-Caveat Lector- >From http://www.iwpr.net/ ICTY's Kosovo Investigation: Suspicions of Manipulation Tribunal Update 122: Last Week in The Hague (19-24 April, 1999) The enthusiasm with which the Western governments started co-operating with the Tribunal's Kosovo investigation has given rise to suspicions of manipulation of the court for political ends. Discontented voices within the legal profession are becoming concerned that the Tribunal is being "used for war propaganda". Recently the Canadian daily, "The Globe and Mail," took up the thread and asked "is war crime prosecutor Louise Arbour becoming a pawn of NATO" The Chief Prosecutor, Louise Arbour, however, sees no reason to worry about this, and does not believe the Tribunal's work has been compromised by accepting offers of co-operation. "There are circumstances in which justice and politics interests coincide," she said last week. Arbour further denied the suggestions that she was given the green light by the Western governments to indict Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. The question is not whether we are free [to indict Milosevic] but whether we will now be better equipped by those who may hold information in moving forward in this investigation." The critical matter for the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP), concluded Arbour, "is not to be given a political mandate [which already exists in the form of Security Council Resolution 827 and Statute of the Tribunal]but to be provided with the information that would allow us to move." The "coinciding interests" have, therefore, brought us to the point of what Tribunal Deputy Prosecutor Graham Blewitt last week described as "unprecedented levels of cooperation." Firstly, the German Defence Minister Rudolf Scharping in Bonn on April 19, handed Arbour a series of aerial photographs taken by drone reconnaissance aircraft, which show both the destruction of villages in Kosovo and refugees being stripped of identity papers and belongings by Yugoslav troops. The following day in London, Arbour received promises from the British Foreign Minister, Robin Cook, that she would soon be given a huge dossier of intelligence material on more than 50 separate incidents over the past month. "We have authorised the handover of British intelligence material to the War Crimes Tribunal. It is a rare step to release intelligence material [but] we will go on collating intelligence on further incidents as the horror unfolds and we will pass it to the Tribunal in what will be one of the largest releases of intelligence material ever authorised by the British," Cook said during a briefing in the British Ministry of Defence. It was Arbour's presence at that war-briefing that started the manipulation rumours. Arbour used the occasion to state that since the Tribunal's resources were limited, international co-operation was essential: "We have no access to judicially authorised electronic surveillance methods. We have no Tribunal-based wire tapping capacity. We have extremely limited opportunities to invite suspects to be questioned." On the following Thursday (April 22), Arbour spoke on the same matter with the Dutch Defence Minister. That same day, the French government promised its full co-operation. This included the gathering of eyewitnesses, providing security for investigators, protecting refugees, transmitting information of military nature, including that gathered on the chains of command. The French Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it was distributing questionnaires sent by Arbour's office to French authorities dealing with refugees coming in from Kosovo. It said France was also helping to finance efforts by non-governmental organisations to collect accounts and eyewitness testimony from ethnic Albanians in refugee camps in regions bordering the southern Yugoslav province. Arbour called recent developments "extremely encouraging", and at a press conference at the Tribunal added: "We have been steadily building our co-operation with a number of countries, and their decisions to increase our access to sensitive information takes us another important step forward. It should also send a signal to leaders and commanders on the ground who are implicated in the commission of war crimes that they will be brought to justice". 'The world has also heard many of the stories told by refugees and the full picture is only beginning to emerge,' Arbour said on that occasion. "The Tribunal's investigators are now assembling a body of direct witness testimonies. Refugee accounts are critical, but they are not enough on their own. The victims didn't see the command structures or the people giving the orders at the highest levels. We therefore need the sophisticated kind of assistance that only states can provide." "Sophisticated kind of assistance" undoubtedly refers to intelligence-based information that has been out of reach of the Prosecutor for a long time. Two years ago, Arbour told Tribunal Update that she doubted that such information would ever be made available to the Tribunal. She then said: "There is no doubt that there might be extremely valuable information contained in the intelligence archives of many countries. But it would be extremely surprising if that information surfaced in international trial, when so little ever surfaces in domestic trials in any country. The difficulty of access to this kind of information, first of all is obtaining an acknowledgement that it exists." The war crimes committed in Kosovo before the eyes of the world have obviously created an environment in which the interests of justice and politics coincide. As Arbour said last week, her job now is to "ensure that we have appropriate safeguards in place for handling sensitive information and to agree on the best way of turning the information into evidence that can be used in a criminal court, particularly so that we can determine the command structures of military and police forces, and prove the responsibility of military and political leaders for any war crimes that are being committed." Asked when would she issue her first Kosovo indictment, Arbour replied: "I can't put it in days or weeks or months, but I'm certainly not thinking in terms of years." © Institute of War & Peace Reporting ~~~~~~~~~~~~ In The Wrong Place This is not a good time to be Albanian in Belgrade. Beatings are followed by the question: "Why don't you go to Albania?" Many have fled. By Gordana Igric in the Rakovica refugee camp, near Sarajevo (Published on May 1, 1999) J.R. was born 28 years ago in Belgrade. He worked for 11 years as an auto-mechanic in a big industrial plant in Rakovica, the working-class quarter of Belgrade. His is also Albanian. Three months ago five unknown bandits walked into the manufacturing hall. They pulled J.R. out into the courtyard in front of his colleagues and beat him. They broke his arm, his leg and one rib, shouting: "Move to Albania. What are you waiting here for?" When J.R. complained to his boss, he was met with a shrug of the shoulders. "That's nothing," said his boss. "Why are you complaining?" Then when the NATO bombing began, J.R. began to receive threatening telephone calls in the middle of the night. So on March 31, he left his flat, his car and all his other possessions, and came to Sarajevo together with his wife and child. Now he lives in a big refugee camp in the vicinity of Sarajevo that happens to bear the same name, Rakovica. They share a tent with 50 other people, his few belongings kept under his bed. His wife cooks lunch on a small wood stove in front of the tent; his child is coughing. J.R. is only one of 300 Albanians from Belgrade in the camp. It also accommodates some 1,600 refugees who have come from Kosovo and Sandzak since the beginning of the bombing. But the total number of "Belgrade" Albanians who have fled to Bosnia is certainly much higher. Many more have settled with friends or families, and therefore are not on the official register. Before the war, estimates for the number of Albanians in Belgrade ranged as high as 100,000. Albanians in the refugee camps in Bosnia claim that now very few remain. The plight of Albanians from Belgrade has passed almost unnoticed due to the tragic fates of those Albanians expelled from Kosovo. Mostly bakers from the area of Dragas in Kosovo, they lived in a relatively compact community. Others sold goods at the market, or worked as street cleaners or garbage collectors. In recent years, life was never easy for them. But their presence was tolerated while the regime waged campaigns against Slovenes, Croats or Muslims--depending on the wars it was fighting at the time. Since March 1998, however, and the beginning of the war in Kosovo, things took a turn for the worse. Threats on the streets, at the workplace and on the phone increased. Albanians' shops were robbed and damaged. With the bombing campaign, this only increased. "What are you waiting for here?" a menacing voice on the telephone asked the 30-year-old Albanian factory worker every night. "We will slit your throat, so we can have your flat. Why don't you go to Albania?" He is now in the Rakovica camp, with his wife and four children. "I left everything I had. I fled for my life," he says. A.G., 46, is a father of four. He worked for 26 years in the Milling Baking Industry, a state bakery in Belgrade. Ever since the bombing started his colleagues became aggressive. "They were telling me at work to chose a stove where I wish to be baked. I could no longer take it. I had a flat in Belgrade, but I left everything and set out for Bosnia," he says. Even those who had managed to open their own local bakeries and become well-liked in their neighbourhoods were not spared. A group of unknown bandits broke into a well-known bakery owned by Uka Cocaj, located in the Merkator shopping centre in New Belgrade. He and his workers were beaten up and his bakery demolished. He, too, is now a refugee in Sarajevo. The same happened in Zemun, a part of Belgrade where the Radicals of Vojislav Seselj hold power. This time, the unknown bandits also set the owner's car on fire. Two days after the bombing started, on the Sarajevo Street in central Belgrade, 14 shops owned by Albanians were demolished. So was an Albanian-owned sweet shop in Belgrade's central Slavija Square. The owner of one private shop, who says he spent 30 years in Belgrade, found an inscription written on his shop door one morning, with the derogatory name Serbs use for Albanians: "Death to Shiptars!" Others found the doors of their homes or their mailboxes marked in red. As the fear increased Albanians stopped speaking Albanian in public. Some Albanians left Belgrade because their families living in Kosovo were expelled, either to Macedonia or Albania. The men of the older generation worked in the Yugoslav capital and saved money to send it their families. A 60-year-old Albanian, who worked for 39 years for the municipal services, said he heard that his village near Dragas was burnt, and that all local families were expelled. "Since then I don't know where my family is," he says. "Who would I now send money to? If they no longer live here, then my place is not in Serbia either. " He came to Rakovica in hopes of finding his family. Many of the Albanians from Belgrade had problems even after leaving the city, at the border between Yugoslavia and Republika Srpska. A.G. says that five other Albanians were on the bus with him. It was April 3, and they reached the border-crossing near Zvornik at 5.30 p.m. The Serbian police collected documents only from Albanians. "They took the men one by one into a room. I was beaten by four policemen, punching me in the head and kicking me in the kidneys," he says. Another man testifies that he was beaten at the same border crossing on April 4 together with 15 other Albanians. "They forced one man to kiss a picture of Slobodan Milosevic. They broke the forehead of an old man. People are still recovering from that beating," he says. On some occasions, the police destroyed the Albanians' documents. The Albanians from Belgrade, like those who arrived from Kosovo via Montenegro, live in uncertainty in the Rakovica refugee camp. They had hoped that they would find the doors of Western embassies open, and could leave the region. But they are learning that refugees are not welcome. They now realise that they have only joined the thousands of Bosniaks (Muslims) who flooded Sarajevo and Tuzla after being expelled from their homes during the war in 1992-93, and who are still waiting to return. Gordana Igric is an independent journalist from Belgrade. © Institute of War & Peace Reporting ~~~~~~~~~~~~ A<>E<>R The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled one is truly vanquished. -Johann Christoph Schiller, German Writer (1759-1805) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
