"EU to establish Kosovo war crimes tribunal" by Nebi Qena | Associated Press April 05, 2014
PRISTINA, Kosovo — The European Union plans to set up an international tribunal focusing exclusively on crimes allegedly committed by Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian rebels during their war with Serbia, the Associated Press has learned.
Plans for an independent tribunal amount to an admission of failure by the West to hold its ethnic Albanian allies accountable for war crimes.
Our allies don't commit war crimes.
The rebels had the backing of NATO during the war — and the West has staunchly supported Kosovo in its efforts to emerge from the conflict as an independent state. But ethnic Albanians have also come under pressure from the international community to reckon with their own war crimes, including alleged organ harvesting.
You didn't miss that movie, did you?
I can see why the propaganda pre$$ is showing it on Saturday and at off hours.
Kosovo declared independence in 2008, and it has been recognized by more than 100 nations, but not by Serbia and its ally Russia.
Crimea quite a switch, 'eh?
The court was expected to start proceedings by next year, a senior EU official told Associated Press, adding that the rules and reach of the tribunal were still being discussed with Kosovo authorities.
The court is to be symbolically seated in Kosovo, but most key proceedings such as hearing witness testimony would take place in the Netherlands, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal has yet to be approved by Kosovo’s assembly.
Prosecutions of ethnic Albanian rebels — both in Kosovo and at the United Nations war crimes tribunal in the Hague, Netherlands — have been marred by intimidation of witnesses and their families. Former rebels are considered by many Kosovars as heroes who fought for freedom from Serbia. Some 10,000 people died in the 1998-1999 war and about 1,700 are considered missing.
The court, which will be set up and paid for by the EU, will consider charges of organ harvesting by the now-disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army rebels as well as the disappearance of some 400 people — most of them Kosovo Serbs — at the end of the war. A two-year investigation led by a US prosecutor, and set to wrap up by mid-June, is to form the basis of any indictments brought before the court. The United States supports the new tribunal.
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Related: Back to the Balkans
And who gets arrested?
"Bosnian war crimes suspect arrested" Associated Press April 05, 2014
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — French police detained a former Bosnian Serb paramilitary soldier suspected of locking dozens of civilians inside a house before setting it ablaze, killing 59 people during the 1992-95 war, Bosnian authorities said.
Radomir Susnjar was arrested in France on Friday morning at the request of Bosnian authorities, prosecutors said in a statement.
Susnjar is suspected of taking part in the July 1992 killing of 59 Muslim Bosniak civilians in the eastern town of Visegrad. Victims, including a 2-day-old baby, were locked into a house, which was then set ablaze. Those who attempted to flee were shot at.
Susnjar is suspected of “personally locking up the victims in the house and setting it on fire,” the statement said. It added that Susnjar should “soon” be extradited to Bosnia to stand trial.
The killings in Visegrad were among the first carried out by Serb forces on the local Muslim Bosniak population during the war. The UN war crimes court in The Hague sentenced several Bosnian Serbs to decades in prison for the Visegrad killing spree.
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Also see: Actress Angelina Jolie hails Bosnia policy
She got her tits cut off over nothing? I can't bear anymore.
"Serb ruling party wins vote, poll says" | Associated Press March 17, 2014
BELGRADE — Serbian voters on Sunday gave a landslide victory in a parliamentary election to the ruling center-right party that has vowed to overhaul the nation’s struggling economy and push for membership in the European Union, according to an exit poll.
The Belgrade-based CeSID polling group said the Serbian Progressive Party won about 160 seats in the country’s 250-seat Parliament. Its coalition partner in the current Serbian government, the Serbian Socialist Party, was second with about 50 seats.
The rest of the seats went to the pro-Western Democratic Party and the New Democratic Party of former president Boris Tadic.
The Progressive Party is expected to choose as its leader Aleksandar Vucic — a former hard-line, pro-Russian nationalist who has become a pro-EU advocate — as prime minister.
May want to rethink that after Ukraine.
In his victory speech, Vucic pledged to vigorously fight corruption and crime and revive the economy in the troubled Balkan nation of about 7 million people.
‘‘We are facing tough reforms,’’ Vucic said....
Turnout was about 52 percent, slightly less than during the 2012 parliamentary election that brought the Progressives, former allies of late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, back to power in Serbia.
War criminals get relieved; war criminal parties continue. No one knows that better than an American.
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