5364 Crimini contro i serbi di Bosnia / 1: Atif Dudakovic

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Crimini contro i serbi di Bosnia / 1: Atif Dudakovic


1) SERBIA WEBSITE POSTS VIDEO OF 1995 MURDER OF SERB POWS BY CROATIAN PARAMILITARY

BBC Monitoring International Reports - August 4, 2006 Friday

2) CROATIAN OFFICIALS SAY BOSNIAN ARMY BEHIND WAR CRIME ON KRAJINA SERB TAPE

BBC Monitoring International Reports - August 7, 2006 Monday

3) SERBIA: VIDEO PROMPTS REQUEST FOR ARREST OF BOSNIAN GENERAL
ADN Kronos International (Italy) - August 9, 2006

4) Serbia seeks justice for ex-commander 
Associated Press - August 11, 2006

5) WAR, CRIMES AND VIDEOTAPES
www.iwpr.net - IWPR'S TRIBUNAL UPDATE No. 463, August 11, 2006

6) CROATIAN SERB REFUGEE RECOGNIZES MISSING FATHER ON TAPE AIRED BY SERBIAN TV
BBC Monitoring International Reports - August 13, 2006, Sunday

7) Il generale nella tempesta
Osservatorio Balcani - 18.08.2006

8) BOSNIA: SERBS PRESENT NEW EVIDENCE OF ALLEGED MUSLIM WAR CRIMES
ADN Kronos International (Italy) - September 6, 2006

9) BOSNIA: VIDEO MOSTRA COMANDANTE MUSULMANO CHE ORDINA CRIMINI
(ANSA) - SARAJEVO, 6 SET

10) BOSNIA: SERB LEADER SLAMS AUTHORITIES FOR IGNORING MUSLIM CRIMES
ADN Kronos International (Italy) - January 16, 2007

11) Nuovo filmato-testimonianza contro un generale musulmano Bosniaco
Resistenze.org / DPA, 9 Febbraio 2007

12) An Excerpt from: "Yugoslavia: Human Rights Watch in Service to the War Party"
by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson and George Szamuely


LINKS:

Download the Atif Dudakovic video at: 

http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/documents/oluja.rm [33 MB RealVideo File]


Guerre, crimes et vidéos

Depuis le début du mois d’août, une série de cassettes vidéo montre les horribles crimes de guerre perpétrés en 1995 contre des Serbes en Croatie et en Bosnie-Herzégovine, dans le cadre de l’opération « Tempête ». Le général bosniaque Atif Dudakovic est particulièrement mis en cause...

http://balkans.courriers.info/article6929.html


=== 1 ===

http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/b92080406.htm

SERBIA WEBSITE POSTS VIDEO OF 1995 MURDER OF SERB POWS BY CROATIAN PARAMILITARY
BBC Monitoring International Reports - August 4, 2006 Friday

Excerpt from report by Belgrade-based Radio B92 on 4 August
Source: Radio B92, Belgrade, in Serbian 1511 gmt 4 Aug 06
Copyright 2006 Financial Times Information
Global News Wire - Asia Africa Intelligence Wire
Copyright 2006 BBC Monitoring/BBC Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Posted for Fair Use only.


Belgrade, Zagreb, Banja Luka, 4 August: The 11th anniversary of Croatia's military Operation Storm was marked with a commemoration in St Mark's Church and a gathering in Nikola Pasic Square [in central Belgrade] today.

Following the commemoration, a protest walk from St Mark's Church to Nikola Pasic Square was organized by the Association of Families of Missing Persons from Krajina [part of Croatia formerly with Serb majority]. A resolution was read out in Nikola Pasic Square to several hundred Serbs from Croatia and the families of those killed and missing in the Croatian army operation, demanding that "Croatian officials - for the sake of peace, reconciliation and a shared life - reveal the truth about 'Storm' in which genocide against the Serb people was carried out. This should be done".

B92 has acquired a video recording compiled by the Hague prosecution showing the events on 7-8 August 1995. The video shows how members of the "Black Mamba" Croatian paramilitary unit and "Hamza" platoon of the Bosnia-Hercegovina Army settled scores with Serb soldiers but also civilians who were leaving Krajina. The participation of the latter in Operation Storm is less well known. This tape of war crimes was made with an amateur camera and those who taped it are the participants themselves.

The video recording contains a scene of the murder of an ethnic Serb who surrendered and was sitting on the ground with his hands up, the torching of houses of the exiled population from an area extending from Glina to Dvor na Uni and the abuse of elderly persons, refugees from the intercepted column.

Download video at: http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/documents/oluja.rm [33 MB RealVideo File]


=== 2 ===

http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/hrt080706.htm

CROATIAN OFFICIALS SAY BOSNIAN ARMY BEHIND WAR CRIME ON KRAJINA SERB TAPE
BBC Monitoring International Reports - August 7, 2006 Monday

Excerpt from report by Croatian TV on 7 August

[Presenter] Following the broadcast of an amateur videotape from 1995 in which, according to media, it can be seen how members of the Hamza unit of the Bosnia-Hercegovina Army and members of the Croatian paramilitary unit Black Mambas killed detained Serb civilians and soldiers, the Hague tribunal [Chief] Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte will receive them tomorrow. [Passage omitted: more on previously covered details]

[Reporter] The Croatian Public Prosecutor's Office has the 11-year-old tape of the alleged murder of a detained Serb civilian. The office received the tape today, we have unofficially learnt, but they cannot reveal from whom. The tape, they say, shows wartime actions by the 505th Buzin Knights' Brigade [as heard] of the Bosnia-Hercegovina Army 5th Corps on the territory of two villages near Dvor na Uni, Donji Zirovac and Gornji Zirovac. [Passage omitted: more on the same]

[Reporter] It can be seen from the contested tape that members of the Croatian Army did take part in the liberation of Dvor na Uni, but a source who wishes to remain anonymous has told us that nothing points to them having participated in the alleged crimes. The Interior Ministry has been asked to process the case and establish the circumstances surrounding the events shown in this tape.

[Interior Ministry spokesman Zlatko Mehun] If there are really elements for initiating any penal proceedings, Croatian police will do the job they are asked to do by the state prosecution regardless of who the alleged perpetrators may be.

[Reporter] As we have learnt, the case will be sent to the Sisak police directorate. The Croatian Public Prosecutor's Office is constantly in contact with the Bosnia-Hercegovina Public Prosecutor's Office, which, we have learnt, is working intensively on establishing who the perpetrators are, since it is suspected on the basis of the videotape that members of the Bosnia-Hercegovina Army were involved.

That is what a statement by the Croatian government spokesman [Ratko Macek] is also indicating. Ratko Macek has confirmed that he has seen the contested tape. He said that this material had been previously known to the public, adding that it had undoubtedly been taped somewhere in Bosnia and that it did not concern Croatian Army members.

Source: HRT1 TV, Zagreb, in Croatian 1730 gmt 7 Aug 06

Copyright 2006 Financial Times Information
Posted for Fair Use only.


=== 3 ===

http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level_English.php?cat=Politics&loid=8.0.329078520&par=0

 ADN Kronos International (Italy) - August 9, 2006

 SERBIA: VIDEO PROMPTS REQUEST FOR ARREST OF BOSNIAN GENERAL

 Belgrade - The government of Serbia has urged Bosnian
 authorities to arrest General Atif Dudakovic for
 crimes allegedly committed against Serb civilians in a
 military operation “Storm” in August 1995. 
 Dudakovic was the commander of the Fifth corps of the
 Bosnian Muslim army, which helped Croatian forces in
 crushing Serb rebellion in Croatia’s Krajina region in
 August 1995. 
 Last Friday Belgrade television station B92 broadcast
 a video showing members of a military unit “Hamza”,
 under Dudakovic’s command, killing a Serb civilian
 after he had thrown his arms up in surrender and the
 burning of Serbian villages.
 The video caused a commotion among the Serbian public,
 which generally believes that the International
 Tribunal for War Crimes in Former Yugoslavia (ICTY)
 has neglected Serbian victims of last decade's Balkan
 wars which were triggered by the disintegration of
 former Yugoslavia. 
 Out of some 150 people indicted by the Tribunal most
 were Serbs, and of the 22 sentenced so far, 18 are
 Serbs.
 A Serbian war crimes prosecutor, Vladimir Vukcevic,
 has sent the video to The Hague, but also to his
 Croatian and Bosnian colleagues, demanding punishment
 of the culprits.
 The ICTY has concluded its list of indictees and all
 new cases are being turned to local courts.
 Vukcevic’s spokesman Bruno Vekaric has proposed a
 creation of a regional body for coordinating the new
 indictments and trials, suggesting that local courts
 might obstruct justice.
 Belgrade television on Monday night showed another
 video, showing Dudakovic commanding his forces in the
 field near the town of Bosanski Petrovac and ordering
 them to burn Serbian villages.
 “It is all Serbian, burn it,” the video showed
 Dudakovic ordering his forces.
 “Atif Dudakovic and other war criminals who committed
 crimes against Serbs must be arrested and face justice
 for their crimes,” the Serbian government said in a
 sharply worded statement Tuesday night.
 ....
 The video's showing has promtped Milorad Dodik, Prime
 Minister of Bosnian Serb entity Republika Srpska,
 demanded that Bosnian authorities press criminal
 charges against Dudakovic and others responsible.
 “Everything but a quick investigation and arrest of
 those responsible will be a proof that the crimes
 committed during the war were measured by two
 different yardsticks,” Dodik said. “These crimes
 unambiguously crumble the aura of a hero that
 Dudakovic has built about himself and put him were he
 belongs – among those responsible for war crimes."


=== 4 ===

http://www.localnewswatch.com/benton/stories/index.php?action=fullnews&id=210037

 Associated Press - August 11, 2006

 Serbia seeks justice for ex-commander 

By MISHA SAVIC

 BELGRADE, Serbia - Serbia has demanded that Bosnia
 prosecute a wartime Muslim commander allegedly seen in
 recently released video footage ordering the
 destruction of Serb homes in 1995 in western Bosnia. 
 More than 200,000 Serbs fled during the offensive —
 the biggest single exodus in the Balkan wars of the
 1990s. 
 Many of them crossed through parts of western Bosnia
 in search of safety, and more than a hundred were
 killed. [Numbers of those expelled and killed
 generally estimated to be far larger - RR]
 The footage — first aired by Belgrade-based B92
 television, then by Serbia‘s state television —
 triggered outrage among many Serbs, who often accuse
 the U.N. tribunal of being biased against them and
 unwilling to investigate cases in which Serbs were the
 victims. 
 "The recordings, which beyond any doubt testify about
 Dudakovic‘s misdeeds, represent evidence that must be
 taken as the basis for immediate action by police and
 judiciary," the government said, urging Bosnia‘s
 authorities to "act to bring war criminals to
 justice."
....
 Serbian prosecutors said they have handed over copies
 of the tapes to their colleagues in Bosnia and
 Croatia, as well as to the Netherlands-based U.N. war
 crimes court for the former Yugoslavia. 


=== 5 ===

www.iwpr.net 
IWPR'S TRIBUNAL UPDATE No. 463, August 11, 2006

WAR, CRIMES AND VIDEOTAPES

A series of videos of apparent war crimes against Serbs stir controversy across former Yugoslavia.

By Merdijana Sadovic in Sarajevo

Videos aired this week showing abuses against Serbs in 1995 have triggered angry reaction in the region and sparked debate on whether broadcasting possible war crimes on national television is the best way to serve justice.
While most analysts agree that such videotapes coming to light is a positive development, they also warn against local authorities using them for political gain - manipulating the situation by releasing only what they see fit and when it suits them.
It is hardly a coincidence that the first in this series of videos was broadcast in Serbia on the eleventh anniversary of Operation Storm - a large scale operation carried out by the Croatian army in conjunction with Bosnian Muslim forces to recapture the Serb-held Krajina region in August 1995.
It was the Croatian army's most successful military operation during their 1991-1995 war with Serb forces. Hundreds of ethnic Serbs were killed during the offensive, which also forced about  200,000 to flee Croatia, mostly into Bosnia and Serbia. Although it officially lasted only four days, smaller operations continued until November of that same year.
One of the videos released this week shows members of the Croatian army's Black Mamba unit harassing Serb refugees attempting to flee Krajina. Bosnian Muslim soldiers, members of the Fifth Corps' special squad Hamze, are seen apparently shooting dead a Serb man who had surrendered and was sitting down with raised hands.
This videotape - like the others - was broadcast on Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian television.
In Croatia, authorities reacted angrily, accusing the Serb media of deliberately choosing the date of the anniversary of Operation Storm in order "to spoil their celebrations". They denied Croatian soldiers were involved in the killings, placing all the blame on Bosnian soldiers.
Serbia's B92 was one of the stations that showed the disturbing images. Ljubica Gojgic, a B92 reporter who regularly covers war crimes cases, dismissed the Croatian government's accusations that the channel got the video two months ago but waited until the anniversary to broadcast it.
"That's not true," she said. "We received this tape from what we think is a credible source just a few days before we aired it."
But she agrees the date it was delivered to B92  was probably chosen on purpose.
"I'm not surprised we got this tape now, because our source knew the anniversary was the time when this footage would receive the most attention," said Gojgoc. She added that the infamous Scorpions video showing the abuse and killing of six Bosnian Muslims from Srebrenica in July 1995 came to public attention in June last year, shortly before the tenth anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre.
Just days after the first videotape came to light, a second explosive video was also aired on Serbia's state-run television.
It was apparently recorded in Bosnian Krajina in September 1995 during the Bosnian army operation to take control over Serb-held towns in the north-west. The Bosnian army's Fifth Corps carried out the attacks, led by former Muslim general Atif Dudakovic, with the help of Croatian forces.
In this video, Dudakovic apparently orders his troops to burn down Serb villages in the area of the operation. "Burn them all," he allegedly said.
The Serbian government has accused Dudakovic of  war crimes and has demanded his immediate arrest.
Dudakovic, now retired, was widely regarded among Bosnian Muslims as one of the best and most capable wartime commanders. Bosnian forces under his command managed to regain control over the western Bosnian towns of Sanski Most and Mrkonjic Grad in autumn 1995 - one of the biggest Bosnian successes in the 1992-95 war.
Until now he hadn't been implicated in any war crimes. He told Bosnian television on August 8 that he did not violate the Geneva conventions and received no reports about any of his soldiers that did.
"I can say with full moral responsibility that members of the Fifth Corps did not commit crimes. There may have been individual cases but only individual," he said.
A third video broadcast on Croatia and Bosnian television on the same day as the one purporting to show Dudakovic was the most shocking of all the videotapes which surfaced this week.
Although it's not new - Gojgic said B92 aired it several years ago - it was nonetheless shocking, showing members of the Hamze unit as they brutalised a captured Serb soldier in September 1995. His body was filmed seconds later - dead with a cut throat. Muslim soldiers are also seen torturing a Serb civilian, who was then tied to a tractor and pulled around until he died.
Bosnian media have reported that the commander of this unit - which was apparently under the Fifth Corps and Dudakovic - was a foreign fighter Tarik El Harbi, who left Bosnia in 2001.
Many in the region are questioning why these videos  - with potentially crucial evidence of war crimes - are emerging only now, more than a decade after the war. They are also asking why those who have this footage prefer to give it to the media rather then to the judiciary.
The head of the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre Natasa Kandic,  who discovered  the Scorpions video a year ago,  told IWPR there are several reasons why these videotapes have been kept in private archives for so long.
"Those who recorded war crimes are usually those who also participated in those atrocities, so if they are still in possession of those tapes, they'll be very careful not to give them to the wrong person," said Kandic.
She speculated that those who have these recordings may use them to blackmail people on the video or try to sell them on the black market. Sometimes they use this material to make a deal with the prosecutors. When all that fails, she says, they turn it over to the authorities or to the media.
Gojgic believes there are "many more similar tapes out there".
"It's fascinating how some people enjoy recording themselves as  they carry out terrible  crimes, just as they enjoy watching that video later on private parties and boasting to their friends about it," she said.
The head of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Banja Luka, Branko Todorovic, agrees.
"Over the next several years, we will be seeing more and more evidence of war crimes committed during the wars in the 1990s, and it will often be shocking," he said.
While he recognises that local authorities and political parties in Bosnia may try to use this latest series of videotapes to manipulate the public and strengthen their own positions in the general elections scheduled for October this year, he says it is important that the videos continue to appear, regardless of the repercussions.
"The key question here is how the public will react to what they see on these tapes and whether they'll be able to distance themselves from the perpetrators of those crimes," he said.
He also believes that to accept the truth, sometimes we all need a little push, "We will have to face the truth about war crimes sooner or later, so the sooner it happens, the better for all of us."
But the director of Sarajevo-based Research and Documentation Center Mirsad Tokaca disagrees. He thinks airing videotapes showing war crimes only degrades the victims.
"If those who distribute these tapes to the media cared about the victims as they claim they do, they would give them as an important potential evidence to the prosecutors and would demand investigation into those crimes. This way, they use this material for their own purposes, releasing it only when it suits them," said Tokaca.
B92's Gojgic told IWPR it is rumoured that Bosnian Serb police had these videotapes for quite some time and probably have more at their disposal.  That infuriates Milan Ivancevic, head of the Association of Killed and Missing Soldiers and Civilians of Republika Srspksa, RS.
"I am angry as a man and as a Serb that they waited until now  to reveal them," said Ivancevic in an interview with Bosnian Serb television. "If they wanted them to be used as evidence, why didn't they do something before?"
Observers  say the zeal with which Republika Srpska and Serbia's authorities demanded arrests of unindicted Bosnian Muslim commanders is in sharp contrast with their own unwillingness to arrest a number of indicted Serb officials. They include RS military and political wartime leaders Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic.
The irony of the situation was not lost on a Muslim member of Bosnia's joint presidency Sulejman Tihic.
"If they are truly committed to processing war criminals, let them prove so by arresting  Karadzic and  Mladic, because they have been hiding and financing them for 11 years," said Tihic in a statement issued on August 9.
Tihic is running for the presidency in Bosnia's  general elections set for October.
Serbian deputy prosecutor for war crimes Dragoljub Stankovic went to The Hague earlier this week to personally deliver some of the Operation Storm videotapes to prosecutors. The tribunal, however, will not be able to make much use of them. All its investigations ended in 2004, and its prosecutors cannot launch new investigations or issue new indictments. They cannot even use this material in the ongoing or pending trials. That means local prosecutors will have to do all the work and under difficult circumstances.
"It's much easier for the prosecutors to do their job without political pressure and pressure from the public," said the spokesman for the tribunal's prosecutor Anton Nikiforov. "Politicians have already been too much involved in this case."
It was in response to that pressure that war crimes prosecutors from Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia met in Zagreb on August 10 to discuss what they should do about the Operation Storm footage. In the statement issued the same day, they said they exchanged all information they had on this case and confirmed their determination to cooperate.
"This is a very positive outcome," said Nikiforov. "This meeting is the best example that these three countries can work together on processing war crimes."
Meanwhile, television viewers in the region await the next videotape. Sead Numanovic, a reporter for the Srajevo daily Avaz, also expects to see more videos in the coming months, showing gruesome details of war crimes committed by various people.
"There is a new war going on - a war with video tapes - and the only ones who will lose for sure are the victims," he said.

Merdijana Sadovic is manager of IWPR's Hague tribunal programme.

=== 6 ===


CROATIAN SERB REFUGEE RECOGNIZES MISSING FATHER ON TAPE AIRED BY SERBIAN TV
BBC Monitoring International Reports - August 13, 2006, Sunday

Text of report by Belgrade-based Radio B92 on 12 August

[Announcer] A refugee from Croatia, Milos Klaric, has recognized his father, Dusan Klaric, on a videotape showing mistreatment of Krajina Serbs [in Croatian region north of Dalmatia] aired by our television. B92 TV broadcast Klaric's testimony following the airing of the videotape in which members of the Black Mambas Croatian paramilitary unit and the Bosnia-Hercegovina Army's Hamzas unit were shown mistreating and killing Krajina Serbs during their exodus from Croatia in August 1995.

According to Klaric, he has had no information for years about his father, who had been reported missing since the [Croatian Army's] Operation Storm [in 1995]. Dusan Klaric wore a blue shirt on the tape, in which three young men were seen ripping off his clothes.

Source: Radio B92, Belgrade, in Serbian 1900 gmt 12 Aug 06

Copyright 2006 Financial Times Information
Copyright 2006 BBC Monitoring/BBC Source: Financial Times Information Limited
Posted for Fair Use only.

=== 7 ===


Il generale nella tempesta

18.08.2006    Da Sarajevo, scrive Massimo Moratti

Una serie di atrocità commesse dalle forze croate e bosniache nei confronti dei serbi, nel corso dell'operazione Tempesta, nel 1995. Le mostrano tre video amatoriali. Uno ritrae Atif Dudakovic, generale di Bihac, che dà l’ordine di incendiare villaggi serbi. Scoppia la polemica politica: tentativo di raccogliere voti o desiderio di giustizia?


Gli anniversari e le ricorrenze nei Balcani non servono solo a commemorare la storia passata, ma anche a produrne di nuova. La tecnologia e i filmati amatoriali contribuiscono enormemente al processo di rielaborazione del passato che sta avvenendo con sempre maggior rapidità nei paesi della ex Jugoslavia. Questi due elementi, produzione di video amatoriali e ricorrenze storiche, miscelati sapientemente da mano esperta producono risultati espolosivi nelle opinioni pubbliche di Bosnia ed Erzegovina, Croazia e Serbia. Gli echi di tali esplosioni vengono poi amplificati dalla cassa di risonanza dei vari partiti politici, che ne fanno ampiamente uso per conquistare il proprio elettorato. 

E così, come l’anno scorso l’anniversario dell’eccidio di Srebrenica fu contraddistinto dall’improvvisa “scoperta” del video degli Scorpioni, che provocò un’ondata di sdegno (seguita poi da una serie di arresti) in Serbia, quest’anno, l’anniversario di Oluja, l’operazione croata che pose fine all’esistenza della Republika Srpska di Krajna, segna la scoperta di un’altra serie di video filmati, che sono stati ritrovati proprio all’inizio di agosto. 

I video, fatti recapitare ad arte all’emittente belgradese B92 pochi giorni prima dell’anniversario di Oluja mostrano una serie di atrocità commesse dalle forze croate e bosniache nei confronti dei serbi, nel corso di Oluja. Tre video puntano direttamente l’indice contro i “Black Mamba” delle forze croate e gli “Hamza” della 505 Brigata di Buzim dell’Armija della Repubblica di Bosnia ed Erzegovina. I video mostrano rifugiati e sfollati serbi che vengono maltrattati dalle unità croate e musulmane, le unità musulmane che uccidono un prigioniero serbo e simili episodi di violenza. Ma il video che ha destato più scalpore è quello che ritrae Atif Dudakovic, generale di Bihac, comandante del V corpo dell’Armija della Repubblica di Bosnia ed Erzegovina che dà l’ordine di incendiare i villaggi serbi della Krajna occidentale, nelle zone di Sanski Most, Petrovac, Kljuc. 

È nei confronti di Dudakovic che si scatenano le principali accuse. Il suo ruolo è paragonabile a quello di Gotovina nella condotta di Oluja. Lo stesso Dudakovic ha dichiarato che l’operazione Oluja

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