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28 October 2003 Afternoon Edition
Kosovo News
· U.N. arrests five Kosovo Albanians
for war crimes (Reuters)
· UN police arrest five for war crimes in Kosovo (AFP)
· Five former ethnic Albanian rebels are arrested for war crimes
in Kosovo (AP)
· Ex-rebels arrested on war crimes charges (B92)
· Batic addresses an open letter to Holkeri (Serbian Government)
· Crimes Against Serbs Continue in Kosovo (WSJ)
Regional News
· Hague indictments against generals
terrible blow for DOS (Tanjug)
· I will not be minister who will arrest Lukic: Mihajlovic (Tanjug)
· Balkans promise to crack down on organized crime (Reuters)
· Fresh suicide attack in Iraq (BBC NEWS)
U.N. arrests five Kosovo Albanians for war crimes
PRISTINA, Serbia and Montenegro, Oct 28 (Reuters) - U.N. police said on Tuesday they had arrested five Kosovo Albanians on charges of war crimes dating back to the 1999 conflict, a move denounced by former guerrillas in the province.
U.N. Kosovo administration spokesman Neeraj Singh said the five men were arrested early on Monday in Kacanik, near the Macedonian border.
Charges were issued by the Kosovo justice department and were not related to the U.N. war crimes court in The Hague, the United Nations said.
``They have been charged on war crimes related charges which relate to actions against the civilian population during the armed conflict in 1999,'' Singh told reporters.
Local media said they were members of the wartime Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and quoted their relatives as saying the arrest warrant was issued by the Pristina district court and signed by an international investigation judge.
They are suspected of kidnapping, causing injury, and killing and attempted murder of fellow Albanians, the media said.
The arrest comes only days after former Kosovo Albanian rebel chief Agim Ceku was briefly held and then released in Slovenia on an invalid Serbian war crimes arrest warrant. His arrest sparked demonstrations by Kosovo Albanians in Pristina.
Associations of KLA war veterans from Kacanik said in a joint statement the acts did not serve peace, freedom and democracy in the province and they proved that Serb ``collaborators'' were getting protection.
War crimes are a sensitive issue in the area, as many Kosovo Albanians see KLA guerrillas as heroes in a war of liberation against harsh Serb rule.
International police of the U.N. interim administration in Kosovo, UNMIK, carried out the arrests, backed up by a special unit of Italian Carabinieri.
Kosovo has been under U.N. administration since June 1999 after NATO bombing forced Serbia to end its military crackdown on the ethnic Albanian majority in the province.
UN police arrest five for war crimes in Kosovo
PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro, Oct 28 (AFP) - United Nations police have arrested five Kosovo Albanians suspected of committing war crimes during the province's 1998-99 war, a UN official said Tuesday.
"Five Kosovo Albanian men have been arrested under warrants relating to war crimes," UN police spokesman Dimitri Priakhin told AFP.
Local media said the five, who were arrested in southern Kosovo on Monday, were suspected of kidnapping, serious bodily harm and the murder of four fellow Albanians in early 1999.
The five are believed to have been with the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army, a rebel group that fought a separatist war against Yugoslavia.
This is the second case of war crimes charges by a local court against former rebel members.
In July a Kosovo district court found four former ethnic Albanian rebels guilty of war crimes and sentenced them to between five and 17 years in prison.
Kosovo has been under UN administration since NATO bombed rump Yugoslavia -- now Serbia and Montenegro -- to force the withdrawal of Serb troops in 1999.
The world body's mandate includes the supervision of the local judicial system and handling sensitive cases such as war crimes.
Five former ethnic Albanian rebels are arrested for war crimes
in Kosovo
PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro (AP) _ U.N. police and NATO-led peacekeepers have arrested five former ethnic Albanian rebels charged with war crimes in Kosovo, officials said Tuesday.
The five were arrested Monday in the town of Kacanik, 58 kilometers (36 miles) south of Pristina, on war crimes related charges, said Squadron Leader Chris Thompson, a spokesman for the NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo.
The five were charged with illegal detention, torture and killing four fellow ethnic Albanians suspected of collaborating with Serb authorities during their crackdown in the province, local media said. The fifth victim survived.
Those arrested were all low-ranking members of the now-disbanded Kosovo
Liberation Army, which battled Serb forces during the 1998-1999 wars in
the province. One of them is a member of Kosovo's police service, media
said.
It was the second time a U.N.-run court moved against the former rebels
and their alleged involvement in war crimes committed in the province.
Earlier this year, a court in Pristina convicted and sentenced four former rebels to prison terms ranging from five to 17 years for ordering the killing, illegal arrest and torture of fellow ethnic Albanians suspected of collaborating with the Serbian regime of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations and NATO since June 1999, following the alliance's bombing campaign which ended the crackdown of Serb forces on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians.
Ex-rebels arrested on war crimes charges (B92)
PRISTINA -- Tuesday - United Nations police have confirmed the arrest of five Kosovo Albanians suspected of war crimes during the province’s 1998-99 war.
“Five Kosovo Albanian men have been arrested under warrants relating to war crimes,” UN police spokesman Dimitri Priakhin told AFP.
Local media said the five, who were arrested in southern Kosovo on Monday, were suspected of kidnapping, serious bodily harm and the murder of four fellow Albanians in early 1999. They are believed to have been members of the Kosovo Liberation Army.
This is the second case of war crimes charges by a local court against former rebel members.
In July a Kosovo district court found four former ethnic Albanian rebels guilty of war crimes and sentenced them to between five and 17 years in prison.
Batic addresses an open letter to Holkeri
Serbian Government
Belgrade, Oct 27, 2003 - Serbian Justice Minister Vladan Batic addressed an open letter to UNMIK chief Harri Holkeri, suggesting that Agim Ceku be immediately dismissed from the position of the head of the Kosovo Protection Corpus (KPC), that Ceku, Hashim Thaçi and Ramush Haradinaj be forbidden to leave Kosovo until documentation submitted by Serbian judiciary organs has been examined, and that the above-mentioned individuals be handed over to Serbia or tried before the judicial organs of Kosovo.
Challenging the statements Holkeri made in a letter to Slovene authorities on the occasion of the recent arrest of Agim Ceku in Ljubljana, Batic said that the ignoring of the Serbian legal system must not be a position of the UN civil administrator, reminding Mr. Holkeri that the Serbian Justice Ministry has so far addressed former UNMIK head Michael Steiner and head of UNMIK's justice department Clint Williamson three times, requesting that Ceku, Thaçi and Haradinaj be handed over to Serbia's authorities.
Batic stressed that the Serbian Ministry of Justice also forwarded to the UNMIK the decisions of the Pristina District Court on the launching of investigation against Ceku and Thaçi for the criminal act of genocide. The Ministry also sent a valid verdict of the same court dating from July 1997, sentencing Thaçi to ten years of prison for terrorism, together with a decision of the Pec District Court against Ramush Haradinaj for a criminal act of terrorism.
Batic said that the Ministry submitted these documents to the UNMIK at its own will, together with a notification that local and Interpol arrest warrants were issued against the above-mentioned individuals. However, after Thaçi’s arrest by Hungarian authorities and Çeku’s arrest in Slovenia, Steiner and Holkeri exerted pressure on the authorities of these countries to release them, instead of handing them over to Serbian judiciary organs.
Batic reminded Holkeri in the letter that Ceku took part in the killing of several dozens of Serbian civilians in Madacki dzep in Croatia while he was an officer in the Croatian Defence Council (HVO). Before he was appointed head of the KPC, Ceku was the commander of the terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
The Serbian Minister highlighted that Ceku, Thaçi and Haradinaj are leaders of terrorists who, following the establishment of the KPC, have carried out more than 7,000 terrorist attacks, killing more than 1,200 people, wounding 1,350, kidnapping 1,500, expelling 340,000, burning and taking away 107,000 houses and pulling down hundreds of churches and monasteries.
Minister Batic reminded Holkeri that these, and many other pieces of evidence have been submitted to the Hague tribunal which is investigating crimes of ethnic Albanians against Serbs in Kosovo, and stressed that the Ministry is willing to offer UNMIK additional proof against Ceku, Thaçi and Haradinaj.
Crimes Against Serbs Continue in Kosovo
Wall Street Journal (WSJ)
In response to Tunku Varadarajan's Houses of Worship column "Prayer and Politics1" (Weekend Journal, Taste page, Oct. 17): Mr. Varadarajan says Serbs are mired in the history of an event that happened in Kosovo in 1389. As for Kosovo today, he claims "there is a groundswell in Albanian civil society that offers hope of a way forward." This is nonsense when one considers the continuing murders of and crimes against the few Serbs remaining in Kosovo. There has been ethnic cleansing of all non-Albanians from Kosovo since it became a U.N. protectorate in 1999.
There is no Western-style criminal justice system at work in Kosovo,
in large part because of the tribal code of ethics, the Kanun, which governs
the Albanians' civil life. Albanian witnesses to crimes are murdered after
testifying against accused fellow-Albanians, so the problems of prosecuting
crimes is enormous. Serb children are being killed while swimming and
playing, but no killers are even identified and brought to justice.
Norman F. Ness
Landenberg, Pa.
Hague indictments against generals terrible blow for DOS
NIS, Oct 28 (Tanjug) - Serbian Radical Party (SRS) presidential candidate Tomislav Nikolic said in Nis on Monday evening that the latest indictments issued by the Hague Tribunal against four army and police generals are a "terrible blow" against the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) before the elections.
Nikolic assessed that the indictment against Gen. Vladimir Lazarevic is more dangerous in the political sense, while the indictment against police General Sreten Lukic is "directly more dangerous".
I will not be minister who will arrest Lukic: Mihajlovic
BELGRADE, Oct 28 (Tanjug) - Serbian Interior Minister Dusan Mihajlovic
on Tuesday refused to comment on what certain media had said that The
Hague tribunal indictee, police general Sreten Lukic, would surrender
to the tribunal voluntarily.
Mihajlovic told journalists he did not want to comment on "the fabrications
of the press."
Balkans promise to crack down on organized crime
SARAJEVO, Oct 28 (Reuters) - Balkan states on Tuesday promised to tighten their laws to crack down on international crime gangs in a bid to calm the European Union's fears about an influx of criminals across its eastern border.
Depressed by the collapse of the Soviet Union and years of war in the former Yugoslavia, governments across the southeast European region hope that improving ties with the European Union could boost trade and maybe lead to membership of the bloc.
``Fighting organized crime is more than a judicial necessity. It is an image issue and directly linked to attracting investment,'' said Erhard Busek, coordinator of an EU initiative set up to help the Balkans integrate into Western Europe.
The European Union blames networks of criminals in the Balkans for trafficking women for prostitution and smuggling arms and drugs across its borders, which will move eastward next May when 10 mostly ex-communist states join the bloc.
It has also made the fight against illegal immigration a priority.
Under Tuesday's agreement, Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania,
Croatia, Bulgaria, Romania and Moldova said they would bring the U.N.
Convention against Transnational Organized Crime into their national laws.
The convention includes measures to fight corruption, obstruction of justice and money laundering as well as rules on protecting witnesses and issues of international cooperation, such as extradition and data protection.
Top police officials from the region also launched a two-day meeting to coordinate their actions to fight organized crime.
Fresh suicide attack in Iraq
A suicide bomber has blown up a car in the flashpoint Iraqi town of Falluja, killing himself and at least four civilians, witnesses have said.
BBC NEWS
The attack took place outside a school and near the main police station in the town, about 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Baghdad.
A number of children are reported to be among the victims.
The big car bombs on non-military targets have borne the hallmarks of
al-Qaeda
BBC Security Correspondent Frank Gardner
It happened a day after a wave of suicide attacks in Baghdad in which at least 35 people were killed and more than 200 injured.
Hours after the blast, a coalition soldier and two civilians - one of them non-Iraqi - were injured when a device exploded on a road in the southern city of Basra, where UK forces are in charge of security.
They were travelling in a military Land Rover and another unspecified vehicle. At least two of them do not have life-threatening injuries.
The BBC's Jill McGivering in Baghdad says the growing pattern of suicide bombings has heightened speculation that foreign fighters may be carrying out the attacks.
The use of suicide bombers was a tactic associated with "foreign elements", the chief British representative in the US-led administration, Jeremy Greenstock, told the BBC.
Al-Qaeda link?
Classes at the boys' school in Falluja had finished for the day and the
building was closed when the bomb went off, close to a power station.
MAJOR BOMB ATTACKS
26 October: Rocket attack on Baghdad's Rashid Hotel kills one, injures
17
12 October: Suicide car bomb outside Baghdad Hotel - six killed
9 October: Suicide car bomb hits police station in the northeast Shia
district Sadr City - at least 10 killed
29 August: Car bomb at mosque near Najaf - 125 killed including Shia Islam
top cleric
19 August: UN headquarters, Baghdad - 23 killed, including Sergio Vieira
de Mello, veteran official
7 August: Jordanian Embassy - at least 14 killed
US troops have sealed off the area around the blast.
Eyewitness Tawfiq Mijibel was driving the car went it exploded.
"It stopped in front of the power company. A man got out while another stayed in the car. A few seconds later it blew up," he said.
In the Baghdad attacks on Monday, four bombs were detonated in less than an hour. Three police stations were hit, as well as a building used by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
A fifth car bomb failed to explode when the driver was shot and captured
by security guards. US military officials said he was found to be carrying
a Syrian passport.
The BBC's security correspondent Frank Gardner says intelligence experts
believe al-Qaeda could have been involved.
But he says the question of foreign involvement in the attacks in Iraq is murky and so far inconclusive.
Those killed in Baghdad included eight Iraqi policemen, at least 26 Iraqi civilians and a US soldier.
Foreign fighters
Mr Greenstock said the style of the attacks on Monday indicated non-Iraqi
fighters were involved.
"There were suicide attackers in most - probably all - the bomb
explosions... and that is a sign of foreign terrorist tactics, rather
than the Saddam loyalist elements that we're still trying to chase down,"
he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"I think that Iraqis are beginning to get quite angry that foreigners
have come in and started to follow a war on their soil against their interests."
US Brigadier General Mark Hertling said the Baghdad attacks bore the hallmarks of "foreign fighters".
But a senior US commander in northern Iraq, Major General Raymond Odierno, said virtually all the fighters opposing his troops were Iraqis.
"We have not seen a large influx of foreign fighters thus far," he said.
Falluja, a stronghold of supporters of ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, has been the scene of frequent clashes involving US troops.