Posted on 04/09/2004 3:04:29 PM PDT by joan
SARAJEVO (AFP) Apr 09, 2004
A Serbian Orthodox priest injured in a NATO raid in Bosnia eight days ago has regained consciousness, a hospital spokeswoman said Friday.
Priest Jeremija Starovlah was awake but on a life-support machine and remained in a critical condition, spokeswoman Amra Odobasic said from a hospital in the northern town of Tuzla.
She said the priest's son, Aleksandar, remained in a coma with no sign of improvement.
The pair were injured when US and British troops blew down the door of their house during a search for indicted war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic.
Bosnian Serbs and the clergy have accused NATO troops of beating up the two men but NATO officials have strongly rejected the allegations.
Aleksandar Starovlah, 28, recovers at the intensive care unit of the hospital in Tuzla, Friday, April 9, 2004. Starovlah and his father, Orthodox priest Jeremija, were injured during an overnight raid of their home, where NATO (news - web sites ) troops were looking for Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, who has been wanted by the U.N. war crimes tribunal for the last nine years. Son and father were injured by an explosion, used to open the door of their residence. (AP Photo)
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The Information Service of the Serbian Orthodox Church April 6, 2004 LETTER OF PATRIARCH PAVLE TO SFOR COMMANDER
His Holiness the Serbian Patriarch Kyr Pavle sent a letter today to U.S. Major General Virgil L. Pickett, the SFOR commander in Bosnia-Herzegovina, stating the following:
Several times already we have asked the SFOR command, the High Representative of the international community in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and even the Secretary-General of the United Nations to put a halt to the completely needless and improper mistreatment of Orthodox residents of the small town of Pale on Mt. Romanija, and the destruction of their property by military forces, which arrived in this part of Europe to help in keeping the peace and establishing understanding and tolerance. We last wrote you regarding this issue only in February of this year after forces under your command, in full battle gear, with the justification that they were seeking persons suspected of war crimes, broke into a church and apartments of Orthodox priests in Pale at the end of the Christmas holidays, where they carried out searches and frightened the household members and their small children.
However, as our letter failed to convince you that our priests and the members of their families take no part in the activities of which you obviously suspect them, you, Sir, ordered that nothing short of a military campaign be launched against their homes on April 1, 2004, on the very eve of the Easter holidays. In the dead of night, your soldiers, using the most lethal explosive devices, broke in through the roof, the door and the windows of their home, completely destroying it in the process. The strong explosions wounded Archpriest Stavrophor Jeremijah (Jeremiah) Starovlah and his son, Catechist Aleksandar. But this was not enough for your soldiers, called "peacekeepers" by our people.
They proceeded to tie up Father Jeremija and his son and, while thus tied, they savagely beat them using rifle butts, boots and whatever else they had on hand. In short: they beat them to death. The entire time this was occurring, the presbytera (the priest's wife) had a gun pointed at her, with a finger on the trigger, so she could not help her son or her husband. These facts, sir, are well known to you. At the time of the writing of this letter, physicians are still fighting for the lives of these two Christians, who are suffering for the same reason the martyrs suffered under the Romans - for the name of Christ.
If it was not clear to you until that day, Sir, that Serbian priests are not hiding those whom you have indicted for committing war crimes, we hope you are now so convinced. Or perhaps you are not, and we should expect to see once again those whom we wished to see as men of goodwill heading with bombs, guns and boots against our holy shrines, the lives of our priests and their families. At this time we wish to advise you that we will inform the global community in the broadest sense with the contents of this letter.
Respectfully,
The Archbishop of Pec, Metropolitan of Belgrade and Karlovac and Serbian Patriarch + Pavle
I wonder about the hospital. Is it run by NATO or the UN?
The Muslims!
I suppose that I really don't know enough about these tangled events to comment intelligently. At the "gut" level though, I suspect that our intervention in these matters is questionable.
I believe that we, unfortunately, have supported the formation of a Muslim state here. I ask the question, does anyone on this forum support the establishment of a Muslim state in Serbia and, if so, why?
Rum, buggery and the lash - I would add - thuggery.
With Destro's hatred of American and British soldiers, it must be Abu Ghraib.
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