Informazione
* 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/
------------------------------------------------------------
* 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/
------------------------------------------------------------
"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/
------------------------------------------------------------
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/
------------------------------------------------------------
* ZASTO SE SUDI NATO-U / PERCHE' LA NATO E' SOTTO ACCUSA
* ASSIJUG: INIZIATIVA A PERUGIA IL 15 APRILE
* A-B-C SOLIDARIETA' E PACE: UN AIUTO PER PANCEVO
----
ZASTO SE SUDI NATO-u
Zoran Kraljevski wrote:
> (...) Ovom prilikom zelim da Vas informisem da 04.04.2000 u Skoplju
> ide promocija moje knjige "Zasto se sudi Nato-u". Na promociji ce biti
> prikazan i dokumentarni film "Sramna godina sile" ciji sam autor ja, a
> na promociji knjige govorice eminentni intelektualci iz
> Makedonije. Knjiga ovde izaziva interesantne i zasad povoljne
> reakcije.
Dalla Repubblica ex-Jugoslava di Macedonia ci scrivono comunicandoci che
il giorno 4 aprile 2000 sara' ufficialmente presentato a Skoplje il
libro "Perche' la NATO e' sotto accusa", di Zoran Kraljevski. Con
l'occasione si terra' un dibattito e sara' proiettato il video "Un
vergognoso anno di violenza". Per informazioni: <nadj@...>
---
Sabato 15 Aprile ore 19.00
CENA SOCIALE E MUSICA BALCANICA IN
SOLIDARIETA' CON LA IUGOSLAVIA
A tutti gli iscritti e simpatizzanti dell'Associazione Italia-Iugoslavia
(ASSIJUG)
A tutti i sinceri democratici e antimperialisti
Sarà l'occasione per ritrovarci di nuovo tutti assieme, in un clima di
cordialità, simpatia e
amicizia. Approfitteremo dell'occasione
(1) per ascoltare gli amici e compagni appena tornati da Belgrado,
(2) l'esperto Marco Saba, che ci relazionerà sull'uso dell'uranio
impoverito da parte della
NATO e le le devastazioni ambientali subite dalla Iugoslavia
(3) discutere assieme anche dei progetti che di recente abbiamo
intrapreso e che sono già a
buon punto:
(a) il gemellaggio che si sta realizzando tra il Comune abruzzese di
Pizzo Ferrato e la
cittadina iugoslava di Bogatic; cosa importante, alla cena saranno
presenti anche il Sindaco
ed alcuni rappresentanti della Giunta comunale di Pizzo Ferrato che ci
parleranno dei motivi
di questa scelta così significativa e coraggiosa;
(b) la prevista rassegna cinematografica sul cinema iugoslavo che
abbiamo intenzione di
concludere entro il mese di Maggio invitando il famoso regista iugoslavo
Kosturica;
(c) la campagna di raccolta di fondi per la Iugoslavia: "Un Fiore per la
Ricostruzione" che
avvieremo nel prossimo Giugno.
Di altre iniziative previste parleremo nel corso della serata. La cena
sarà inoltre
l'occasione per lanciare il tesseramento all'Associazione per l'anno
2000, invitando chi non
l'ha ancora fatto a tesserarsi e gli altri a rinnovare la propria
adesione. L'appuntamento è
dunque per il giorno:
Sabato 15 Aprile ore 19.00
c/o la Casa del popolo di Casa del Diavolo
Strada Tiberina Nord
Casa del Diavolo -PG-
(superstrada E45, uscita Ponte Pattoli)
Partecipa e fai partecipare tutti, diffondi questo invito ad amici,
parenti, compagni di lavoro,
conoscenti!
Con amicizia.
l'Associazione Italia-Iugoslavia (ASSIJUG)
Per informazioni puoi rivolgerti: Associazione Italia-Iugoslavia
(Assijug) Via Duranti,5
06100 Perugia.
Tel/Fax 075-42686. E mail: assijug@.... o direttamente in sede
dalle 17.00 alle
19.30.
---
UN AIUTO A PANCEVO PER LE ANALISI DI ARIA E DI ACQUA
AVVELENATE DALLA NATO
per chi sia interessato il sito web dell'Associazione è il seguente:
http://www.freeweb.org/volontariato/abcsolidarieta/index1.htm
Gentili amici,
volevamo richiamare la vostra attenzione sull'iniziativa di aiuto a
Pancevo
per le analisi di aria e acqua avvelenate dalla Nato, avviata dal
quotidiano
“il manifesto” e “A, B, C, solidarietà e pace”. Molti di voi aiutano già
generosamente i bambini serbi, altri i bambini brasiliani o quelli della
Guinea Bissau, ma riteniamo doveroso, da parte nostra, informarvi
comunque
su questo nuovo progetto:
si tratta di aiutare i bambini e le loro famiglie a sopravvivere in
un'area
geografica contaminata dai bombardamenti della Nato reperendo o
acquistando
alcune apparecchiature di cui ha urgente bisogno l’Istituto di igiene e
tutela ambientale del Banato del sud (dott.ssa Mica Saric Tanaskovic).
Ovviamente renderemo conto a tutti del lavoro svolto.
Grazie e cordiali saluti.
p. A, B, C, solidarietà e pace
Franco Della Marra
Questo e' l'elenco del materiale di cui ha bisogno urgente l'Istituto
di igiene e tutela ambientale del Banato del sud (dottoressa Mica
Saric Tanaskovic - Pancevo):
STRUMENTI PER L'ANALISI DELL'ACQUA:
- Attrezzature (portatili) per il rilevamento della contaminazione
batteriologica e chimica
- Strumenti da campo
- Tester (Ph, EC, T, ORP) dell'acqua
- Colorimetro, torbidimetro
- Strumenti per laboratorio
- Attrezzature per la purificazione dell'acqua in grado di rendere
potabile acqua a basso livello ionico, organico, con presenze
liquidi infiammabili e batteri
- Spettrofotometro (di basso costo)
- Dosatori (0,2-1, 1-5; 5-3° ml)
- Unita' di flusso laminare dell'aria
- Unita' di analisi microbiologica
- Veicoli 4x4 per il monitoraggio e la raccolta di campioni sul campo
MONITORAGGIO DELL'ARIA:
- Strumenti da campo
- Analizzatori PID portatili e GC (PID, FID, FPD, ECD) portatili
- Strumenti trasportabili per il monitoraggio dell'aria
- Rack encolsure da 19 piedi
- Bagno con termostato
- Attrezzi per la campionatura degli alimenti e dell'acqua
- Spettrofotometro UV-VIS
Chi disponesse di qualcuno degli strumenti suelencati, o potesse
procurarli, e' pregato di contattare l'Associazione "ABC solidarieta'
e pace" (tel-fax: 06/4067358; 06/4063334; e-mail:
abcsolidarieta@...), che ne sta curando la raccolta in
collaborazione col quotidiano "Il manifesto".
Altrimenti, chi volesse comunque contribuire al lor acquisto puo'
servirsi del conto corrente postale n. 75377002 intestato
"ABC SOLIDARIETA' E PACE - VIA UMBERTO CALOSSO 50 - 00155 ROMA",
causale PANCEVO, ovvero del conto bancario n. 410197871 (01020-03219)
Banco di Sicilia Ag. 16 di Roma.
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
* ASSIJUG: INIZIATIVA A PERUGIA IL 15 APRILE
* A-B-C SOLIDARIETA' E PACE: UN AIUTO PER PANCEVO
----
ZASTO SE SUDI NATO-u
Zoran Kraljevski wrote:
> (...) Ovom prilikom zelim da Vas informisem da 04.04.2000 u Skoplju
> ide promocija moje knjige "Zasto se sudi Nato-u". Na promociji ce biti
> prikazan i dokumentarni film "Sramna godina sile" ciji sam autor ja, a
> na promociji knjige govorice eminentni intelektualci iz
> Makedonije. Knjiga ovde izaziva interesantne i zasad povoljne
> reakcije.
Dalla Repubblica ex-Jugoslava di Macedonia ci scrivono comunicandoci che
il giorno 4 aprile 2000 sara' ufficialmente presentato a Skoplje il
libro "Perche' la NATO e' sotto accusa", di Zoran Kraljevski. Con
l'occasione si terra' un dibattito e sara' proiettato il video "Un
vergognoso anno di violenza". Per informazioni: <nadj@...>
---
Sabato 15 Aprile ore 19.00
CENA SOCIALE E MUSICA BALCANICA IN
SOLIDARIETA' CON LA IUGOSLAVIA
A tutti gli iscritti e simpatizzanti dell'Associazione Italia-Iugoslavia
(ASSIJUG)
A tutti i sinceri democratici e antimperialisti
Sarà l'occasione per ritrovarci di nuovo tutti assieme, in un clima di
cordialità, simpatia e
amicizia. Approfitteremo dell'occasione
(1) per ascoltare gli amici e compagni appena tornati da Belgrado,
(2) l'esperto Marco Saba, che ci relazionerà sull'uso dell'uranio
impoverito da parte della
NATO e le le devastazioni ambientali subite dalla Iugoslavia
(3) discutere assieme anche dei progetti che di recente abbiamo
intrapreso e che sono già a
buon punto:
(a) il gemellaggio che si sta realizzando tra il Comune abruzzese di
Pizzo Ferrato e la
cittadina iugoslava di Bogatic; cosa importante, alla cena saranno
presenti anche il Sindaco
ed alcuni rappresentanti della Giunta comunale di Pizzo Ferrato che ci
parleranno dei motivi
di questa scelta così significativa e coraggiosa;
(b) la prevista rassegna cinematografica sul cinema iugoslavo che
abbiamo intenzione di
concludere entro il mese di Maggio invitando il famoso regista iugoslavo
Kosturica;
(c) la campagna di raccolta di fondi per la Iugoslavia: "Un Fiore per la
Ricostruzione" che
avvieremo nel prossimo Giugno.
Di altre iniziative previste parleremo nel corso della serata. La cena
sarà inoltre
l'occasione per lanciare il tesseramento all'Associazione per l'anno
2000, invitando chi non
l'ha ancora fatto a tesserarsi e gli altri a rinnovare la propria
adesione. L'appuntamento è
dunque per il giorno:
Sabato 15 Aprile ore 19.00
c/o la Casa del popolo di Casa del Diavolo
Strada Tiberina Nord
Casa del Diavolo -PG-
(superstrada E45, uscita Ponte Pattoli)
Partecipa e fai partecipare tutti, diffondi questo invito ad amici,
parenti, compagni di lavoro,
conoscenti!
Con amicizia.
l'Associazione Italia-Iugoslavia (ASSIJUG)
Per informazioni puoi rivolgerti: Associazione Italia-Iugoslavia
(Assijug) Via Duranti,5
06100 Perugia.
Tel/Fax 075-42686. E mail: assijug@.... o direttamente in sede
dalle 17.00 alle
19.30.
---
UN AIUTO A PANCEVO PER LE ANALISI DI ARIA E DI ACQUA
AVVELENATE DALLA NATO
per chi sia interessato il sito web dell'Associazione è il seguente:
http://www.freeweb.org/volontariato/abcsolidarieta/index1.htm
Gentili amici,
volevamo richiamare la vostra attenzione sull'iniziativa di aiuto a
Pancevo
per le analisi di aria e acqua avvelenate dalla Nato, avviata dal
quotidiano
“il manifesto” e “A, B, C, solidarietà e pace”. Molti di voi aiutano già
generosamente i bambini serbi, altri i bambini brasiliani o quelli della
Guinea Bissau, ma riteniamo doveroso, da parte nostra, informarvi
comunque
su questo nuovo progetto:
si tratta di aiutare i bambini e le loro famiglie a sopravvivere in
un'area
geografica contaminata dai bombardamenti della Nato reperendo o
acquistando
alcune apparecchiature di cui ha urgente bisogno l’Istituto di igiene e
tutela ambientale del Banato del sud (dott.ssa Mica Saric Tanaskovic).
Ovviamente renderemo conto a tutti del lavoro svolto.
Grazie e cordiali saluti.
p. A, B, C, solidarietà e pace
Franco Della Marra
Questo e' l'elenco del materiale di cui ha bisogno urgente l'Istituto
di igiene e tutela ambientale del Banato del sud (dottoressa Mica
Saric Tanaskovic - Pancevo):
STRUMENTI PER L'ANALISI DELL'ACQUA:
- Attrezzature (portatili) per il rilevamento della contaminazione
batteriologica e chimica
- Strumenti da campo
- Tester (Ph, EC, T, ORP) dell'acqua
- Colorimetro, torbidimetro
- Strumenti per laboratorio
- Attrezzature per la purificazione dell'acqua in grado di rendere
potabile acqua a basso livello ionico, organico, con presenze
liquidi infiammabili e batteri
- Spettrofotometro (di basso costo)
- Dosatori (0,2-1, 1-5; 5-3° ml)
- Unita' di flusso laminare dell'aria
- Unita' di analisi microbiologica
- Veicoli 4x4 per il monitoraggio e la raccolta di campioni sul campo
MONITORAGGIO DELL'ARIA:
- Strumenti da campo
- Analizzatori PID portatili e GC (PID, FID, FPD, ECD) portatili
- Strumenti trasportabili per il monitoraggio dell'aria
- Rack encolsure da 19 piedi
- Bagno con termostato
- Attrezzi per la campionatura degli alimenti e dell'acqua
- Spettrofotometro UV-VIS
Chi disponesse di qualcuno degli strumenti suelencati, o potesse
procurarli, e' pregato di contattare l'Associazione "ABC solidarieta'
e pace" (tel-fax: 06/4067358; 06/4063334; e-mail:
abcsolidarieta@...), che ne sta curando la raccolta in
collaborazione col quotidiano "Il manifesto".
Altrimenti, chi volesse comunque contribuire al lor acquisto puo'
servirsi del conto corrente postale n. 75377002 intestato
"ABC SOLIDARIETA' E PACE - VIA UMBERTO CALOSSO 50 - 00155 ROMA",
causale PANCEVO, ovvero del conto bancario n. 410197871 (01020-03219)
Banco di Sicilia Ag. 16 di Roma.
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
PERICOLOSO CERCARE DI CONTRASTARE LA DISINFORMAZIONE IN OCCIDENTE:
IL CASO DI "LIVING MARXISM" E DEL COLOSSO MEDIATICO ITN
Alcuni anni fa il giornalista tedesco Thomas Deichmann in un articolo
aveva svelato la truffa mediatica del campo di concentramento di
Trnopolje, presso Prijedor, nel quale i serbi avrebbero arbitrariamente
rinchiuso civili musulmani, tenendoli in condizioni di indigenza e
maltrattandoli. Nel suo articolo Deichmann sosteneva che i giornalisti
della ITN autori del principale reportage ad effetto su Trnopolje
avevano in realta' costruito un caso "a tavolino", tra l'altro chiedendo
ad un detenuto malato di sistemarsi dietro al filo spinato della
recinzione di una centralina elettrica per ottenere una foto che
destasse indignazione (sul caso si vedano:
http://www.srpska-mreza.com/lm-f97/lm-f97.html
http://www.informinc.co.uk/ITN-vs-LM/story/LM97_Bosnia.html ).
L'articolo di Deichmann apparve originariamente su "Living Marxism"
(LM), e poi sulla stampa in Germania e sul libro, curato dall'IAC, "NATO
in the Balkans" (in italiano "La NATO nei Balcani", Editori Riuniti
1999). La vicenda viene anche egregiamente spiegata in un filmato
recentemente prodotto da Emperor's Clothes negli USA (si veda piu' sotto
per le modalita' di spedizione della videocassetta).
Evidentemente colta in fallo, la ITN dopo alcuni tentennamenti ha
provveduto a fare causa a LM. La causa e' stata vinta pochi giorni fa
NON perche' LM abbia scritto il falso, ma perche' non e' riuscita a
dimostrare "oltre ogni ragionevole dubbio" di aver detto il vero, e
cioe' che i giornalisti della ITN Penny Marshall e Ian Williams sono dei
bugiardi privi di ogni scrupolo, oltreche' privi di deontologia.
Cosicche' adesso LM rischia di chiudere. Deve infatti risarcire la ITN
con la bellezza di 375mila sterline... Un chiaro monito per chiunque
voglia mettere i bastoni fra le ruote ai signori della guerra a mezzo
stampa.
SOLIDARIETA' CON "LIVING MARXISM"!
CONTRIBUIAMO ALLA SOPRAVVIVENZA DELLA RIVISTA!
CRJ, 31/3/2000
---
>
> STOP NATO: NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.HOME-PAGE.ORG
>
> THE END OF LM MAGAZINE
> Statement by Mick Hume, editor
>
> On Tuesday 14 March, the High Court ordered the connections of LM
> magazine to pay ITN and two of its journalists a total of #375 000 in
> libel damages. The next day, we received a letter from ITN's lawyers,
> Biddle, demanding the money. Within a week they had sent another demand,
> with court order attached.
>
> As a consequence of this, Informinc (LM) Ltd, the company which
> publishes the magazine, is now having to go into liquidation, cease
> trading and make its employees redundant. Myself as editor, and Helene
> Guldberg as co-publisher, also face the threat of personal bankruptcy.
>
> The current April 2000 edition of LM will be the last monthly issue. We
> are trying to raise the finance to publish a final, bumper issue of LM
> in the summer, and go out with all guns blazing.
>
> The LM-initiated Institute of Ideas, a series of events planned to take
> place from June to July, will go ahead in partnership with major
> institutions in London, including the British Library, the Royal
> Institution, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal Society of Arts,
> Tate Modern, and the Union Chapel Project. A new company, the Academy of
> Ideas, has been set up by Claire Fox to coordinate these events.
>
> We would like to thank all of our subscribers and Friends of LM for
> their support. They will be contacted directly about the implications of
> the magazine's closure.
>
> Anybody who can help to finance the final issue of LM should get in
> touch with Helene Guldberg on (020) 7269 9228.
>
> The LM Online website will continue to operate for the time being. As
> for the post-LM future of magazine publishing, watch this space.
>
---
From www.emperors-clothes.com - "JUDGEMENT" (Please forward!)
--- At last we have visual proof that the media lied about Yugoslavia
We have just finished production work on the English version of a
stunning
new film - "JUDGMENT." It exposes the tricks used to concoct phony
pictures
of a nonexistent Serbian 'death camp' in 1992. These doctored images --
especially the famous emaciated man behind barbed wire -- were broadcast
worldwide to dehumanize the Serbs. They led to the deaths of thousands
and
great suffering for millions of human beings.
"JUDGMENT" PROVES THOSE PICTURES WERE CYNICAL FABRICATIONS.
We urge you: Buy this film today Give a copy to a friend who doesn't
want to
believe the mass media would fabricate phony atrocity pictures. Show
this
film on TV stations, show it to local organizations, get it reviewed in
local
papers. It will change people's minds. It will change your mind.
TELLING THE TRUTH, AND OTHER CRIMES
Last week the British alternative magazine, LM, was fined over $500,000
US
for libel. LM had printed a story that that charged British news
station ITN
and reporters Penny Marshall and Ian Williams with fraud. LM said ITN
had
faked the "death camp" pictures to demonize the Serbs.
The Judge in the libel case admitted that ITN might have made some
mistakes.
But he argued: the LM people weren't in Bosnia that day. So how could
LM be
sure what was really happening there?
IN FACT another film crew was present the entire time. They filmed the
footage used in "JUDGMENT".
"JUDGMENT", proves LM was simply telling the truth. "JUDGMENT" proves
Penny
Marshall lied. "JUDGMENT" shows how Marshall produced the picture that
fooled the world and justified a war.
The ITN crew visited a POW center and a refugee camp. By sheer luck
they
were accompanied by a crew from Serbian television (RTS). The RTS crew
filmed the ITN crew at work. Using this RTS footage, a small Yugoslav
film
studio has recreated the events of that day. Emperors-Clothes edited
the
Yugoslav movie to produce the English language film, "JUDGMENT".
RTS is the TV station that NATO bombed in April, 1999, killing 20
people.
The film is dedicated to those dead, whose murders began with the ITN
pictures. We say this because the images that Penny Marshall fabricated
in
1992 began the dehumanization of the Serbian people. ITN and Penny
Marshall
laid the political basis for the bombing of the Bosnian loyalist
government
and of Serbia itself a year ago.
WHAT THIS FILM PROVES
1) The Loyalist ("Serbian") Authorities were humane.
>From the pictures that ITN produced one would think that Marshall and her
crew had sneaked into a death camp and shot their film when nobody was
watching. Not so. The ITN crew visited two surprisingly casual and
humane
locations. They were protected but not controlled by the loyalist
authorities whom they later compared to Nazi's.
2) Marshall KNEW the loyalists were humane.
She and the crew from RTS interviewed POWs', their wives, non-POW
refugees, a
doctor, at least one red cross worker, the commander of the POW Center.
The
film shows these interviews. Marshall simply suppressed this evidence
of
humane treatment. Instead she staged some pictures. These were then
doctored to produce Nazi-like images for mass consumption. The height
of
cynicism and dishonesty.
3) The refugees SAID they were treated decently.
Marshall is shown arguing with one refugee. She tries to coerce the man
to
say something anti-Yugoslav. He refuses. "No, no," he protests
vehemently.
"Not a prison. No, no. REFUGEE center. They treat us very kind. No,
no,
very kind." Undeterred, Marshall used this very location to stage her
phony
death camp shots.
4) Marshall staged the death camp sequence seen around the world.
She went out of her way to film from inside an awkward storage area.
Why?
Because one side had what she wanted: a fence, mainly chicken wire but
with a
few strands of barbed wire at the top. Shooting through the barbed
wire,
Marshall talked to refugees OUTSIDE the fence. She then doctored the
raw
footage to produce false images of prisoners behind barbed wire.
5) Marshall and Ian Williams were filmed in the act of lying.
The amazing thing is -- the RTS people were filming a few feet away.
They
caught the same shots from a slightly different angle. They got
pictures of
Marshall, Ian Williams, a cameraman, a man holding a mike. You will
see,
step by step, just how Marshall doctored her pictures to produce the
look of
a Nazi death camp. That is, the film takes footage shot by RTS and then
proceeds to alter it, as you watch, producing the phony ITN photos of
Nazi-like atrocities.
This film will change people's minds.
It documents that Marshall and ITN have committed the worst crime
against
humanity: they lied to millions of people in order to justify a war.
Order the film now for $19.95 plus shipping and handling. Show it to
everyone you can.
VHS TAPES NOW AVAILABLE (Prices on PAL and SECAM tapes as soon as
possible)
Base price, $19.95 plus $1 tax ONLY in Massachusetts
Cost including shipping and handling:
2-3 days within US - $25.00
1 day in Massachusetts - $26.00
Next day outside Massachusetts but within US add $11.00
Europe (5 days) $26.50
New Zealand, Australia and Japan (about 6 days) Total $30.00
Canada 2-3 days - $26.00
Rest of Asia, Africa, former Soviet Union, etc. - $22.00
(Special shipping available on request)
ORDER BY MAIL, BY SECURE SERVER OR BY PHONE
BY MAIL - send check and instructions to EMPERORS CLOTHES, PO Box
610-321,
Newton, MA 02461-0321 Please state how you heard about the film.
BY PHONE - call 617-916-1705 from 8:30 am to 4:30 PM Eastern Standard
Time
BY SECURE SERVER - go to http://emperors-clothes.com/howyour.html#donate
Pay the appropriate amount AS A DONATION. Then PLEASE email us stating
the
amount donated and the number of films desired. Send the email to
emperors1000@... This must be done so we'll know your donation is to
pay
for the film! Please also state how you heard about the film.
WE PRESENTLY HAVE FILMS IN STOCK. WE CAN REPLENISH STOCK WITHIN TWO
DAYS.
VIEW it. SHOW it to friends. MAIL IT to friends and relatives. SHOW
it to
organizations, churches, unions, at schools. GET it on TV.
NOTE TO WEBSITES, MAGAZINES AND NEWSPAPERS AND TV STATIONS: IF YOU
ADVERTISE
THIS FILM YOUR ORGANIZATION CAN RECEIVE A COMMISSION FOR EVERY FILM YOU
HELP
TO SELL. Drop us an email for details. Emperors1000@.... So far
the
film is being distributed by emperors-clothes.com and antiwar.com. Care
to
join us?
---
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 23:42:57 +0000
From: Philip Hammond <hammonpb@...>
Reply-To: "STOP NATO: NO PASARAN!" <STOPNATO@...>
Organization: South Bank University
To: "STOP NATO: NO PASARAN!" <STOPNATO@...>
STOP NATO: NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.HOME-PAGE.ORG
I imagine many people will have already seen the Thomas Deichmann
article; what you may not know is that Deichmann was in court today
(Friday) because of it, as was Mick Hume, the editor of the magazine
(LM, formerly Living Marxism) which originally published the story.
The libel suit brought by ITN is going through the High Court in London
at the moment, and will reach a conclusion soon. The judge is expected
to begin summing up early next week. If it is successful, ITN will
bankrupt the magazine, its publishers and editor.
For details of the case and some transcripts of court proceedings visit:
http://www.informinc.co.uk/itn-vs-lm/court/index.html
Interestingly, ITN appears to have lost a crucial videotape of the uncut
rushes from which the report was edited together -- an accident, of
course...
---
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 22:42:08 +0000
From: Philip Hammond <hammonpb@...>
Reply-To: "STOP NATO: NO PASARAN!" <STOPNATO@...>
Organization: South Bank University
To: "STOP NATO: NO PASARAN!" <STOPNATO@...>
STOP NATO: NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.HOME-PAGE.ORG
Peter Bein wrote:
>
> Can you notify us of the court ruling, Philip? Or will it be on the site you
> link to?
-----------------
The verdict was today: ITN won, & was awarded damages amounting to
375,000 pounds. LM editor Mick Hume said:
'The only thing this court case has proved 'beyond reasonable
doubt' is
that English libel law is a disgrace to democracy and a menace to a free
press.
'As libel defendants, we were assumed to be guilty unless we
could
prove our innocence. The court threw out all of our expert witnesses,
including John Simpson of the BBC and a leading QC. The judge's summing
up was so one-sided that it made ITN's overpaid barrister redundant. And
even though the central fact in our article concerning the position of
the barbed-wire fence in relation to the journalists has never been
seriously challenged, we could not win because the law demanded that we
prove the unprovable.
'We apologise for nothing. But we will not be appealing. Life
is too
short, and other issues too important, to waste any more time in the
bizarre world of the libel courts.
'As I told the judge and jury, I believe in the right of people
to
judge the truth for themselves in the court of public opinion. What we
are allowed to read or hear should not be dictated by ITN, their
lawyers, or even the High Court.
'The future of LM magazine is now uncertain. But we are not
going away,
and we will not keep quiet about the concerns that led us to publish
Thomas Deichmann's article and, reluctantly, to fight this case: freedom
of speech, journalistic standards, and the exploitation of the
Holocaust.
'We would like to thank all those who have supported our stand
for free
speech over the past three years, and our legal team led by Gavin
Millar, who won everything except the verdict.
'In the meantime, if anybody needs a hard-working editor or has
some
cash to invest in an exciting magazine project....'
In due course, further details may become available at
http://www.informinc.co.uk/itn-vs-lm/court/index.html, but the site has
closed down for the moment.
Needless to say, the verdict is a blow for the truth about Bosnia, as
well as free speech. ITN has always admitted Trnopolje was not a
Nazi-style concentration camp: but when its pictures were broadcast
around the world as evidence that it was, ITN did not contradict this
impression. ITN has also not contested Deichmann's revelation that the
'camp' was not surrounded by barbed wire, as it seemed to be in the
reports. That's British justice for you...
---
------------------------------------
SUPPORT LM Magazine!
------------------------------------
(please forward this message as much as you can!)
There is a little book written by Mr. Michael Hume, the editor of LM,
called "Whose war is it anyway? The dangers of the Journalism of
Attachment." If you have not read it, you can get it via LM web page
(it's
about $7 -£5 and you would be supporting them against the libel with
ITN). I
will quote some paragraphs:
"Srebrenica became one of the world media's favourite symbols of Serb
aggression and Muslim suffering after the town was besieged by Bosnian
Serbs in 1993. Since Srebrenica fell in 1995 horror stories of massacres
and alleged mass graves have filled the news. Yet who can recall seeing
reports of the events which led up to the Serb assault on Srebrenica?
Between April 1992, when the war in Bosnia began, and January 1993,
muslim forces drove almost every Serb out of Srebrenica town, while 50
nearby Serbian villages were burned down and many of their inhabitants
killed. By March 1993, 1200 Serbs are estimated to have been killed and
about 3000 wounded, in this small corner of eastern Bosnia. (These
events
were the subject of Clive Gordon's award-winning documentary, "The
Unforgiving", Channel 4 UK, August 1993)
"Yet it was only when the ragtag local Serb army started to mobilise to
push the Muslim back to Srebrenica and away from nearby Bratunac that
the conflict hit the headlines. Suddenly journalists were flocking to
get to
the besieged Muslim enclave, having largely ignored the previous attack
on
Serbs. The Muslims of Srebrenica and the Serbs of Bratunac both
suffered.
But while many in the West have heard of Srebrenica, who has heard of
Bratunac?..."
Regards,
Francisco Javier Bernal
PS: The Merchandise page of LM's site can be found at
http://www.informinc.co.uk/LM/transact/bookstore/index.html
---
The Times (London), 17 March 2000
After ITN's libel victory this week over LM magazine Mick Hume, its
Editor, says the law is a menace to a free press
[PHOTOGRAPH]
Victory: ITN reporters Penny Marshall and Ian Williams
(Photograph: MICHAEL WALTER/PA)
Spare any change guv?
On Tuesday the High Court ordered the connections of LM magazine to pay
ITN and two of its journalists a total of #375,000 in libel damages. On
Wednesday we received a letter from ITN's lawyers, Biddle, demanding to
know when we are going to send them the money. Umm, can I owe you until
I get paid at the end of the month?
Forget about the big bill for legal costs, those damages are more than
enough to bankrupt the cash-strapped defendants: myself as Editor, LM's
co-publisher Helene Guldberg, and the publishing company. As I said on
the steps of the court, what this case has proved "beyond reasonable
doubt" is that English libel law is a disgrace to democracy and a menace
to a free press. The use of that law by a large news organisation
against a magazine with a circulation of 10,000 could have far-reaching
implications for independent and investigative journalism.
Under the libel law, we were assumed to be guilty unless we could prove
our innocence - the reverse of natural justice. Little wonder that only
one in ten libel defendants wins in court.
At the pre-trial review, Mr Justice Morland ruled that none of our
expert witnesses - including John Simpson of the BBC, the writer Phillip
Knightley and a leading QC - could give evidence. So when the case came
to trial, there were 18 ITN witnesses versus me and Thomas Deichmann,
the German author of the article in question, published in LM three
years ago. Presumably that is what the law means by "a level playing
field". Even when our barrister, Gavin Millar, scored heavily in
cross-examination, it did not seem to make any difference to the court.
As the BBC's Nick Higham reported on the evening of the verdict:
"Summing up, Mr Justice Morland told the jury that LM's facts might have
been right, but he asked, did that matter?"
That summing up was so one-sided that it made ITN's barrister redundant.
It reached its nadir when, having quoted extensively from ITN witnesses,
the judge told the jury that he was not going to mention anything that I
or Mr Deichmann had said, because we were not at Trnopolje camp in
northern Bosnia on August 5, 1992. But if eyewitness accounts cannot be
challenged after the event, where does that leave critical journalism?
Advising the jury on damages, the judge said that somebody who lost both
arms in an accident might receive compensation of #100,000, so awarding
the ITN journalists more than #150,000 each for their hurt feelings
would be "excessive". He also said that damages would be aggravated if
the defence had strenuously cross-examined the claimants. The more
robustly we defended ourselves, the higher price we would have to pay.
As a champion of the jury system, I do not blame the jurors who voted
against us after four hours of deliberation. We could not win because
the law demanded that we prove the unprovable - what was going on in the
ITN journalists' minds eight years ago. We have apologised for nothing
but we are not going to appeal. Life is too short to waste any more
time in the bizarre world of the libel courts. The dust-and-wood-polish
atmosphere of Court 14 is no place for journalists to debate important
issues. As I said in the witness box, I believe that people should have
the right to judge the truth for themselves in the court of public
opinion.
The future of our magazine is on the line. Those who know LM will
appreciate that we do not intend to go quietly into the night. Whatever
happens, the attempt to set a new agenda for discussion will carry on.
The LM-initiated events planned for the summer - the month-long
Institute of Ideas and the debates at the Edinburgh festivals - will go
ahead. There is life after a libel trial.
In the meantime, if anybody needs a hard-working editor or has some
money to invest in a magazine that stands up for free speech ...
Mick Hume is the Editor of LM magazine and a Times columnist.
---
Observer, Sunday March 19, 2000
Richard Ingrams' week
Grub St winds around the Inns of Court
Miss Penny Marshall, the ITN journalist who won #150,000 in a libel
action last week against the obscure left-wing magazine, Living Marxism,
or LM as it now calls itself, must have led a very sheltered life. In
the course of her evidence she said that the libel had upset her 'more
than anything that ever happened to me'.
Such evidence of extreme sensitivity on the part of a journalist comes
as no surprise to me, because it is a sad fact that a large number of
those who bring libel actions and then talk in this way in the witness
box are members of my own so-called profession.
Over the years I have had to listen to scores of journalists bearing
their sensitive souls before the jury. I remember, in particular, the
late Nora Beloff, once the political correspondent of this paper,
describing her deep shock and horror when Auberon Waugh wrote in Private
Eye that she had been to bed with every member of Harold Wilson's
Cabinet, though he added: 'No impropriety occurred.'
More shocking perhaps is the apparent belief of hacks that a victory in
the libel courts represents a complete vindication of their motives or
that the truth of any matter is best decided ultimately by a judge and
jury. You have only to call to mind the various rogues and scoundrels
who have won huge damages in recent years to realise that truth is the
very last thing to come out of a libel action.
As to the ITN report from Bosnia that caused all the trouble, I find the
picture of two smiling journalists on the Law Court steps, richer now
between them by #300,000, rather more shocking than the picture of
emaciated Muslims in a Serb detention camp.
[...]
---
Guardian, Saturday March 18, 2000
Lies and libel
As the Irving and ITN cases show, the court is no place to establish the
truth
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Whatever the verdicts, neither action should have been brought. Whatever
the rights and wrongs in either case, the two libel actions which ended
in London this week show yet again how harsh and obscurantist our libel
laws are.
In the suit brought by Penny Marshall and Ian Williams of ITN, the jury
awarded the plaintiffs heavy damages against the magazine LM. The even
weirder action brought by David Irving against Deborah Lipstadt and her
publisher was heard by a judge without a jury. Judgment is reserved and
will be given later.
Both cases ostensibly concerned history and truth. The ITN reporters
claimed that LM had accused them of fabricating a story about the Serb
concentration camp at Trnopolje in Bosnia. Irving says Lipstadt had
accused him of being a "Holocaust denier". While we await the Irving
result, Marshall and Williams claim they have now been vindicated. But
have they?
Whether or not they should have been, neither case could have been
brought in the United States, not since an historic judgment a
quarter-century ago. A broad public-interest defence was extended so
that it is very difficult for a public figure - which plainly includes
the ITN reporters and Irving - to sue for libel.
So far from any such protection for the media, our own libel laws are
heavily stacked against the defendant. A plaintiff doesn't have to prove
any material loss, only that feelings have been hurt and reputation
damaged, something easy to assert but impossible either to quantify or
refute in court. Uniquely in law, the burden of proof is on the
defendant, who has to prove the truth of what was written.
Admirers of the law, like the late Lord Goodman, speciously say that
truth is an absolute defence. But exact truth is likewise very difficult
to demonstrate in court, and an attempt to do so may well be held to
aggravate the libel. As a result, the mere threat of libel is too often
used to silence a newspaper which understandably prefers the discretion
of an apology to the valour of a defended action. If a brazen or frankly
perjurious plaintiff has strong enough nerves, he can push all the way.
Neil Hamilton might have got away with it, Jonathan Aitken nearly got
away with it, and Jeffrey Archer actually did get away with it.
Not that this is a party-political question. One of the most shameful
of all such cases was the "Venetian blind", as it was jocosely known in
the Labour party. In 1957, an article in the Spectator skittishly
suggested that three Labour politicians had been drinking a good deal at
a Socialist conference in Venice. The three, Aneurin Bevan, Richard
Crossman and Morgan Phillips, sued, testified on oath to their sobriety,
and won large damages. Fifteen years later, Crossman boasted (in my
presence) that they had indeed all been toping heavily, and that at
least one of them had been blind drunk.
Apart from questions of truth and falsehood, the latest cases illustrate
the sheer oppressiveness of a law which can be used to punish or even
ruin a foe. Whatever the outcome, it is outrageous that Deborah
Lipstadt should have to give up years of her life to this case, and
spend many weeks in court, with nothing to gain.
While Irving has conducted his own case, the defendants retained the
usual array of solicitors, silk and junior. It has been obvious from the
start that Irving couldn't pay his opponents' costs if he lost. He can
only declare himself bankrupt and leave Lipstadt and Penguin with a bill
more likely in seven figures than six. What is the legal concept of the
vexatious litigant for if not to prevent such an abuse?
If anything, the other case was almost worse, and not just because of
the sight of a huge, rich news organisation using the law to crush a
tiny magazine, however cranky or even obnoxious. It's not often that
Noam Chomsky, Roy Greenslade and Auberon Waugh can be found on the same
side, but their round-robin letter saying that freedom of speech and
media criticism have been curtailed by the ITN case is surely correct.
According to Richard Tait, the editor-in-chief of ITN, the case was
necessary to defend the integrity of the two reporters, and according to
Ed Vulliamy "the law now records that Penny Marshall and Ian Williams
(and myself for that matter) did not lie but told the truth". These
claims are frankly absurd.
Personally (though I don't have to add a rhetorical "Am I alone ...?",
since I know I am not), my view of Bosnia, ITN and LM has been in no way
whatever affected by the case. If anything, I think the less of the
plaintiffs than before, not to say of David Irving. If there are
historical disputes about Auschwitz or Trnopolje, a law court is the
worst possible place to conduct them.
Does Vulliamy seriously believe that our libel courts always establish
the truth? And are Marshall and Williams really happy to find
themselves alongside Lord Archer, of whom the law also once recorded
that he did not lie but told the truth?
The best outcome of these wretched proceedings would a reform of the
law. It is too much to hope that the burden of proving the falsehood of
a statement should be placed on the plaintiff. But there should be a
much broader public-interest defence, and the law of libel - written
defamation - should be assimilated to the law of slander, spoken or
fleeting defamation, in which the plaintiff has to prove actual damage
or material loss.
The trouble is that a reform would have to be introduced in parliament.
And, as the names of Aitken and Archer, not to say Bevan and Crossman,
remind us, politicians have all too much partiality to the existing law.
So we will be stuck with a law which grossly infringes free speech while
producing no real winners. Apart from the lawyers, that is, who have
enjoyed the real victories these past weeks.
As Ogden Nash so well put it: "Professional people have no cares -
Whatever happens, they get theirs."
---
Question and be damned
The case of ITN vs LM only goes to show that it doesn't pay to challenge
a journalist
By Helene Guldberg, LM's Publisher
The Independent, 21 March 2000
In an article headlined "ITN sued journalists to strike a blow for free
speech", published in the Daily Telegraph on 17 March, Richard Tait, the
editor-in-chief of ITN, argues that "attempts to ruin the reputations of
honest journalists are a far greater threat to freedom of speech than
the use of the law to protect those who have been libelled".
In summing up, ITN's silk Tom Shields argued that the recognition in
law of the importance of reputation indicates the democratic nature of
our society. So, in this case, has English libel law struck the correct
balance between the right to a reputation and the right to free speech?
First, let's get some things straight. It has been suggested that there
was a campaign orchestrated by LM magazine against ITN and its two
journalists, Penny Marshall and Ian Williams, and that this is why ITN
felt compelled to sue LM. There was no such campaign. There was an
article - "The picture that fooled the world" - published in February
1997 and there was a press release. Both were critical of the two
journalists concerned, and many of Ms Marshall's colleagues subsequently
phoned her enquiring about the allegations. These phone calls were cited
in the witness box as evidence of the distress she suffered. But all
that has happened is that the journalists' actions in relation to a
particular news broadcast have been criticised. As Thomas Deichmann, the
author of the article, said outside the High Court: "The job of
journalists is to investigate and criticise. If they cannot stand the
heat without running to the High Court, they should get out of the
kitchen."
Journalists, more than most, have means to rebut allegations they feel
are unjust. Ian Williams and Richard Tait have had articles published
since their libel victory. Could they not have done so in 1997 rather
than taking legal action? The use of libel law as a last resort may be
understandable, when all other avenues have failed. As a first resort,
it is inexcusable.
If LM magazine went running to the High Court whenever libelled, we
would be multimillionaires by now (as would many other journalists).
Were we foolhardy to risk our future by taking the principled stance of
refusing to back down and apologise? ITN has since suggested that it
offered us a way out back in September 1997. But the truth is that ITN
gave us no other option. Before even having read the article, ITN
instructed its solicitors to demand we apologise, destroy all copies of
the magazine and pay costs and damages. ITN dragged us to court. It was
prepared to waive damages; but it still demanded that we apologise in
Open Court and in our magazine, as well as footing ITN's legal bill,
which we could have hardly afforded then. In the end, the journalists
were awarded "aggravated damages" for the additional "hurt" of being
subjected to strenuous cross-examination - amounting to a total of
#375,000.
Within 24 hours of the verdict a letter arrived from ITN's solicitors
stating any delay in payment would entitle them to interest. But setting
damages and interest aside, ITN's legal bill alone could bankrupt the
magazine's publishing company, Mick Hume and myself. As many
commentators pointed out last week, the High Court is not the best place
to establish the truth of allegations. The odds are overwhelmingly in
favour of those who sue - therefore having a chilling effect on free
speech. It is presumed that the defamatory statement is false - and the
burden falls on the defendant to prove its truth - a reverse burden of
proof that is almost unique to English libel law. The defendant not only
has to defend the literal meaning - but also possible interpretations or
unintended meanings. It is no wonder defendants only have a one in 10
chance of success!
In Court 14 last week the jury was asked: "Have the defendants
established that Penny Marshall and Ian Williams had compiled television
footage which deliberately misrepresented an emaciated Bosnian Muslim,
Fikret Alic, as being caged behind a barbed-wire fence at the
Serbian-run Trnopolje camp on 5 August 1992 by the selective use of
videotape shots of him?" And the word "deliberately" was emphasised by
the judge. The answer from the jury was "no". In other words, we were
unable to prove what went on in the journalist's heads. In his summing
up, the judge said: "Clearly Ian Williams and Penny Marshall and their
television teams were mistaken in thinking they were not enclosed by the
old barbed-wire fence, but does it matter?"
The implications of this trial for journalism are far-reaching. If
journalists' reputations and feelings are more important than a free
press then the message is not to question the word according to
reporters. If libel is the guarantor of free speech and democracy, then
journalism is the tame creature of bland inoffensiveness.
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
IL CASO DI "LIVING MARXISM" E DEL COLOSSO MEDIATICO ITN
Alcuni anni fa il giornalista tedesco Thomas Deichmann in un articolo
aveva svelato la truffa mediatica del campo di concentramento di
Trnopolje, presso Prijedor, nel quale i serbi avrebbero arbitrariamente
rinchiuso civili musulmani, tenendoli in condizioni di indigenza e
maltrattandoli. Nel suo articolo Deichmann sosteneva che i giornalisti
della ITN autori del principale reportage ad effetto su Trnopolje
avevano in realta' costruito un caso "a tavolino", tra l'altro chiedendo
ad un detenuto malato di sistemarsi dietro al filo spinato della
recinzione di una centralina elettrica per ottenere una foto che
destasse indignazione (sul caso si vedano:
http://www.srpska-mreza.com/lm-f97/lm-f97.html
http://www.informinc.co.uk/ITN-vs-LM/story/LM97_Bosnia.html ).
L'articolo di Deichmann apparve originariamente su "Living Marxism"
(LM), e poi sulla stampa in Germania e sul libro, curato dall'IAC, "NATO
in the Balkans" (in italiano "La NATO nei Balcani", Editori Riuniti
1999). La vicenda viene anche egregiamente spiegata in un filmato
recentemente prodotto da Emperor's Clothes negli USA (si veda piu' sotto
per le modalita' di spedizione della videocassetta).
Evidentemente colta in fallo, la ITN dopo alcuni tentennamenti ha
provveduto a fare causa a LM. La causa e' stata vinta pochi giorni fa
NON perche' LM abbia scritto il falso, ma perche' non e' riuscita a
dimostrare "oltre ogni ragionevole dubbio" di aver detto il vero, e
cioe' che i giornalisti della ITN Penny Marshall e Ian Williams sono dei
bugiardi privi di ogni scrupolo, oltreche' privi di deontologia.
Cosicche' adesso LM rischia di chiudere. Deve infatti risarcire la ITN
con la bellezza di 375mila sterline... Un chiaro monito per chiunque
voglia mettere i bastoni fra le ruote ai signori della guerra a mezzo
stampa.
SOLIDARIETA' CON "LIVING MARXISM"!
CONTRIBUIAMO ALLA SOPRAVVIVENZA DELLA RIVISTA!
CRJ, 31/3/2000
---
>
> STOP NATO: NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.HOME-PAGE.ORG
>
> THE END OF LM MAGAZINE
> Statement by Mick Hume, editor
>
> On Tuesday 14 March, the High Court ordered the connections of LM
> magazine to pay ITN and two of its journalists a total of #375 000 in
> libel damages. The next day, we received a letter from ITN's lawyers,
> Biddle, demanding the money. Within a week they had sent another demand,
> with court order attached.
>
> As a consequence of this, Informinc (LM) Ltd, the company which
> publishes the magazine, is now having to go into liquidation, cease
> trading and make its employees redundant. Myself as editor, and Helene
> Guldberg as co-publisher, also face the threat of personal bankruptcy.
>
> The current April 2000 edition of LM will be the last monthly issue. We
> are trying to raise the finance to publish a final, bumper issue of LM
> in the summer, and go out with all guns blazing.
>
> The LM-initiated Institute of Ideas, a series of events planned to take
> place from June to July, will go ahead in partnership with major
> institutions in London, including the British Library, the Royal
> Institution, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal Society of Arts,
> Tate Modern, and the Union Chapel Project. A new company, the Academy of
> Ideas, has been set up by Claire Fox to coordinate these events.
>
> We would like to thank all of our subscribers and Friends of LM for
> their support. They will be contacted directly about the implications of
> the magazine's closure.
>
> Anybody who can help to finance the final issue of LM should get in
> touch with Helene Guldberg on (020) 7269 9228.
>
> The LM Online website will continue to operate for the time being. As
> for the post-LM future of magazine publishing, watch this space.
>
---
From www.emperors-clothes.com - "JUDGEMENT" (Please forward!)
--- At last we have visual proof that the media lied about Yugoslavia
We have just finished production work on the English version of a
stunning
new film - "JUDGMENT." It exposes the tricks used to concoct phony
pictures
of a nonexistent Serbian 'death camp' in 1992. These doctored images --
especially the famous emaciated man behind barbed wire -- were broadcast
worldwide to dehumanize the Serbs. They led to the deaths of thousands
and
great suffering for millions of human beings.
"JUDGMENT" PROVES THOSE PICTURES WERE CYNICAL FABRICATIONS.
We urge you: Buy this film today Give a copy to a friend who doesn't
want to
believe the mass media would fabricate phony atrocity pictures. Show
this
film on TV stations, show it to local organizations, get it reviewed in
local
papers. It will change people's minds. It will change your mind.
TELLING THE TRUTH, AND OTHER CRIMES
Last week the British alternative magazine, LM, was fined over $500,000
US
for libel. LM had printed a story that that charged British news
station ITN
and reporters Penny Marshall and Ian Williams with fraud. LM said ITN
had
faked the "death camp" pictures to demonize the Serbs.
The Judge in the libel case admitted that ITN might have made some
mistakes.
But he argued: the LM people weren't in Bosnia that day. So how could
LM be
sure what was really happening there?
IN FACT another film crew was present the entire time. They filmed the
footage used in "JUDGMENT".
"JUDGMENT", proves LM was simply telling the truth. "JUDGMENT" proves
Penny
Marshall lied. "JUDGMENT" shows how Marshall produced the picture that
fooled the world and justified a war.
The ITN crew visited a POW center and a refugee camp. By sheer luck
they
were accompanied by a crew from Serbian television (RTS). The RTS crew
filmed the ITN crew at work. Using this RTS footage, a small Yugoslav
film
studio has recreated the events of that day. Emperors-Clothes edited
the
Yugoslav movie to produce the English language film, "JUDGMENT".
RTS is the TV station that NATO bombed in April, 1999, killing 20
people.
The film is dedicated to those dead, whose murders began with the ITN
pictures. We say this because the images that Penny Marshall fabricated
in
1992 began the dehumanization of the Serbian people. ITN and Penny
Marshall
laid the political basis for the bombing of the Bosnian loyalist
government
and of Serbia itself a year ago.
WHAT THIS FILM PROVES
1) The Loyalist ("Serbian") Authorities were humane.
>From the pictures that ITN produced one would think that Marshall and her
crew had sneaked into a death camp and shot their film when nobody was
watching. Not so. The ITN crew visited two surprisingly casual and
humane
locations. They were protected but not controlled by the loyalist
authorities whom they later compared to Nazi's.
2) Marshall KNEW the loyalists were humane.
She and the crew from RTS interviewed POWs', their wives, non-POW
refugees, a
doctor, at least one red cross worker, the commander of the POW Center.
The
film shows these interviews. Marshall simply suppressed this evidence
of
humane treatment. Instead she staged some pictures. These were then
doctored to produce Nazi-like images for mass consumption. The height
of
cynicism and dishonesty.
3) The refugees SAID they were treated decently.
Marshall is shown arguing with one refugee. She tries to coerce the man
to
say something anti-Yugoslav. He refuses. "No, no," he protests
vehemently.
"Not a prison. No, no. REFUGEE center. They treat us very kind. No,
no,
very kind." Undeterred, Marshall used this very location to stage her
phony
death camp shots.
4) Marshall staged the death camp sequence seen around the world.
She went out of her way to film from inside an awkward storage area.
Why?
Because one side had what she wanted: a fence, mainly chicken wire but
with a
few strands of barbed wire at the top. Shooting through the barbed
wire,
Marshall talked to refugees OUTSIDE the fence. She then doctored the
raw
footage to produce false images of prisoners behind barbed wire.
5) Marshall and Ian Williams were filmed in the act of lying.
The amazing thing is -- the RTS people were filming a few feet away.
They
caught the same shots from a slightly different angle. They got
pictures of
Marshall, Ian Williams, a cameraman, a man holding a mike. You will
see,
step by step, just how Marshall doctored her pictures to produce the
look of
a Nazi death camp. That is, the film takes footage shot by RTS and then
proceeds to alter it, as you watch, producing the phony ITN photos of
Nazi-like atrocities.
This film will change people's minds.
It documents that Marshall and ITN have committed the worst crime
against
humanity: they lied to millions of people in order to justify a war.
Order the film now for $19.95 plus shipping and handling. Show it to
everyone you can.
VHS TAPES NOW AVAILABLE (Prices on PAL and SECAM tapes as soon as
possible)
Base price, $19.95 plus $1 tax ONLY in Massachusetts
Cost including shipping and handling:
2-3 days within US - $25.00
1 day in Massachusetts - $26.00
Next day outside Massachusetts but within US add $11.00
Europe (5 days) $26.50
New Zealand, Australia and Japan (about 6 days) Total $30.00
Canada 2-3 days - $26.00
Rest of Asia, Africa, former Soviet Union, etc. - $22.00
(Special shipping available on request)
ORDER BY MAIL, BY SECURE SERVER OR BY PHONE
BY MAIL - send check and instructions to EMPERORS CLOTHES, PO Box
610-321,
Newton, MA 02461-0321 Please state how you heard about the film.
BY PHONE - call 617-916-1705 from 8:30 am to 4:30 PM Eastern Standard
Time
BY SECURE SERVER - go to http://emperors-clothes.com/howyour.html#donate
Pay the appropriate amount AS A DONATION. Then PLEASE email us stating
the
amount donated and the number of films desired. Send the email to
emperors1000@... This must be done so we'll know your donation is to
pay
for the film! Please also state how you heard about the film.
WE PRESENTLY HAVE FILMS IN STOCK. WE CAN REPLENISH STOCK WITHIN TWO
DAYS.
VIEW it. SHOW it to friends. MAIL IT to friends and relatives. SHOW
it to
organizations, churches, unions, at schools. GET it on TV.
NOTE TO WEBSITES, MAGAZINES AND NEWSPAPERS AND TV STATIONS: IF YOU
ADVERTISE
THIS FILM YOUR ORGANIZATION CAN RECEIVE A COMMISSION FOR EVERY FILM YOU
HELP
TO SELL. Drop us an email for details. Emperors1000@.... So far
the
film is being distributed by emperors-clothes.com and antiwar.com. Care
to
join us?
---
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 23:42:57 +0000
From: Philip Hammond <hammonpb@...>
Reply-To: "STOP NATO: NO PASARAN!" <STOPNATO@...>
Organization: South Bank University
To: "STOP NATO: NO PASARAN!" <STOPNATO@...>
STOP NATO: NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.HOME-PAGE.ORG
I imagine many people will have already seen the Thomas Deichmann
article; what you may not know is that Deichmann was in court today
(Friday) because of it, as was Mick Hume, the editor of the magazine
(LM, formerly Living Marxism) which originally published the story.
The libel suit brought by ITN is going through the High Court in London
at the moment, and will reach a conclusion soon. The judge is expected
to begin summing up early next week. If it is successful, ITN will
bankrupt the magazine, its publishers and editor.
For details of the case and some transcripts of court proceedings visit:
http://www.informinc.co.uk/itn-vs-lm/court/index.html
Interestingly, ITN appears to have lost a crucial videotape of the uncut
rushes from which the report was edited together -- an accident, of
course...
---
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 22:42:08 +0000
From: Philip Hammond <hammonpb@...>
Reply-To: "STOP NATO: NO PASARAN!" <STOPNATO@...>
Organization: South Bank University
To: "STOP NATO: NO PASARAN!" <STOPNATO@...>
STOP NATO: NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.HOME-PAGE.ORG
Peter Bein wrote:
>
> Can you notify us of the court ruling, Philip? Or will it be on the site you
> link to?
-----------------
The verdict was today: ITN won, & was awarded damages amounting to
375,000 pounds. LM editor Mick Hume said:
'The only thing this court case has proved 'beyond reasonable
doubt' is
that English libel law is a disgrace to democracy and a menace to a free
press.
'As libel defendants, we were assumed to be guilty unless we
could
prove our innocence. The court threw out all of our expert witnesses,
including John Simpson of the BBC and a leading QC. The judge's summing
up was so one-sided that it made ITN's overpaid barrister redundant. And
even though the central fact in our article concerning the position of
the barbed-wire fence in relation to the journalists has never been
seriously challenged, we could not win because the law demanded that we
prove the unprovable.
'We apologise for nothing. But we will not be appealing. Life
is too
short, and other issues too important, to waste any more time in the
bizarre world of the libel courts.
'As I told the judge and jury, I believe in the right of people
to
judge the truth for themselves in the court of public opinion. What we
are allowed to read or hear should not be dictated by ITN, their
lawyers, or even the High Court.
'The future of LM magazine is now uncertain. But we are not
going away,
and we will not keep quiet about the concerns that led us to publish
Thomas Deichmann's article and, reluctantly, to fight this case: freedom
of speech, journalistic standards, and the exploitation of the
Holocaust.
'We would like to thank all those who have supported our stand
for free
speech over the past three years, and our legal team led by Gavin
Millar, who won everything except the verdict.
'In the meantime, if anybody needs a hard-working editor or has
some
cash to invest in an exciting magazine project....'
In due course, further details may become available at
http://www.informinc.co.uk/itn-vs-lm/court/index.html, but the site has
closed down for the moment.
Needless to say, the verdict is a blow for the truth about Bosnia, as
well as free speech. ITN has always admitted Trnopolje was not a
Nazi-style concentration camp: but when its pictures were broadcast
around the world as evidence that it was, ITN did not contradict this
impression. ITN has also not contested Deichmann's revelation that the
'camp' was not surrounded by barbed wire, as it seemed to be in the
reports. That's British justice for you...
---
------------------------------------
SUPPORT LM Magazine!
------------------------------------
(please forward this message as much as you can!)
There is a little book written by Mr. Michael Hume, the editor of LM,
called "Whose war is it anyway? The dangers of the Journalism of
Attachment." If you have not read it, you can get it via LM web page
(it's
about $7 -£5 and you would be supporting them against the libel with
ITN). I
will quote some paragraphs:
"Srebrenica became one of the world media's favourite symbols of Serb
aggression and Muslim suffering after the town was besieged by Bosnian
Serbs in 1993. Since Srebrenica fell in 1995 horror stories of massacres
and alleged mass graves have filled the news. Yet who can recall seeing
reports of the events which led up to the Serb assault on Srebrenica?
Between April 1992, when the war in Bosnia began, and January 1993,
muslim forces drove almost every Serb out of Srebrenica town, while 50
nearby Serbian villages were burned down and many of their inhabitants
killed. By March 1993, 1200 Serbs are estimated to have been killed and
about 3000 wounded, in this small corner of eastern Bosnia. (These
events
were the subject of Clive Gordon's award-winning documentary, "The
Unforgiving", Channel 4 UK, August 1993)
"Yet it was only when the ragtag local Serb army started to mobilise to
push the Muslim back to Srebrenica and away from nearby Bratunac that
the conflict hit the headlines. Suddenly journalists were flocking to
get to
the besieged Muslim enclave, having largely ignored the previous attack
on
Serbs. The Muslims of Srebrenica and the Serbs of Bratunac both
suffered.
But while many in the West have heard of Srebrenica, who has heard of
Bratunac?..."
Regards,
Francisco Javier Bernal
PS: The Merchandise page of LM's site can be found at
http://www.informinc.co.uk/LM/transact/bookstore/index.html
---
The Times (London), 17 March 2000
After ITN's libel victory this week over LM magazine Mick Hume, its
Editor, says the law is a menace to a free press
[PHOTOGRAPH]
Victory: ITN reporters Penny Marshall and Ian Williams
(Photograph: MICHAEL WALTER/PA)
Spare any change guv?
On Tuesday the High Court ordered the connections of LM magazine to pay
ITN and two of its journalists a total of #375,000 in libel damages. On
Wednesday we received a letter from ITN's lawyers, Biddle, demanding to
know when we are going to send them the money. Umm, can I owe you until
I get paid at the end of the month?
Forget about the big bill for legal costs, those damages are more than
enough to bankrupt the cash-strapped defendants: myself as Editor, LM's
co-publisher Helene Guldberg, and the publishing company. As I said on
the steps of the court, what this case has proved "beyond reasonable
doubt" is that English libel law is a disgrace to democracy and a menace
to a free press. The use of that law by a large news organisation
against a magazine with a circulation of 10,000 could have far-reaching
implications for independent and investigative journalism.
Under the libel law, we were assumed to be guilty unless we could prove
our innocence - the reverse of natural justice. Little wonder that only
one in ten libel defendants wins in court.
At the pre-trial review, Mr Justice Morland ruled that none of our
expert witnesses - including John Simpson of the BBC, the writer Phillip
Knightley and a leading QC - could give evidence. So when the case came
to trial, there were 18 ITN witnesses versus me and Thomas Deichmann,
the German author of the article in question, published in LM three
years ago. Presumably that is what the law means by "a level playing
field". Even when our barrister, Gavin Millar, scored heavily in
cross-examination, it did not seem to make any difference to the court.
As the BBC's Nick Higham reported on the evening of the verdict:
"Summing up, Mr Justice Morland told the jury that LM's facts might have
been right, but he asked, did that matter?"
That summing up was so one-sided that it made ITN's barrister redundant.
It reached its nadir when, having quoted extensively from ITN witnesses,
the judge told the jury that he was not going to mention anything that I
or Mr Deichmann had said, because we were not at Trnopolje camp in
northern Bosnia on August 5, 1992. But if eyewitness accounts cannot be
challenged after the event, where does that leave critical journalism?
Advising the jury on damages, the judge said that somebody who lost both
arms in an accident might receive compensation of #100,000, so awarding
the ITN journalists more than #150,000 each for their hurt feelings
would be "excessive". He also said that damages would be aggravated if
the defence had strenuously cross-examined the claimants. The more
robustly we defended ourselves, the higher price we would have to pay.
As a champion of the jury system, I do not blame the jurors who voted
against us after four hours of deliberation. We could not win because
the law demanded that we prove the unprovable - what was going on in the
ITN journalists' minds eight years ago. We have apologised for nothing
but we are not going to appeal. Life is too short to waste any more
time in the bizarre world of the libel courts. The dust-and-wood-polish
atmosphere of Court 14 is no place for journalists to debate important
issues. As I said in the witness box, I believe that people should have
the right to judge the truth for themselves in the court of public
opinion.
The future of our magazine is on the line. Those who know LM will
appreciate that we do not intend to go quietly into the night. Whatever
happens, the attempt to set a new agenda for discussion will carry on.
The LM-initiated events planned for the summer - the month-long
Institute of Ideas and the debates at the Edinburgh festivals - will go
ahead. There is life after a libel trial.
In the meantime, if anybody needs a hard-working editor or has some
money to invest in a magazine that stands up for free speech ...
Mick Hume is the Editor of LM magazine and a Times columnist.
---
Observer, Sunday March 19, 2000
Richard Ingrams' week
Grub St winds around the Inns of Court
Miss Penny Marshall, the ITN journalist who won #150,000 in a libel
action last week against the obscure left-wing magazine, Living Marxism,
or LM as it now calls itself, must have led a very sheltered life. In
the course of her evidence she said that the libel had upset her 'more
than anything that ever happened to me'.
Such evidence of extreme sensitivity on the part of a journalist comes
as no surprise to me, because it is a sad fact that a large number of
those who bring libel actions and then talk in this way in the witness
box are members of my own so-called profession.
Over the years I have had to listen to scores of journalists bearing
their sensitive souls before the jury. I remember, in particular, the
late Nora Beloff, once the political correspondent of this paper,
describing her deep shock and horror when Auberon Waugh wrote in Private
Eye that she had been to bed with every member of Harold Wilson's
Cabinet, though he added: 'No impropriety occurred.'
More shocking perhaps is the apparent belief of hacks that a victory in
the libel courts represents a complete vindication of their motives or
that the truth of any matter is best decided ultimately by a judge and
jury. You have only to call to mind the various rogues and scoundrels
who have won huge damages in recent years to realise that truth is the
very last thing to come out of a libel action.
As to the ITN report from Bosnia that caused all the trouble, I find the
picture of two smiling journalists on the Law Court steps, richer now
between them by #300,000, rather more shocking than the picture of
emaciated Muslims in a Serb detention camp.
[...]
---
Guardian, Saturday March 18, 2000
Lies and libel
As the Irving and ITN cases show, the court is no place to establish the
truth
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Whatever the verdicts, neither action should have been brought. Whatever
the rights and wrongs in either case, the two libel actions which ended
in London this week show yet again how harsh and obscurantist our libel
laws are.
In the suit brought by Penny Marshall and Ian Williams of ITN, the jury
awarded the plaintiffs heavy damages against the magazine LM. The even
weirder action brought by David Irving against Deborah Lipstadt and her
publisher was heard by a judge without a jury. Judgment is reserved and
will be given later.
Both cases ostensibly concerned history and truth. The ITN reporters
claimed that LM had accused them of fabricating a story about the Serb
concentration camp at Trnopolje in Bosnia. Irving says Lipstadt had
accused him of being a "Holocaust denier". While we await the Irving
result, Marshall and Williams claim they have now been vindicated. But
have they?
Whether or not they should have been, neither case could have been
brought in the United States, not since an historic judgment a
quarter-century ago. A broad public-interest defence was extended so
that it is very difficult for a public figure - which plainly includes
the ITN reporters and Irving - to sue for libel.
So far from any such protection for the media, our own libel laws are
heavily stacked against the defendant. A plaintiff doesn't have to prove
any material loss, only that feelings have been hurt and reputation
damaged, something easy to assert but impossible either to quantify or
refute in court. Uniquely in law, the burden of proof is on the
defendant, who has to prove the truth of what was written.
Admirers of the law, like the late Lord Goodman, speciously say that
truth is an absolute defence. But exact truth is likewise very difficult
to demonstrate in court, and an attempt to do so may well be held to
aggravate the libel. As a result, the mere threat of libel is too often
used to silence a newspaper which understandably prefers the discretion
of an apology to the valour of a defended action. If a brazen or frankly
perjurious plaintiff has strong enough nerves, he can push all the way.
Neil Hamilton might have got away with it, Jonathan Aitken nearly got
away with it, and Jeffrey Archer actually did get away with it.
Not that this is a party-political question. One of the most shameful
of all such cases was the "Venetian blind", as it was jocosely known in
the Labour party. In 1957, an article in the Spectator skittishly
suggested that three Labour politicians had been drinking a good deal at
a Socialist conference in Venice. The three, Aneurin Bevan, Richard
Crossman and Morgan Phillips, sued, testified on oath to their sobriety,
and won large damages. Fifteen years later, Crossman boasted (in my
presence) that they had indeed all been toping heavily, and that at
least one of them had been blind drunk.
Apart from questions of truth and falsehood, the latest cases illustrate
the sheer oppressiveness of a law which can be used to punish or even
ruin a foe. Whatever the outcome, it is outrageous that Deborah
Lipstadt should have to give up years of her life to this case, and
spend many weeks in court, with nothing to gain.
While Irving has conducted his own case, the defendants retained the
usual array of solicitors, silk and junior. It has been obvious from the
start that Irving couldn't pay his opponents' costs if he lost. He can
only declare himself bankrupt and leave Lipstadt and Penguin with a bill
more likely in seven figures than six. What is the legal concept of the
vexatious litigant for if not to prevent such an abuse?
If anything, the other case was almost worse, and not just because of
the sight of a huge, rich news organisation using the law to crush a
tiny magazine, however cranky or even obnoxious. It's not often that
Noam Chomsky, Roy Greenslade and Auberon Waugh can be found on the same
side, but their round-robin letter saying that freedom of speech and
media criticism have been curtailed by the ITN case is surely correct.
According to Richard Tait, the editor-in-chief of ITN, the case was
necessary to defend the integrity of the two reporters, and according to
Ed Vulliamy "the law now records that Penny Marshall and Ian Williams
(and myself for that matter) did not lie but told the truth". These
claims are frankly absurd.
Personally (though I don't have to add a rhetorical "Am I alone ...?",
since I know I am not), my view of Bosnia, ITN and LM has been in no way
whatever affected by the case. If anything, I think the less of the
plaintiffs than before, not to say of David Irving. If there are
historical disputes about Auschwitz or Trnopolje, a law court is the
worst possible place to conduct them.
Does Vulliamy seriously believe that our libel courts always establish
the truth? And are Marshall and Williams really happy to find
themselves alongside Lord Archer, of whom the law also once recorded
that he did not lie but told the truth?
The best outcome of these wretched proceedings would a reform of the
law. It is too much to hope that the burden of proving the falsehood of
a statement should be placed on the plaintiff. But there should be a
much broader public-interest defence, and the law of libel - written
defamation - should be assimilated to the law of slander, spoken or
fleeting defamation, in which the plaintiff has to prove actual damage
or material loss.
The trouble is that a reform would have to be introduced in parliament.
And, as the names of Aitken and Archer, not to say Bevan and Crossman,
remind us, politicians have all too much partiality to the existing law.
So we will be stuck with a law which grossly infringes free speech while
producing no real winners. Apart from the lawyers, that is, who have
enjoyed the real victories these past weeks.
As Ogden Nash so well put it: "Professional people have no cares -
Whatever happens, they get theirs."
---
Question and be damned
The case of ITN vs LM only goes to show that it doesn't pay to challenge
a journalist
By Helene Guldberg, LM's Publisher
The Independent, 21 March 2000
In an article headlined "ITN sued journalists to strike a blow for free
speech", published in the Daily Telegraph on 17 March, Richard Tait, the
editor-in-chief of ITN, argues that "attempts to ruin the reputations of
honest journalists are a far greater threat to freedom of speech than
the use of the law to protect those who have been libelled".
In summing up, ITN's silk Tom Shields argued that the recognition in
law of the importance of reputation indicates the democratic nature of
our society. So, in this case, has English libel law struck the correct
balance between the right to a reputation and the right to free speech?
First, let's get some things straight. It has been suggested that there
was a campaign orchestrated by LM magazine against ITN and its two
journalists, Penny Marshall and Ian Williams, and that this is why ITN
felt compelled to sue LM. There was no such campaign. There was an
article - "The picture that fooled the world" - published in February
1997 and there was a press release. Both were critical of the two
journalists concerned, and many of Ms Marshall's colleagues subsequently
phoned her enquiring about the allegations. These phone calls were cited
in the witness box as evidence of the distress she suffered. But all
that has happened is that the journalists' actions in relation to a
particular news broadcast have been criticised. As Thomas Deichmann, the
author of the article, said outside the High Court: "The job of
journalists is to investigate and criticise. If they cannot stand the
heat without running to the High Court, they should get out of the
kitchen."
Journalists, more than most, have means to rebut allegations they feel
are unjust. Ian Williams and Richard Tait have had articles published
since their libel victory. Could they not have done so in 1997 rather
than taking legal action? The use of libel law as a last resort may be
understandable, when all other avenues have failed. As a first resort,
it is inexcusable.
If LM magazine went running to the High Court whenever libelled, we
would be multimillionaires by now (as would many other journalists).
Were we foolhardy to risk our future by taking the principled stance of
refusing to back down and apologise? ITN has since suggested that it
offered us a way out back in September 1997. But the truth is that ITN
gave us no other option. Before even having read the article, ITN
instructed its solicitors to demand we apologise, destroy all copies of
the magazine and pay costs and damages. ITN dragged us to court. It was
prepared to waive damages; but it still demanded that we apologise in
Open Court and in our magazine, as well as footing ITN's legal bill,
which we could have hardly afforded then. In the end, the journalists
were awarded "aggravated damages" for the additional "hurt" of being
subjected to strenuous cross-examination - amounting to a total of
#375,000.
Within 24 hours of the verdict a letter arrived from ITN's solicitors
stating any delay in payment would entitle them to interest. But setting
damages and interest aside, ITN's legal bill alone could bankrupt the
magazine's publishing company, Mick Hume and myself. As many
commentators pointed out last week, the High Court is not the best place
to establish the truth of allegations. The odds are overwhelmingly in
favour of those who sue - therefore having a chilling effect on free
speech. It is presumed that the defamatory statement is false - and the
burden falls on the defendant to prove its truth - a reverse burden of
proof that is almost unique to English libel law. The defendant not only
has to defend the literal meaning - but also possible interpretations or
unintended meanings. It is no wonder defendants only have a one in 10
chance of success!
In Court 14 last week the jury was asked: "Have the defendants
established that Penny Marshall and Ian Williams had compiled television
footage which deliberately misrepresented an emaciated Bosnian Muslim,
Fikret Alic, as being caged behind a barbed-wire fence at the
Serbian-run Trnopolje camp on 5 August 1992 by the selective use of
videotape shots of him?" And the word "deliberately" was emphasised by
the judge. The answer from the jury was "no". In other words, we were
unable to prove what went on in the journalist's heads. In his summing
up, the judge said: "Clearly Ian Williams and Penny Marshall and their
television teams were mistaken in thinking they were not enclosed by the
old barbed-wire fence, but does it matter?"
The implications of this trial for journalism are far-reaching. If
journalists' reputations and feelings are more important than a free
press then the message is not to question the word according to
reporters. If libel is the guarantor of free speech and democracy, then
journalism is the tame creature of bland inoffensiveness.
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