kosovo is full of all kinds of narcotics. Their prices are here half of
those in the European or American cities. Narcotics are being sold not
per gr. but per kilos. For example one kilo of heroine in Pristina costs
16,000 $. The price of joint is almost equal to the price of some fine
quality cigarettes.

Narcotics are arriving in Kosovo by Euro-Asian road from Iran, Pakistan,
Turkey, Bulgaria and Macedonia, or by sea around Greece and Albania.

Albanian narco-businessmen provide 5 tons of heroine from Kosovo to West
European market. Their profit is about 120 mills of $. In a year they
get more than 1 bill of $. Only for the purpose of comparison, this year
budget of the mission of international community in Kosovo is 210 mills
of $.

FBI admits it is relatively incapable of doing anything since, as FBI
claims, it is difficult to find a man that would infiltrate
"fis"
because of the language problem and lack of knowledge of Albanian
mentality.

Money earned from the dealing of narcotics is mainly used for purchase
of Serb houses and flats in Kosovo. In Kosovo Polje only, the Albanians
bought during the last four months 256 Serb houses and flats at the
price 100,000-250,000 German Marks per each.

Z.V. Vlaskalic

---

http://www.smh.com.au/news/0003/14/world/world10.html

Sydney Morning Herald (The Guardian)
Tuesday, March 14, 2000

Drugs 'pouring out of Kosovo' without check
By MAGGIE O'KANE in Belgrade

International agencies fighting the drug trade are
warning that Kosovo has become a "smugglers' paradise"
supplying up to 40 per cent of the heroin sold in
Europe and North America.

NATO-led forces, struggling to keep peace in the
province a year after the war, have no mandate to
fight drug traffickers, and - with the expulsion from
Kosovo of the Serb police, including the "4th unit"
narcotics squad - the smugglers are running the
"Balkan route" with complete freedom.

The peacekeepers of K-For "may as well be coming from
another planet when it comes to tackling these guys",
said Mr Marko Nicovic, a lawyer and vice-president of
the International Narcotics Enforcement Officers
Association, based in New York.

"It's the hardest narcotics ring to crack because it
is all run by families and they even have their own
language. Kosovo is set to become the cancer centre of
Europe, as western Europe will soon discover," he
said.

He estimates that the province's traffickers are now
handling between 4.5 and five tonnes of heroin a month
and growing fast.

This compares to the two tonnes they were shifting
before the Kosovo war of March-June last year, when
NATO bombing forced Serbia's regime to pull out of the
largely ethnic-Albanian province.

"It's coming through easier and cheaper, and there's
much more of it," Mr Nicovic said. "The price is going
down and if this goes on we are predicting a heroin
boom in western Europe as there was in the early 80s."

A trafficker in Belgrade confirmed that since the war
the Kosovo heroin dealers, most of them from four main
families, were concentrating on the western Europe and
United States markets.

A kilogram of heroin that was worth $US16,000
($26,000) in Kosovo or double that in Belgrade could
make $US64,000 on the British, Italian or Swiss
markets, said the 24-year-old heroin middleman. He
expected the Kosovo route to grow: "There's nobody to
stop them."

Only half the promised 5,000 policemen have arrived to
join the peace operation in the province, which is now
the main route for heroin flowing through some of the
world's most troubled areas - Afghanistan, northern
Iran, the southern states of the Russian Federation,
Azerbaijan, Turkey, Kosovo - into western Europe and
the US.

"It is the Colombia of Europe," said Mr Nicovic, who
was chief of the Yugoslav narcotics force until 1996.
"When Serb police were burning houses in Kosovo, they
were finding it [heroin] stuffed in the roof. As far
as I know there has not been a single report in the
last year of K-For seizing heroin. They are soldiers,
not criminal investigators."

Echoing this, an official at NATO in Brussels said:
"Generals do not want to turn their troops into cops
... They don't want their troops to get shot pursuing
black-marketeers."

There is no evidence that the ethnic Albanians' Kosovo
Liberation Army is involved directly in drug
smuggling. But according to the British-based
International Police Review, they may be dependent on
the drug families who, it says, partly funded the
KLA's operations in Kosovo last year.

When drug-squad chiefs from northern and eastern
Europe met in Sweden 10 days ago the Balkan route was
the main issue, according to the head of the Czech
narcotics agency, Mr Jiri Komorous.

"There are four paths of drug trafficking through the
Balkans to western Europe. We have to improve our
attempts to control the Kosovo Albanians."

The Kosovo mafia has been smuggling heroin since the
mid-80s, but since the Kosovo war they have come into
their own, according to Mr Nicovic. "You have an
entire country without a police force that knows what
is going on."

The Kosovo Albanian mafia is almost untouchable.
"Everything is worked out on the basis of the family
or clan structure - the Fic [brotherhood] - so it is
impossible to plant informers," said Mr Nicovic.

The Guardian

(see also:
http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/international/0,2846,146154,00.html )


---

Mother Jones Magazine

Heroin Heroes

The United States propped up the KLA in the Kosovo conflict. With
Milosevic gone, and no one in control, the former freedom fighters are
now transforming the province into a major conduit for global drug
trafficking.
by Peter Klebnikov
January/February 2000

When the bombs stopped falling over Yugoslavia last June, a flood of
humanity swept through the Balkans as thousands of Kosovar Albanians
returned home from refugee camps. But over the craggy mountains
separating Yugoslavia and Albania, a far less innocent traffic returned.
A fleet of Mercedes sedans without license plates lined the streets of
Kosovo's capital, Pristina, and young men with hooded eyes and bulky
suits checked into the top floors of showcase hotels such as the Rogner
in Tirana, the Albanian capital. It was time for criminal elements with
close ties to America's newest ally to reopen the traditional Balkan
Road -- one of the biggest conduits for global heroin trafficking. Law
enforcement officials in Europe have suspected for years that ties
existed between Kosovar rebels and Balkan drug smugglers. But in the six
months since Washington enthroned the Kosovo Liberation Army in that
Yugoslav province, KLA-associated drug traffickers have cemented their
influence and used their new status to increase heroin trafficking and
forge links with other nationalist rebel groups and drug cartels. The
benefits of the drug trade are evident around Pristina -- more so than
Western aid. "The new buildings, the better roads, and the sophisticated
weapons -- many of these have been bought by drugs," says Michel
Koutouzis, the Balkans region expert for the Global Drugs Monitor (OGD),
a Paris-based think tank. The repercussions of this drug connection are
only now emerging, and many Kosovo observers fear that the province
could be evolving into a virtual narco-state under the noses of 49,000
peacekeeping troops.
For hundreds of years, Kosovar Albanian smugglers have been among the
world's most accomplished dealers in contraband, aided by a propitious
geography of isolated ports and mountainous villages. Virtually every
stage of the Balkan heroin business, from refining to end-point
distribution, is directed by a loosely knit hierarchy known as "The 15
Families," who answer to the regional clans that run every aspect of
Albanian life.
The Kosovar Albanian traffickers are so successful, says a senior U.S.
State Department official, "because Albanians are organized in very
close-knit groups, linked by their ethnicity and extended family
connections."
The clans, in addition to their drug operations, maintained an armed
brigade that gradually evolved into the KLA. In the early 1990s, as the
Kosovar uprising in Yugoslavia grew, ethnic Albanian rebels there faced
increased financial needs. The 15 Families responded by boosting drug
trafficking and channeling money and weapons to the rebels in their
clans. As traffickers started taking bigger risks, drug seizures by
police across Europe skyrocketed from a kilo or two in the early 1980s
to multimillion-dollar hauls, culminating in the spectacular 1996 arrest
at Gradina, Yugoslavia, of two truckers running a load of more than half
a ton of heroin worth $50 million.
German Federal Police now say that Kosovar Albanians import 80 percent
of Europe's heroin. So dominant is the Kosovar presence in trafficking
that many European users refer to illicit drugs in general as "Albanka,"
or Albanian lady.
The Kosovar traffickers ship heroin exclusively from Asia's Golden
Crescent. It's an apparently inexhaustible source. At one end of the
crescent lies Afghanistan, which in 1999 surpassed Burma as the world's
largest producer of opium poppies. From there, the heroin base passes
through Iran to Turkey, where it is refined, and then into the hands of
the 15 Families, which operate out of the lawless border towns linking
Macedonia, Albania, and Serbia. Not surprisingly, the KLA has also
flourished there. According to the State Department, four to six tons of
heroin move through Turkey every month. "Not very much is stopped," says
one official. "We get just a fraction of the total." Initially, the
Kosovar traffickers used the direct Balkan route, carrying goods
overland by truck from Turkey and Yugoslavia into Europe. With the
Bosnian war, the direct route was shut down and two splinter routes
developed to bypass Yugoslavia.
The ascent of the Kosovar families to the top of the trafficking
hierarchy coincided with the sudden appearance of the KLA as a fighting
force in 1997. As Serbia unleashed its campaign of persecution against
ethnic Albanians, the diaspora mobilized. Hundreds of thousands of
expatriate Kosovars around the world funneled money to the insurrection.
Nobody sent more than the Kosovar traffickers -- some of the wealthiest
people of Kosovar extraction in Europe. According to news reports,
Kosovar Albanian traffickers launder $1.5 billion in profits from drug
and arms smuggling each year through a shadowy network of some 200
private banks and currency exchange offices. A congressional briefing
paper obtained by Mother Jones indicates: "We would be remiss to dismiss
allegations that between 30 and 50 percent of the KLA's money comes from
drugs."
As the war in Kosovo heated up, the drug traffickers began supplying the
KLA with weapons procured from Eastern European and Italian crime groups
in exchange for heroin. The 15 Families also lent their private armies
to fight alongside the KLA. Clad in new Swiss uniforms and equipped with
modern weaponry, these troops stood out among the ragtag irregulars of
the KLA. In all, this was a formidable aid package. It's therefore not
surprising, say European law enforcement officials, that the faction
that ultimately seized power in Kosovo -- the KLA under Hashim Thaci --
was the group that maintained the closest links to traffickers. "As the
biggest contributors, the drug traffickers may have gotten the most
influence in running the country," says Koutouzis. The congressional
brief explains how groups like the KLA become involved with drug barons.
"Such groups had it easier during the Cold War when they could seek out
patron states," it notes. "But today, with the decline in state
sponsorship of insurgent groups, private funding is critical to keep the
revolution alive."
The KLA's dependence on the drug lords is difficult to prove, but the
evidence is impossible to overlook:
In 1998, German Federal Police froze two bank accounts of the "United
Kosovo" organization in a DŸsseldorf bank after they discovered
deposits totaling several hundred thousand dollars from a convicted
Kosovar drug trafficker. According to at least one published report, the
accounts were controlled by Bujar Bukoshi, prime minister of the Kosovo
government in exile.
In early 1999, an Italian court in Brindisi convicted an Albanian heroin
trafficker named Amarildo Vrioni, who admitted obtaining weapons for the
KLA from the Mafia in exchange for drugs.
Last February 23, Czech police arrested Princ Dobroshi, the head of a
Kosovar drug gang. While searching his apartment, they discovered
evidence that he had placed orders for light infantry weapons and rocket
systems. No one questioned what a small-time dealer would be doing with
rockets. Only later did Czech police reveal he was shipping them to the
KLA. The Czechs extradited Dobroshi to Norway, where he had escaped from
prison in 1997 while serving a 14-year sentence for heroin trafficking.
In Kosovo, it's hard to separate a legal organizational structure from
an illegal one. "A trafficker can sell blue jeans one day and heroin the
next," says Koutouzis. "The same supply network is used. There are no
ethical distinctions. Heroin is just another way of making money." It
was the disparate structure of the KLA, Koutouzis says, that facilitated
the drug-smuggling explosion. "It permitted a democratization of drug
trafficking, where small-time people get involved, and everyone
contributes a part of his profit to his clan leader in the KLA," he
explains. "The more illegal the activity, the more money the clan gets
from the traffickers. So it's in the interest of the clan to promote
drug trafficking."
According to Marko Nicovic, the former chief of police in Belgrade, now
an investigator who works closely with Interpol, the international
police agency, 400 to 500 Kosovars move shipments in the 20-kilo range,
while about 5,000 Kosovar Albanians are small-timers, handling shipments
of less than two kilos. At one point in 1996, he says, more than 800
ethnic Albanians were in jail in Germany on narcotics charges. In many
places, Kosovar traffickers gained a foothold through raw violence.
According to a 1999 German Federal Police report, "The ethnic Albanian
gangsÉhave been involved in drugs, weapons traffickingÉblackmail,
and murder.ÉThey are increasingly prone to violence."
Tony White of the United Nations Drug Control Program agrees with this
assessment. "They are more willing to use violence than any other
group," he says. "They have confronted the established order throughout
Europe and pushed out the Lebanese, Pakistani, and Italian cartels." Few
gangs are willing to tangle with the Kosovars. Those that do often pay
the ultimate price. In January 1999, Kosovar Albanians killed nine
people in Milan, Italy, during a two-week bloodbath between rival heroin
groups.
Daut Kadriovski, the reputed boss of one of the 15 Families, embodies
the tenacity of the top Kosovar drug traffickers. A Yugoslav Interior
Ministry report identifies him as one of Europe's biggest heroin
dealers, and Nicovic calls him a "major financial resource for the KLA."
Through his family links, Nicovic says, Kadriovski smuggled more than
100 kilos of heroin into New York and Philadelphia. He lived comfortably
in Istanbul and specialized in creative trafficking solutions, once
dispatching a shipment of heroin in the hollowed-out accordion cases of
a popular traveling Albanian folk music group. German authorities
eventually arrested him in 1985 with four kilos of heroin. They
confiscated his yachts, cars, and villas, and sent him to prison.
Kadriovski's reign appeared to be over.
But Kadriovski greased his way with narco-dollars. He escaped from
prison by bribing guards, and in 1993 he headed for the United States,
where it's believed he continues to operate. According to Nicovic,
Kadriovski reportedly funneled money to the KLA from New York through a
leading Kosovar businessman and declared KLA contributor. "Kadriovski
feels more secure with his KLA friends in power," Nicovic says.
The U.S. representatives of four other heroin families are suspected by
Interpol of having sent money for the uprising, according to Nicovic.
These men typically maintain links with local distributors, he says, and
move heroin through a network of small import-export companies in New
York and Philadelphia.
Now free of the war and the repressive Yugoslav police machine, drug
traffickers have reopened the old Balkan Road. With the KLA in power --
and in the spotlight -- the top trafficking families have begun to seek
relative respectability without decreasing their heroin shipments. "The
Kosovars are trying to position themselves in higher levels of
trafficking," says the U.N.'s Tony White. "They want to get away from
the violence of the streets and attract less attention. Criminals like
to move up like any other business, and the Kosovars are becoming
business leaders. They have become equal partners with the Turks."
Italian national police discovered this new Kosovar outreach last year
when they undertook "Operation Pristina." The carabinieri uncovered a
chain of connections that originated in Kosovo and stretched through
nine European countries, extending into Central Asia, South America, and
the United States.
"People from Pristina worked all over Europe and the world," says
JŸrgen Storbeck, director of Europol, the cooperative police force of
the European Union. "They used sophisticated methods, taking advantage
of places where police work was not so successful, like Eastern Europe."
Eventually, 40 people were arrested and 170 kilos of heroin were seized
in an operation that involved seven European police departments. As
their business reaches a saturation point in Europe, Kosovar traffickers
are looking more to the West. It's a smart business move. The United
States has seen a marked shift from cocaine to heroin use. According to
recent DEA statistics, Afghan heroin accounted for almost 20 percent of
the smack seized in this country -- nearly double the percentage taken
four years earlier. Much of it is distributed by Kosovar Albanians.
The Clinton administration has launched a vigorous crackdown on
Colombian heroin. As the campaign intensifies, some White House
officials fear Kosovar heroin could replace the Colombian supply. "Even
if we were to eliminate all the heroin production in Colombia, by no
means do we think there would be no more heroin coming into the United
States," says Bob Agresti of the White House Office of National Drug
Control Policy. "Look at the numbers. Colombia accounts for only six
percent of the world's heroin. Southwest Asia produces 75 percent."
Perhaps most alarmingly, Kosovar drug dealers associated with the KLA
have begun to form partnerships with Colombian traffickers -- the
world's most notorious drug lords. "We have an all-new situation now,"
says Europol's Storbeck. "Colombians like to use Kosovar groups for
distribution of cocaine. The Albanians are getting stronger and
stronger, and there is a certain job sharing now. They are used by Turks
for smuggling into the European Union and by Colombians for distribution
of cocaine."
Washington clearly hopes the KLA will disentangle itself from its
drug-running friends now that it's in power, but this may not be easy.
"The KLA owes a lot of debts to the traffickers and holy warriors," says
Koutouzis. "They are being pressured to assist other insurrections."
Already, the OGD has reports of KLA weapons being routed to the newest
Muslim holy war in Chechnya.
The congressional brief addresses the KLA's future: "One of the problems
you have with organizations that engage in drug trafficking is that they
become addicted to the trade and the income it brings," the report
notes. "Later on in life, even if they want to stop trafficking in
drugs, it's not always possible."
Marko Nicovic, the former Belgrade police chief, puts it a bit more
succinctly: "If Kosovo gets full autonomy, they may well double the
production of heroin," he says. "Kosovo will become a smuggler's
paradise, its doors open to every global criminal." The U.S. Foreign
Assistance Act of 1961 prohibits aid to any entity that has colluded
with narcotics traffickers. Similarly, the Balkan peace agreement
brokered in June prohibits the KLA from engaging in criminal activity.
And so the Clinton administration tries to steer clear of questions
suggesting the KLA has joined a rogues' gallery of narco-leaders. KLA
drug-running is the last thing the administration wants to tackle with
the success of its "moral war" already open to question.
Late last spring, Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) sent a letter to
President Clinton requesting an assessment of KLA drug trafficking. The
president responded quickly, telling Grassley in a June 15 letter that
he had demanded an intelligence assessment from the CIA and the DEA on
Kosovar drug trafficking. "Neither agency," the president wrote, "has
any intelligence that indicates the KLA has either been engaged in other
criminal activity or has direct links to any organized crime groups."
Clinton did acknowledge that crime groups "have contributed at least
limited funds and possibly small arms to the KLA." He promised to
"monitor" narcotics distribution there in the future. "There was no
action," said a congressional source close to Grassley. "It was a
nonanswer."
White House officials deny a whitewashing of KLA activities. "We do care
about [KLA drug trafficking]," says Agresti. "It's just that we've got
our hands full trying to bring peace there." The DEA is equally reticent
to address the issue. According to Michel Koutouzis, the DEA's website
once contained a section detailing Kosovar trafficking, but a week
before the U.S.-led bombings began, the section disappeared. "The DEA
doesn't want to talk publicly [about the KLA]," says OGD director Alain
Labrousse. "It's embarrassing to them." High-ranking U.S. officials are
dismayed that the KLA was installed in power without public discussion
or a thorough check of its background. "I don't think we're doing
anything there to stem the drugs," says a senior State Department
official. "It's out of control. It should be a high priority. We've
warned about it."
Even if it tried to stop Kosovar heroin, the U.S. would be hard-pressed
to do so. "Nobody's in control in Kosovo," adds the State Department
official. "They don't even have a police force." Regardless of what it
says, there's little indication that the administration wants to do
anything with the intelligence available about its newest ally. "There
is no doubt that the KLA is a major trafficking organization," said a
congressional expert who monitors the drug trade and requested
anonymity. "But we have a relationship with the KLA, and the
administration doesn't want to damage [its] reputation. We are partners.
The attitude is: The drugs are not coming here, so let others deal with
it."
That phrase is troublingly familiar. It raises the question: Is our
embrace of the KLA the latest in an ignoble tradition of aiding drug
traffickers for political reasons? Similar recipients of U.S. largesse
have included the Nicaraguan Contras, former Panamanian strongman Manuel
Noriega, the Afghan Taliban, and Burma's Khun Sa. Early in 1999, as the
war against Serbia raged, Congress voted to fund the KLA's drive for
independence. In the days ahead, our embrace of the KLA may come to
haunt us. Elections scheduled for this spring in Kosovo have been
delayed; but no matter when they occur, observers say, their outcome is
already certain. The time-honored clans will win. And the men in
oversized suits -- the kind who sing allegiance to democracy and global
capitalism while conducting business in the back of an unlicensed
Mercedes -- will be running the show.


--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
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"DOPO IL NERO FASCISTA, IL NERO PRETE"


Risalii quest'estate ad Opicina.
Era con me un ragazzo comunista.
Tito sui muri s'iscriveva, in vista,
sotto, della mia bianca cittadina.

Nell'ora dei ricordi vespertina
sedemmo all'osteria, che ancora m'attrista,
oggi, se penso quella camerista
che ci servi' con volto d'assassina.

Due vecchie ebree, testarde villeggianti,
io, quel ragazzo, parlavamo ancora
lassu' italiano, tra i sassi e l'abete.

"Dopo il nero fascista il nero prete;
questa e' l'Italia, e lo sai. Perche' allora -
diceva il mio compagno - aver rimpianti?"


(Umberto Saba, "Opicina 1947".
Dalla raccolta "Epigrafe")


--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------