Free Republic

He clasps the crag with crooked hands . . . he watches from his mountain walls, and like a thunderbolt he falls. These words, written of an eagle, today are a far better fit for one of the most amazing commanders of World War II. He is Yugoslavia's Draja Mihailovich. Ever since Adolf Hitler vaingloriously announced a year ago that he had conquered Yugoslavia, Draja Mihailovich and his 150,000 guerrillas in the mountains south-west of Belgrade have flung the lie in Hitler's teeth. It has been probably the greatest guerrilla operation in history...

On July 17, 1946, sixty-two years ago, the life of General Draza Mihailovich came to an end. Why should we care? Why did his life and death matter? He was a military officer who lived at a time in history when his dedication to democratic ideals would bring him into conflict with the fascists, the Nazis and, in the end, the communists. It would be the communists who would finally silence him, but not before he and his people fought valiantly to prevent his country, Yugoslavia, from falling into communist hands after the war. It would be too easy to...

16 July 2008 Gjakova _ The UN authorities in Kosovo have pledged to hold talks with council officials in Gjakova after it emerged a park is being built over the remains of a Serbian Orthodox Church. Local Serb radio KIM found that the construction of the park in Gjakova (known in Serbian as Djakovica), an overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian town in western Kosovo, is now in its final stages. A metre of soil was placed on top of the church’s foundations and trees and flowers planted over it. Some 20 workers from the Bala construction company were finishing work at the...

The U.S. Justice Department has asked a Seattle federal court to revoke the citizenship of a Washington state resident accused of serving the Nazis. Tuesday's complaint alleges that Yugoslavian-born Peter Egner, 86, in April 1941 joined the Nazi-controlled Security Police and Security Service in German-occupied Belgrade, Serbia, a Nazi mobile killing unit that participated in the mass murder of more than 17,000 Serbian civilians during World War II. According to the complaint, Egner has admitted volunteering to serve in the Security Police and Security Service and guarding prisoners as they were being transferred to concentration camps. Egner also admitted serving...

SEATTLE (AP) - The Justice Department asked a federal court Tuesday to revoke the citizenship of an 86-year-old Bellevue man, saying he served in a Nazi unit that slaughtered 17,000 Serbian civilians during World War II. Peter Egner, a native of Yugoslavia, served as a guard and interpreter with the Nazi-controlled Security Police and Security Service in Belgrade, Serbia - then Yugoslavia - from April 1941 to September 1943, said a civil complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle. Egner did not divulge that information after he immigrated to the U.S. in 1960 and applied for citizenship, the complaint...

S ixty prominent leaders from Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Qatar, and Iraq have supported development of closer ties with Kosovo and fast recognition of Kosovo independence by the Arab states. The conclusion came from the conference “Kosova and the Arab world� organized in Amman, Jordan, by the Al Quds Center for Political Studies and Forum 2015 from Prishtina. Speakers at the conference were Kosovo intellectuals like Veton Surroi, Muhamet Mustafa and Qemalj Morina, and influential intellectuals and civil society leaders from the Arab world. “Kosovo topic arose interest among the Arab participants at the conference, who saw it important to...

Late on July 7, Serbia got a cabinet after two months of hard coalition bargaining. A total of 127 members of parliament of the 250-seat Serbian assembly approved the government composition that Cvetkovic had proposed earlier in the day along with the cabinet programme, after which the new ministers were sworn in. In the statement, issued on July 8, Obama said that “Serbs have moved through several painful chapters in their long and proud history�. Citizens of Serbia are eager for progress, democratic development and economic growth, Obama said. “In May, voters expressed their desire for a European future, a...

BELGRADE, Serbia: A bus carrying Polish tourists overturned north of Belgrade on Friday, killing six people and injuring nearly 40, Serbian police said. Police said 68 people were on the bus when the accident happened at about 6.30 a.m. (0430GMT) on the road between the Serbian capital, Belgrade, and the northern city of Novi Sad. The Polish bus "for a so far unknown reason swerved off the road and overturned, falling on its right side," a police statement said. Two children, a woman and three men were killed, and nearly 40 people were admitted to the hospital in Novi Sad,...

8 July 2008 | 16:36 | Source: Beta PRIŠTINA -- Representatives of civil society in Kosovo will start lobbying for Kosovo's recognition, write Priština media. Daily Koha Ditore claims that there is financial support from George Soros and the Kosovo Fund for Open Society: “The lobbying group will include Veton Suroi and Blerim Shala, the coordinator of the former Kosovo negotiating team, Luan Shllaku, the director of the Kosovo Fund for Open Society, and Muhamet Mustafa, the dean of the Reinvest University.� The group‘s work will be based on the plan and recommendations of former international envoy to Kosovo Martti...

YPSILANTI, MICHIGAN (WTOL) - As we celebrate Independence Day, four veterans of World War II want to thank those who kept them safe in enemy territory years ago. They were recently reunited at the Yankee Air Museum in Ypsilanti thanks to the Experimental Aircraft Association. News 11's Jennifer Boresz was there and has their story. These men are called the 'Forgotten 500' in a published book. As more and more people hear the story, however, they're hoping the daring rescue mission and the men behind it will never be forgotten again. "When they said pull that rip cord, I started...

The United States will pledge $400 million in aid to Kosovo next week at a donors conference expected to raise more than $1 billion for the newly independent state, a senior U.S. official said on Wednesday..... The Bush administration requested the bulk of its pledge from the U.S. Congress more than a year ago, well before Kosovo declared independence, out of a certainty that the region would need financial help whenever it declared independence.

The travel section of the paper featured a story on Kosovo the other day with a recommendation that readers visit this latest "must see" spot on the globe. It made me laugh. Almost forty years ago--1971 to be exact -- I traveled in what was then called Yugoslavia and is now called Kosovo. The memories of that trip remain so vivid and so utterly at odds with this report.

BELGRADE, Serbia: Serbian authorities have started a disciplinary procedure against two of its diplomats accused of helping a Serbian college basketball player flee the U.S. after being charged with severely beating a classmate, a radio station reported Monday. The Serbian Foreign Ministry said it will "be extremely efficient" in solving the case of Miladin Kovacevic, Belgrade's independent B92 radio reported, without providing any details about what it would do. The 6-foot-9-inch (2.05-meter), 260-pound (118-kilogram) Kovacevic, who was recruited to play basketball for Binghamton University in upstate New York, was arrested after a May 4 fight at a downtown Binghamton bar...

On February 17, 2008, Kosovo declared independence from Serbia. Some are concerned about what NATO, the United Nations, and the European Union have nurtured there since the military and humanitarian intervention in 1999. James Jatras, a U.S.-based advocate for the Serbian Orthodox Community, put it bluntly last year when he said Kosovo was a “a beachhead into the rest of Europe” for “radical Muslims” and “terrorist elements.” It’s an assertion without evidence. “We’ve been here for so long,” said United States Army Sergeant Zachary Gore in Eastern Kosovo, “and not seen any evidence of it, that we’ve reached the assumption...

Professor John P. Maher reviews "July 1914: Soldiers, Statesmen, and the Coming of the Great War: A Brief Documentary History." Edited by Samuel R. Williamson and Russel Van Wyk. 2003. Bedford / St Martin's Press. A commonplace in recent books on the Balkans is to draw parallels between 1990s Serbia and the Third Reich. Williamson and Van Wyk confirm the consensus view that that Germany and Austria-Hungary started the Great War, but fail to pursue another parallel. They say nothing about activities of Germany and Austria in the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. But policy and press in those...

American Deputy Secretary of State John Bolton believes the United States committed a serious mistake when it recognized the independence of Kosovo. He fears such policy may escalate tensions in the Balkans. In an interview for the Russian news agency Interfax, Mr. Bolton remarked that Washington’s policy was on autopilot since the regime of the late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. But the situation has changed considerably after the democratic government took over, which, in Mr. Bolton’s opinion, makes support for Kosovo’s independence a pointless atavism.

Serbs in protest against mosque construction 26 June 2008 | 15:19 | Source: FoNet BERIVOJCE -- Serbs from the village of Berivojce near Kosovska Kamenica are obstructing work on a building site where Albanians have begun illegally building a mosque. The Serbs are demanding that UNMIK and the Albanian authorities in Kamenica put a stop to the work and the “further irritation of the Serb populace”, reads a statement from the Kosovo Ministry. Over a hundred Serbs are protesting. One Serb representative, Boža Stanojević, said that a number of Kosovo Police Service members were harassing and provoking Serb protestors. “It...

Pristina _ Spain is lobbying against Kosovo's independence in the countries of Latin America, a former British Minister for Europe says. In a comment in today's Independent newspaper, published in London, Denis Macshane writes that “key European Union nations like Spain, Greece, Romania and Slovakia weaken the unity of Europe by refusing to recognise Kosovo”. “Greece blocks Macedonia’s EU and NATO ambitions, while Spain lobbies in Latin America against recognition of Kosovo”, writes MacShane, adding that “this bodes ill for the notion that a united EU diplomacy of weight can develop”. MacShane outlined some of the recent developments that have...

MOSCOW, June 23 (RIA Novosti) - Russia is not opposed to an EU mission replacing the UN force in Kosovo, but the move should have the formal backing of the UN Security Council and Serbia, a senior Russian diplomat said on Monday. "We are not opposed to the European Union taking on part of the responsibility for what is happening in Kosovo," Vladimir Chizhov, envoy to the European Communities, said adding a European mission should be approved by a UN Security Council resolution and Belgrade. Chizhov said UN Security Council Resolution 1244 was currently the only legal basis for an...

A gigantic poster of genocidal Bosnian Serb war criminal Radovan Karadzic hung on the outside wall of a hideous communist-style apartment block. “Get a picture of that,” I said to my friend and traveling companion Sean LaFreniere as I drove our rented car through the outer suburbs of Serbia's capital Belgrade. I had the wheel and he had the camera. “Too late,” he said. We were driving fast on a four-lane road and were almost out of the city. Our road trip from Serbia to Kosovo via Bosnia, Croatia, and Montenegro was just beginning. “That’s okay,” I said. “We’ll probably...

BELGRADE: Serbia's Socialist Party has broken off coalition talks with the nationalist bloc and is starting negotiations with the pro-European alliance led by the Democratic Party, officials said on Saturday. Socialist leader Ivica Dacic told the state news agency Tanjug there was "no common view regarding the key issues" with the nationalists. Options for the country now were a new election, a Socialist coalition with the pro-European bloc, or a government without the Socialists. A Socialist alliance with the Democrats has been seen as a done deal in recent weeks, with media and political sources saying the two parties had...

In her book "The Hunt: Me and War Criminals," Carla Del Ponte, former chief prosecutor at The Hague, reveals the gruesome details of the hundreds of Serb prisoners whose bodies were stripped of their organs during the Kosovo war. According to her sources, senior figures in the KLA were aware of the scheme, in which hundreds of young Serbs were reportedly taken by truck from Kosovo to northern Albania, where their organs were removed. Miss Del Ponte provides grim details of the reported organ harvesting and of how some prisoners were sewn up after having kidneys removed. Miss Del Ponte...

The Silesian Autonomy Movement has sent a petition to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk asking him to allow all regional communities to gain autonomy status. If he does not agree, the Silesians say they are ready to raise the issue of separation, according to Russian newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta. The movement officially declares its support for the autonomy of Silesia. The association was founded in 1991 and is based mainly in the Polish part of Upper Silesia. A similar petition has been sent to the Polish Sejm, the lower house of parliament, which along with the Senate (the upper house) has...

President of Papal Council for Christian Reunification, Cardinal Walter Casper says Vatican has no intention to recognize Kosovo's independence, reports InterFax. "Until this moment, the Wholly Synod has not recognized Kosovo as an independent country, and has no intention to do so" said Casper in an interview published by Magazine "Itogi". In the Interview, the Cardinal explains that Vatican understand why "Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church are worried with Kosovo" and admit that Kosovo is "craddle of the Serbian Orthodox Church". According to the Cardinal, the Wholly Synod understand that "each national minority as a right on social, religios...

The UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, today brushed aside furious Russian protests and downgraded the UN mission in Kosovo to allow the European Union to launch its most ambitious foreign project. Ban announced the "reconfiguration" of the nine-year-old UN mission on the eve of the Kosovo authorities enacting a constitution for an independent state which is fiercely opposed by Russia and Serbia. Russia responded by demanding the sacking of the UN chief in Kosovo, Joachim Ruecker of Germany, accusing him of working to sabotage his own mission. The Russian foreign ministry said Ruecker's conduct was "scandalous obstinacy which should be decisively...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia demanded disciplinary action against the head of the United Nations mission in Kosovo on Thursday for preparing to hand over powers to a European Union mission that Moscow says is illegal. Russia's foreign ministry made the demand on the same day NATO chiefs met to try and iron out problems over the international security presence in Kosovo, which announced its secession from Serbia this year. Russia opposes the recognition of Kosovo's independence and says the UN mission, which provides policing and other support, cannot handover to an EU mission because the UN Security Council has not...

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) — NATO nations agreed Thursday to broaden their peacekeeping mission in Kosovo to include training for the newly independent nation's security forces. NATO troops will help train Kosovo's troops even though a minority of member nations, led by Spain, have not recognized Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia in February. "With this decision, NATO will be able to assist Kosovo in building necessary, democratic security institutions," alliance Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said at the meeting of NATO defense ministers. "This Kosovo security force will be lightly armed, democratic and will focus initially on crisis response...

Appathurai said the training is expected to start soon, and diplomats added that the aim was to have an initial force of 1,200 ready by year's end. Diplomats said the 600 or so Spanish troops serving in Kosovo would not take part in the training. Although Appathurai stressed the planned multiethnic nature of the force, it was uncertain whether members of Kosovo's ethnic Serb minority would participate. Meanwhile, Russia signaled its continued annoyance over Kosovo by calling for the dismissal of the top U.N. official in the new nation over plans for the European Union to replace the current U.N....

"Stolen Kosovo" Documentary Censored in Czech Republic: Suffering of Kosovo Serbs Cannot be Shown on National TV That there can be no freedom of expression under the dictatorial regimes was confirmed yet again by the state-owned Czech TV, supposedly a "public service" which took part in the financing of the Vaclav Dvorak's documentary "Stolen Kosovo" prior to Czech Government's recognition of the mafia state on Serbian territory, but now, after their FM announced recognition of the fake state, refused to air it. According to the Czech daily Aktualne, the representatives of the state television justify their refusal to show the...

Pristina, 6 June (AKI) - An international panel of judges has sentenced a Kosovo Albanian to 40 years in prison for blowing up a Serbian bus that killed 11 people and injured ten others in 2001. Florim Ejupi was charged with planting and detonating explosives under a bridge near the northern Kosovar town of Podujevo. The blast blew up a bus belonging to the Serbian company Nis Express. Ejupi denied the charges and will be able to appeal the sentence before Kosovo's Supreme Court in two weeks. Kosovo, where ethnic Albanians outnumber Serbs by 17 to one, has been under...

PARIS: It was time for another French Open women's final, and though four-time winner Justine Hénin was still on the grounds, she was no longer on the clay. This year, with Hénin retired and watching from the front row, it would be time for a new Grand Slam champion, and it turned out to be the same young, elegant Serbian who had let her nerves get the best of her against Hénin in last year's flop of a final. Ana Ivanovic is a better, fitter, more composed contender now, and on Saturday, she filled the void at the top of...

“If Yugoslavia was the laboratory of Communism, then Communism would breathe its last dying breath here in Belgrade. And to judge by what [Slobodan] Milosevic was turning into by early 1989, Communism would exit the world stage revealed for what it truly was: fascism, without fascism's ability to make the trains run on time.” - Robert D. Kaplan “You bombed my country.” These were the nearly first words I heard after clearing passport control on arrival in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, from a taxi driver who flagged me down inside the airport. “Fifteen countries bombed my country.” I didn't...

SUBOTICA -- A Bosniak man in northern Serbia is under arrest for staging and then reporting incidents made to look like hate crime. Serbian police (MUP) in Subotica say they yesterday detained Samir K., 35, on suspicion that he threw a Molotov cocktail at his own house, in addition to spraying nationalist graffiti, and then reported this. The suspect was further found in illegal possession of firearms and explosives, and will be charged with causing ethnic, racial and religious hatred and intolerance, as well as with attempted murder in an unrelated incident. His claims started to unravel when the suspect...

BRUSSELS, May 28 (Reuters) - NATO troops should not be left to shoulder police tasks in Kosovo, the U.S.-led alliance said on Wednesday as signs grew that a European Union plan to take over police duties there faced months of delay. Kosovo's ethnic Albanian government asked the EU to take over policing from the United Nations when it declared independence from Serbia in February, but Serb ally Russia has so far blocked any formal handover.

BELGRADE (Reuters) - The socialist and nationalist parties that will soon rule Serbia's capital Belgrade vowed on Wednesday to prove their pro-Western rivals wrong by making the city more attractive to investors and a better place to live. National and local elections on May 11 left Serbia split between nationalists, led by the Radical Party, and liberals led by the Democratic Party. The Socialists of late autocrat Slobodan Milosevic emerged as kingmakers in the elections and hold the key to coalitions at the local and national level. It is unclear if the Socialists' deal with the Radicals in the capital,...

Serbian police said they arrested two former ethnic Albanian rebels and seized large cache of weapons in a region of southern Serbia which was a scene of Albanian uprising back in 2000-01. Serbian police stormed the houses of two former leaders of the „Liberation army of Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja" (UCPBM) near the regional hub of Presevo on Saturday, and found five assault rifles, two RPG's, 20 missiles, ten heavy machine guns, five pistols, two hand grenades and more than 20,000 pieces of ammunition. The owners of those houses, brothers Nazmi and Adan Hajredini were immediately arrested, raising a storm...

Sir -- I am a serving army officer and I have just returned off leave. I read your article on Kosovo with great interest. It was excellent, I really am fed up reading the UN propaganda that is blindly regurgitated by most visiting journalists. While undoubtedly United Nations' Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) has improved the country and the lot of the Kosovar Albanians in particular, as an international organisation it could have done so much better. So well done for telling it as it is! ... The population is as divided as ever, freedom of movement for the K/Serbs is...

24 May 2008 | 22:42 | FOCUS News Agency Prague. President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Klaus is ‘ashamed’ of the decision of the right-centrist government to acknowledge the independence of Kosovo, AFP reports. The government of PM Mirek Topolanek officially recognized Kosovo on Wednesday, three months after the state declared its independence. As a result, Serbia recalled its ambassador to Prague. ‘It is not a secret and I could not accept the recognition of Ksovo’, Kaus said before the media.

Vice President of Serbian Radical Party, Tomislav Nikolic with a view that there will be war in Europe if Kosovo attempts to join Albania. In an interview for Magazine Spiegel Online, Nikolic says that his view is not to argue, rather to converse with the European Union. To the question what he wished to speak to the EU about, Nikolic answered that the EU can no longer decide without Serbia's consent, reports Serbian paper "Blic". "Why no one for Kosovo did not offer the Cyprus solution? Cyprus is recognized as a country, even though its North section doesn't exist, this...

Serbia is due to host the Eurovision song contest with a tune hailed as a gesture of nationalist defiance over the secession of Kosovo. The camp songfest has long dripped with barely-concealed political intrigue as countries vote for friends and neighbours no matter how awful their efforts. Belgrade's moment in the spotlight comes just three months after Serbia's former province of Kosovo declared independence backed by most of the European Union. Serbia has withdrawn its ambassadors from those countries which recognise Kosovo, and now Jelena Tomasevic, its Eurovision entrant, is to ram home the country's disgust with her song 'Oro'....

Belgrade, 20 May (AKI) – Up to 15,000 music fans from all over Europe have arrived in the Serbian capital, Belgrade, for the Eurovision song contest to be held Tuesday. Sandra Susa, executive producer for Serbian television, said Belgrade hotels are at full capacity and many visitors have sought private accommodation and apartments. Serbia won the right to stage the event after its representative Marija Serifovic won the contest in Finland last year. Susa said the biggest benefit of the contest would be the improvement of the image of the country, with hundreds of millions of television viewers expected to...

When he first heard about Serbia from his study partner, Rabbi Yehoshua Kaminetzky conjured up images of the war-torn Balkan republic most people remember from news reports: bombed-out buildings and economic stagnation. But Kaminetzky, 24, is the first to admit that the Serbia of the past is not the Serbia of the present, let alone the future. What he and his wife Miri, 23, see is a country full of potential, and a Jewish community on the brink of rapid expansion. The Kaminetzkys, the new directors of Chabad-Lubavitch of Serbia, are the country’s first full-time emissaries. After arriving last week,...

Ivica Dacic, the leader of Serbia's Socialist party, has said that he has agreed the basic principles of a new government with the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) and the Radical Party (SRS). Dacic said the DSS and SRS had agreed to include the principle of social justice within five basic principles of a future cabinet's platform. Serbia's nationalists have been holding talks with other parties to form a government after their pro-Western rivals' claim of victory in last Sunday's general election. The vote has left Serbians sharply split over whether to join the EU or shift towards Russia, their...

What Serbia's election says about the European Union's enlargement A BRITISH tabloid set a high standard for bombast when it once took credit for the re-election of a Tory government with the headline: “It's The Sun Wot Won It”. This week European Union leaders were taking credit for another election upset: the unexpected success of the pro-European coalition led by the Serbian president, Boris Tadic, in the general election on May 11th. The Serbs had “clearly chosen Europe,” said the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner. Jan Marinus Wiersma, a Dutch member of the European Parliament, declared that the election was...

"Doesn't Belgrade help you?" we asked. "It's hard to call it 'help,'" Popovich said. "Their policy is to move all the educated people to Serbia and help them find work. Belgrade helped all qualified workers leave. Only we farmers and workers remain. But that's okay. We'll win Kosovo back the same way we lost it. And our friends will be stronger by then. I don't think we should drag Russia into a war right now. In the meanwhile our kids are growing up." "Do Serbs really have children in the enclaves?" we asked. "People just understood what they need to...

Iron Carla's revelation Hardly a day goes by without fragments of Ponte's book hitting Belgrade newspapers. Here is a commonly quoted section that details the horrors of Kosovo organ trafficking: "According to the journalists' sources, who were only identified as Kosovo Albanians, some of the younger and fitter prisoners were visited by doctors and were never hit. They were transferred to other detention camps in Burrel and the neighboring area, one of which was a barracks behind a yellow house 20 km behind the town. "One room inside this yellow house, the journalists said, was kitted out as a makeshift...

BELGRADE: Serbs voted Sunday in elections that will decide whether the nation takes a step toward mainstream Europe or reverts to a hard-line stance reminiscent of Slobodan Milosevic. The ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party clung to a slim lead heading into the parliamentary vote, closely trailed by President Boris Tadic's pro-Western coalition. Officials said early turnout was strong. Potential kingmakers included Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica's conservative bloc and Milosevic's Socialists. One or both were expected to help form a new government with an anti-Western and pro-Russia stance. "People here can't shake the feeling that Europe isn't fair and just toward Serbia,"...

The West was poised for bad news from the May 11 parliamentary vote in Serbia, where often shrill nationalist tones dominated the final days of the campaign. Instead it got good news: the pro-European Democratic Party emerged victorious, defeating the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party and their allies. The Democrats, led by President Boris Tadic, won some 37% of the vote, or 103 out of 250 seats, which should enable Tadic to dominate Serbia's policies for the next several years. The Radicals came a distant second, with 77 seats, which works out at 29.1% while the Democratic Party of Serbia, led...

BELGRADE, Serbia - The head of an ultranationalist party leading the polls going into Serbia's elections doesn't like to be compared to Slobodan Milosevic. He says the late leader wasn't hard enough during the Balkan wars and paved the way for losing Kosovo. "Milosevic was a communist, then a socialist, but he was never a nationalist," Tomislav Nikolic, the leader of Serbia's far-right Radicals, said during an interview Tuesday with The Associated Press. Two years after Milosevic died while on trial by a U.N. tribunal on genocide charges tied to the bloody breakup of former Yugoslavia, Nikolic's party could use...

Kosovo/Albania: Investigate Postwar Abductions, Transfers to Albania Official Dismissals Premature (New York, May 5, 2008) – Additional information has emerged that bolsters allegations of abductions and cross-border transfers from Kosovo to Albania after the 1998-1999 Kosovo war, Human Rights Watch said today. The Kosovar and Albanian governments should open independent and transparent investigations to help resolve the fate of approximately 400 Serbs who went missing after the war. "Serious and credible allegations have emerged about horrible abuses in Kosovo and Albania after the war," said Fred Abrahams, senior emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch, who investigated human rights violations in...