Free Republic

“He did everything that we asked of him, including arming the KLA�, said Albanian lobbyist Joe DioGuardi. The Albanians collected one million dollars for the presidential campaign of this senator. Americans of Albanian heritage collected a million dollars in one evening for the presidential campaign of Republican Senator John McCain, said the Albanian American Civic League yesterday, the lobby group headed by former Congressman Joe DioGuardi. A reception for McCain was held January 22 at the Saint Regis Hotel in Manhatten, and the senator, who is now leading in the runoff for the Republican party candidacy in the November elections,...

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain has enjoyed strong support from a lobbyist group that backs the Kosovo Liberation Army despite allegations the KLA is a Muslim terrorist group with ties to criminal drug networks and al-Qaida. The Albanian American Civic League, or AACL, regards the KLA as "freedom fighters," said the AACL's president, former Republican congressman Joe DioGuardi of New York. They're "not terrorist, like the Serbs and Greeks say," DioGuardi insisted in an interview with WND. But Islam expert Robert Spencer, editor of the popular website Jihad Watch, contends radical Islam is the driving force behind the Kosovo...

The Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), since its inception in 1993 has been assailed by many as a NATO political instrument to justify dismemberment of Yugoslavia and NATO aggressions. It has been essentially a rogue court with rigged rules and scandalous protocol to achieve political objective to convict. Some judges did not hear about the Balkans until they arrived in The Hague. John Laughland wrote: “It is not victor’s justice; it is no justice at all.” The Tribunal’s verdict for the Serbs was predetermined –all would be found guilty. Over its 15 years of existence, the Tribunal has indicted...

I have written in today's paper about the revelations from Carla del Ponte's new book "The Hunt: Me and War criminals". I wanted to talk to her before writing the piece, but was unable to get an interview. Some readers of this blog have already posted snippets of the book in their comments. Most of these excerpts - translated from the original Italian - have come from Serb media outlets - perhaps not the most objective source for a story about Serbs being tortured. So with the help of our Rome correspondent, Malcolm Moore, I have put together a transcription...

MOSCOW, April 8 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's Foreign Ministry has asked the Hague to provide details on crimes described in a book by former chief criminal prosecutor Carla del Ponte, the ministry said on Tuesday. In her book called The Hunt: Me and War Criminals, Carla del Ponte described atrocities against Kosovo Serbs and other ethnic groups committed by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). "Batching freedom of speech concerning crimes against civilians, one may assume, is aimed at softening the reaction within international social and political circles to the facts revealing the criminal prehistory to the illegitimate sovereignty of Kosovo,"...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jV_LnXaQ8A

via translation - ALERT - Kosovo: Thaçi confirms a proclamation of independence Sunday PRISTINA (Serbia) - Prime Minister of Kosovo Hashim Thaçi confirmed Saturday that the independence of the province in southern Serbia was proclaimed Sunday, when he said "the will of the citizens of Kosovo" will be executed.

As Defence Minister Peter MacKay attempts to browbeat, badger or coerce a NATO partner into reinforcing the mission in southern Afghanistan, most European countries are keeping their eyes on a possible security crisis much closer to home. It is widely expected that Kosovo will unilaterally declare its independence from Serbia within the next six weeks, and if history repeats itself, this will trigger yet another round of Balkan bloodletting. In anticipation of an escalation in ethnic violence in the disputed province, reinforcements have been sent into Kosovo to bolster the international security force that has been in place there for...

A Hellenic Case Against Hillary by Theodore G. Karakostas The following critique is not motivated by partisanship. I am a critic of the anti-Hellenic and anti-Orthodox policies of both major political parties. However, the focus now is Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party. In 1992, then Presidential Candidate Bill Clinton promised the Greek-American community he would not recognize Skopje with the name Macedonia. In 1994, the Clinton administration broke its promise and subsequently recognized Skopje under the Hellenic name of Macedonia. The Clinton administration subsequently tried to pressure Athens to lift the embargo that had been justifiably imposed by Greece...

The former chief of the Albanian separatist guerrillas, Hashim Thaci, has proclaimed Sunday victory of his party in the elections in Kosovo. The leader of the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) advocates a speedy independence of Kosovo. "I thank all those who have helped our victory and the victory of Kosovo," said Hashim Thaci, at a rally of his supporters. According to the NGO "Democracy in Action", which monitors elections, the KDP has obtained 35% of the vote against 23% for the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), founded by the charismatic President Ibrahim Rugova, who died in 2006. The...

The UN state and the seven robbers When Bernard Kouchner lands in Kosovo in the summer of 1999 there is no mobile telecommunication. German Siemens and French Alcatel submit one offer each. A panel of local experts select Siemens. The offer is the cheapest and it is not colonial. At a fixed lump sum the Germans promise to build a network for Kosovo. The French offer says the network would remain French property and the country code of Monaco would be utilized. Kouchner and the Kosovo Gangster What happens? Bernard Kouchner, Kosovos legislator, head of government and head of justice,...

20 August 2007 | 01:46 | FOCUS News Agency Pristina. Hundreds of Kosovo Albanians attended a folk concert to celebrate the 61th birthday of former US president Bill Clinton on Sunday, remembering his support for their separatist struggle. Dancing to Albanian folk music before a huge birthday cake outside the national theatre, they expressed gratitude for Clinton's approval of a NATO bombing campaign to end a Serbian crackdown during the 1998-99 Kosovo conflict. "I hope president Clinton lives to be 101. I hope his wife Hillary is elected president and rules America as her husband did," said Lutfi Salihu, a...

So, the secret is out. The “premier” of the Kosovo government, the former ringleader of the terrorist “Kosovo Liberation Army” Agim Ceku has named the date, to which the Albanian leaders of the province would time their declaration of independence. That is slated for November 28,2007, when the neighbouring Albania will celebrate its principal state holiday - Day of the Flag. But the holiday has to do with Albania but indirectly. It has long been viewed by the Albanian diaspora scattered all over the world as Day of All Albanians. To understand what Kosovo separatists mean by selecting this particular...

An important set of meetings will take place today at the State Department and the White House that may well determine the future stability of southeast Europe and the integrity of the international system. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is set to meet with the "unity team" of Kosovo leaders to decide the way forward on the status of Kosovo, now that it is clear Russia will veto any U.N. Security Council resolution that puts Kosovo on a path to independence. Eight years ago, I served as President Bill Clinton's chief of staff when our administration faced a similar dilemma....

Bexhet Pacoli, the richest Kosovo Albanian in the world from whose telephone, according to BND findings, a transaction in the amount of two million euros was arranged from a Swiss bank to one in Cyprus in the name of Kosovo special envoy Martti Ahtisaari, openly claims that he is paying 60 people just in Washington who are lobbying for the independence of Kosovo. "In Washington I am paying a team of 60 people who are lobbying for Kosovo in the administration of president George Bush and in the U.S. Senate and Congress," said Pacoli in a recently published interview. He...

6.7.2007 17:09 MERDARE, (Tanjug) - Representatives of the Serbian Government Commission for Missing Persons on Friday accepted the remains of five Serbs, who were kidnapped and then murdered by the Albanian terrorists in Kosovo and Metohija during the 1998-1999 period, Commission President Veljko Odalovic told Tanjug.

NEW YORK -- Six men from New Jersey have been arrested in an alleged terror plot against soldiers at Fort Dix, according investigators. Investigators said the men planned to use automatic rifles to enter Fort Dix and kill as many soldiers as they could at the N.J. base. Fort Dix was just one of several military and security locations allegedly scouted by this group, authorities said. Investigators told Newschannel 4's Jonathan Dienst that these arrests are the result of a tip to the FBI and use of an informant to track the suspects. Authorities were alerted in January 2006 after...

THE HAGUE -- The trial of three former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) commanders continued Thursday. The trial of Ramush Haradinaj, Idriz Balaj and Lahi Brahimaj continued with the testimony of an elderly Albanian man, who gave his evidence as Witness 8, with image and voice distortion. According to the allegations in the prosecution’s pre-trial brief, Witness 8 gave evidence about an incident on 20 July 1998, when two Albanians were taken off a bus between �akovica and Priština and subsequently killed. In his 15-minute long testimony, the witness confirmed he was from the �akovica area and he was present on...

The 2006 U.S. elections, which put the Democrats in charge of the House and Senate, were widely described in media as a referendum on the Iraq war. Intense media scrutiny had resulted in critical reports on pre-war intelligence, the decision-making process that preceded the war, the postwar plan, and an unfolding civil war. Books with titles such as Fiasco, Imperial Hubris, and Colossus described an America in denial of imperial ambitions that were destined to fail. Their authors and others ascribed to the U.S. such motives as arrogance and a willful refusal to learn from history. They characterized American foreign...

Pristina: An explosion damaged seven automobiles belonging to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in the Kosovo town of Pec on Monday, just hours before former prime minister Ramus Haradinaj left for the Hague to stand trial before the United Nations' tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on charges of crimes against Serb and other civilians during the 1998/99 Kosovo conflict. "Immediately after the explosion, the police found seven OSCE automobiles damaged at the scene as well as two private vehicles," local police spokesman Avni Djevukaj told media. He said the explosion took place at 3.30 am local...

Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis - January 19, 2007, Friday Analysis. By GIS Staff. Reliable sources indicate that the Chinese-built RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade fired at the US Embassy in Athens on January 12, 2007, was supplied to the leftist Greek terrorist organization, Revolutionary Struggle, by the Albanian jihadist -linked group, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA/UCK). The confirmation of the link demonstrates the growing linkages between anti-Western leftist terrorist groups and anti-Western Islamist jihadi groups, and there is some suggestion that the reappearance of Revolutionary Struggle may have been prompted directly by support received from the cash-rich KLA. The KLA...

The war in the former Yugoslavia ended eight years ago but illegal arms trade and training of Islamic terrorists continues across the Balkans, particularly in Bosnia and Kosovo currently administered by EU / UN Missions. Reports of such developments came also from Gregory Copley. In his article “Strong warning indicators for new surge in European Islamic terrorism” he says that, “Intelligence sources in the Balkans and Middle East indicate that the Iranian and Osama bin Laden terrorist networks, assets and alliances built up in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia, Southern Serbia and elsewhere in the Balkans are preparing for significant new...

BELGRADE -- Belgrade war crimes prosecution believes KLA’s Orahovac group is responsible for the 1998 deaths of 25 Serbs in Kosovo. Prosecution spokesman Bruno Vekaric told B92 that the Belgrade District Court War Crimes prosecution considers Sinan Morina, currently in custody, as one of the persons responsible for the crime. The murdered Kosovo Serbs, whose remains were identified last year, lived in the villages of Opterusa and Retimlje, Orahovac municipality. The prosecution suspects that the crime took place in the nights between July 17 and 19, 1998. The victims were forced out of their homes, subjected to beatings, stripped of...

AS the war in Afghanistan goes on, the ghost of interventions past sits in a courtroom in The Hague. America can drop tons of explosives and send in the Marines to fight Taliban terrorism. But when the Serbs confronted a similar menace, they were demonized and bombed for 78 days, and had a province wrested from them and presented to Osama bin Laden's Balkan brigade. Slobodan Milosevic has been charged with complicity to commit genocide and crimes against humanity. Before the travesty is over, he will doubtless be convicted of running the rail line to Auschwitz. The former Yugoslav president...

Are the cases of missing persons in Kosovo science fiction or consciously closed files? Unexpectedly for many Kosovo crisis observers, proliferation of terrorism and violence resulted with huge number of cases of missing and kidnapped civilians, mostly non-Albanians (especially Serbs): in the summer of 1998, spring 1999 and during 2000. Actually, last reported kidnappings occurred in 2004. Although such acts of terror were well known to local population and local authorities, eccentric doubts could be summarized with only one question: If victims were held in hidden prisons and if after some time they were executed, where are the bodies? Searches,...

Former KLA Chief of Staff admits that the KLA did in some situations order the civilians to move out of some areas of Kosovo for reasons of safety. He described a case when the villagers of Belanica decided to stay in their homes until the arrival of the Serbian troops and police, despite the KLA orders As his examination-in-chief drew to a close, former KLA Chief of Staff Bislim Zyrapi admitted that in some situations the KLA had ordered civilians to move out of certain areas. The defense of the six Serbian officials charged with crimes in Kosovo has been...

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/thomas100806.htm Paedophiles, Cheb sex capital of Europe Captive market, "Girls who've shown signs of disobedience have had their feet cemented into washbasins before being dumped in the Aegean Sea. Others have been horrifically tortured. The Albanian gangs have a seemingly endless supply of women, and their power extends way beyond their homeland to the underworlds of Italy and parts of New York. The victims do not officially exist and are powerless to resist." Most Albanian gangsters are men in their twenties from the backward north of the country. Rather than being based around individual gangland bosses, they are organized in...

September 28, 2006 -- A Kosovo Albanian drug-boss, Princ Dobrosi, says that he is a friend of a Pakistani-born al Qaeda leader Arfan Qaeder Bhatti who was recently arrested in Norway on charges of planning to terrorize Israeli and American embassies in Oslo, Norway. Kosovo Albanian Princ Dobrosi, left, escorted by police in this 2000 file photo. According to a Czech daily Mlada fronta Dnes, Bhatti has solicited operational help from a Kosovo Albanian drug-boss Princ Dobrosi in order to plan attacks on the Czhech capital, Prague. "We got acquainted in the Ringerike prison in Norway a few years ago,"...

Clinton’s Kosovo Whopper By Cliff Kincaid September 28, 2006 Of all the whoppers told by former President Clinton in his Chris Wallace interview, perhaps the most outrageous was his claim that he was involved in “trying to stop a genocide in Kosovo…” In fact, Clinton’s bombing of the former Yugoslavia killed more people than died in this “genocide.” And his policy benefited Osama bin Laden and the global Jihad. In the year before the bombing, some 2,000 people had been killed in a civil war in Kosovo. A conservative estimate is that 6,000 were killed by U.S. and NATO bombs....

Bloomberg cannot be posted to FR, so here is a link to the story:http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aBZvrM76tIlk&refer=worldwide_news

KOSOVO IS SERBIA The son of Alija Izetbegovic and vice-president of the Bosnian Party of Democratic Action Bakir Izetbegovic says the secession of Kosovo would set a dangerous precedent BELGRADE - Bakir Izetbegovic, the vice president of the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) and the son of the late leader of that party, Alija Izetbegovic, sharply opposes the secession of Kosovo from Serbia and the proclamation of the independence of the southern Serbian province. In a statement for "Kurir" Izetbegovic assessed that "it would be better if Kosovo did not secede because this would set a precedent for Europe". "It...

11 September 2006 | 17:22 | FOCUS News Agency Podgorica. Six US citizens together allies from Montenegro have planned to carry out terrorist attacks on the territory of Malesia and Tuzi (in Montenegro) on 10 and 11 September, the Directorate of the Montenegrin police announced on Monday, cited by the independent Montenegrin news portal PCNEN. The US citizens - four of whom have been captured and two are wanted - originate from the territory of Malesia, Tuzi and Kosovo. According to the Chief of the criminal police in Montenegro Ivan Masulovic 12 people were arrested in relation to the findings....

A new videotape aired on Aljazeera television has shown Osama bin Laden and senior al-Qaeda members meeting some of the men who carried out the September 11 attacks against the US in 2001. The 90-minute video apparently shows bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, taking part in the planning and preparation of the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people... The footage, first aired on Thursday, also shows Abu Hafsa al-Masri, al-Qaeda's then military leader, and Ramzi bin al-Shaiba, co-ordinator of the 9/11 attacks, meeting in al-Qaeda's training camps in Taliban controlled Afghanistan. The tape also says that a previous unknown...

While the Bush Administration can be criticized for ignoring warnings that an attack like 9/11 might occur, it is the Clinton Administration which can be accused of actually facilitating 9/11 by conducting a foreign policy that promoted the rise of radical Islam. The so-called 9/11 Truth Movement, which has been covered extensively by C-SPAN as well as Al-Jazeera, has confused many Americans and Muslims alike about the nature of the 9/11 attacks. This movement, which includes associates of Lyndon LaRouche, who openly supported Saddam Hussein before the first Gulf war, are telling us that the Bush Administration was really behind...

The German plan to regain their losses of the first and second world wars in Central and South Eastern Europe is now almost complete. The Czechs have been split from the Slovaks (the German puppet State during the Second World War guilty of horrendous trading of Jews to the Nazis) the break up of Yugoslavia into the same Nazi friendly statelets which existed between 1941 and 1945, the abolition of 15 central banks and currencies and the effective destruction of the constitutions of 25 previously sovereign democratic nations - now controlled by Germany in the EU. The uprising of the...

One of the more odious lies that the far left and the media has successfully propagated centers around the alleged Serbian ethnic cleansing of ethnic Albanians. At the time, US government officials, such as Ambassador David Sheffer, were making hysterical claims that the death toll from Serbian ethnic cleansing was in the hundreds of thousands. NATO decided to move in and correct the situation. Not a bad idea, as far as ideas go, there’s just one problem: the ethnic cleansing that was the justification for war never happened. It’s all one gigantic lie.

Secret diner in Washington Holbrooke and Thaqui planned terror Less than a week before the clashes in Kosovo and Metohija occurred, a group of Albanian lobbyists from USA held a meeting at which they decided to help Kosovo Albanians to force international community to give independence to Kosovo. 'Blic' got this information from well-informed sources in the US. As 'Blic' further finds out this informal meeting was held at the initiative of David Philips, deputy director of the Center for preventive action within Council for international relations in New York. The meeting was held at his home with light diner....

BERLIN (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told European leaders to stop preaching to him about civilian war casualties in an interview published on Sunday in German newspaper Welt am Sonntag. Olmert also said it would not be possible to completely destroy Hizbollah and insisted he did not underestimate them, saying they had fired just 3,000 of their arsenal of 15,000 rockets so far. "Where do they get the right to preach to Israel?" Olmert said when asked about criticism from European capitals of Israeli military operations that have led to a heavy civilian toll. "European countries attacked Kosovo...

PRISTINA, Serbia-Western powers and United Nations should allow Kosovo to create an army as part of resolving the final status of the disputed province, a think tank said in a report Friday. The International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, said that the final status determination should outline the steps that will be taken to develop a small Kosovo defense force, which would be limited in its size and capabilities. The international community "must avoid creating a weak state," the ICG warned. It proposed that the force should be made up of up to 3,000 personnel and have no tanks,...

Police have broken up a criminal gang based in Torrevieja, Alicante, but which operated in the provinces of Alicante, Málaga, Barcelona, Jaén and Madrid. 18 Kosovo-Albanians have been arrested, in connection with several thefts from industrial estates, often by making a hole in the wall. The police operation started when the Organised Crime Section ECO of the Civil Guard in Alicante, detected the group of man in Torrevieja who were spending large sums of money with no visible income. © typicallyspanish.com

James Bissett is former Canadian Ambassador to the former Yugoslavia and writes from Ottawa. Balkan realities Tod Lindberg is right that the EU and NATO countries should not turn their backs on Balkan countries wishing to share in the peace and prosperity of the new Europe. However, he is wrong to suggest that it was only Slobodan Milosevic's "genocidal policies" that set the Balkans in flames in the early 1990s and wrong to condemn Serbian determination to maintain Kosovo as an integral part of its territory ("Where Milosevic's butchery held sway," Op-Ed, July 11). It has become fashionable to blame...

TRUTH in the David Hicks affair remains as elusive as ever after fresh allegations this week from inside the US military that the Guantanamo Bay commissions are so seriously flawed that a fair trial is impossible. The most damaging blows yet to the commissions -- still supported by the Howard Government -- came from three US Air Force prosecutors involved in the trials who have quit the investigation in protest. One, John Carr, said the process appeared to have been rigged and that the first four cases -- including Hicks -- had been been "handpicked" and would not be acquitted....

PODGORICA, Montenegro - Bedri Shala has his reasons for not wanting to go home to Kosovo. Back across the border, he said, are Kosovo Albanian men who in the aftermath of the war in 1999 kidnapped, tortured and raped him repeatedly, shot his brother dead, and tried to shoot Shala, too, as he ran away.

How [radical] Islam makes one into a fascist, whether you are Arab, black, etc. The broader view of the deep & wide reality of Islamofascism What do the Arab Muslim massacre in NYC WTC, The Pakistani Muslim bombing in London, the Arab Muslim bombing in Madrid, an Indonesian attack on Australians in Bali, an Arab Muslim racist attack on an ordinary Jew in Paris, Arabs' onslaught in the genocide campaign in Sudan, WW2's Bosnian Muslims attacking Christian Serbs, Jordanian Arab murderer: Zarqawi that seperated (Nazi style) between Shiite & Sunni kids on a bus, Arab slave masters in Mauritania, a...

A picturesque valley in the western province of Kosovo is home to the largest and most urgently preserved monastery in Serbia. The 14th century Visoki Decani monastery has not only survived the passage of time but also the ravages of war. Even though around half the Serb population fled a wave of revenge attacks after the war, the 100,000 who stayed are still targeted by sporadic violence. Stoning of police and attacks on individuals are not uncommon. In 1998, Slobodan Milosevic, who was president at the time, led troops against Albanian forces in an effort to reclaim parts of Kosovo....

PRISTINA, Serbia - Kosovo's top leaders travel to Washington next week to hold talks with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the president's office said Friday. President Fatmir Sejdiu and Prime Minister Agim Ceku are to meet Rice on Monday, said Muhamet Hamiti, the president's adviser. Sejdiu will visit the United States for the first time since he was elected in February, succeeding Kosovo's late President Ibrahim Rugova, who died of lung cancer earlier this year. During his trip, Sejdiu will meet other officials in the State Department and the White House, the statement said. Ceku is also scheduled to...

PRAGUE -- Serbia's long tragedy looks like it is coming to an end. The death of Slobodan Milosevic has just been followed by Montenegro's referendum on independence. Independence for Kosovo, too, is inching closer. The wars of the Yugoslav succession have not only been a trial for the peoples of that disintegrated country; they also raised huge questions about the exercise of international justice. Do international tribunals of the sort Milosevic faced before his death promote or postpone serious self-reflection and reconciliation in damaged societies? Do they strengthen or undermine the political stability needed to rebuild wrecked communities and shattered...

The former US general who commanded NATO's 1999 air war against Serbia predicted its southern province of Kosovo would become independent within months. Wesley Clark told Kosovo Albanian leaders in Pristina he had confidence in their "strong, positive and visionary proposals" to find a solution for Kosovo, which has been run by the United Nations and NATO since 1999. "I am confident that this issue will be solved very soon, and probably in few months, Kosovo will become independent and will respect the rights of all citizens," said Clark. "I believe that Kosovo will be welcomed into the family of...

Persecution and martyrdom of Christians under 20th century totalitarianism - mainly of Russian Orthodox Christians under Bolshevism - is by far the greatest crime in all of recorded history. It is several times greater than the Holocaust in terms of innocent lives brutally destroyed. It has killed more Christians in a few decades than all other causes put together in all ages, with Islam a distant second as the cause of their death and suffering. And yet it still remains a largely unknown, often minimized, or scandalously glossed over crime. According to the respected and reliable OUP World Christian...

Among the most important priorities of U.S. global policy is combating the international traffic in drugs and in persons (often a euphemism for women and children forced into prostitution). Because of the linkage and overlap among terrorist networks and organized criminal gangs, the battle against trafficking is also an integral part of the war on terror. Fighting organized criminal activities is difficult even in countries with a functioning legal system, honest police and the rule of law. Think how much harder that would be when dealing with an independent country where the authorities are an integral part of the criminal...