[ALBSA-Info] Illyria newspaper

[Agron Alibali]

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Me poshte jane tre shkrime te numrit te fundit te Illyrias lidhur me te 
njejten teme. Kam perfshi edhe shkrimin origjinal te IWPR
Sokoli

Anti-Albanian Slurs Fill Milosevic’s Rhetoric

By Sokol Rama

In his third appearance before the UN Tribunal for war crimes in former 
Yugoslavia (ICTY), former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic dismissed the 
tribunal’s indictments calling it a document written at the level of "a 
retarded 7-year-old child." 
In addition, he said that the U.S. government had turned to him for help in 
tracking down bin Laden, who was believed to be behind the 1998 bombings of 
the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. 
"The previous American administration knew that bin Laden was in Albania two 
years after he blew up their embassies and they discussed these facts with me 
and my associates," Milosevic told the ICTY judges.
U.S. and Albanian authorities have repeatedly denied the ill-intended 
Yugoslav and Russian media reports that bin Laden ever visited the country. 
A statement issued by the Albanian government soon after Milosevic’s remarks 
said: "We turn down with disgust this vile concoction, suitable only for the 
person who articulated it." 
"War criminals and the enemies of civilization like Milosevic or bin Laden 
should end up in the defendant's dock and we are convinced that bin Laden 
will soon be held accountable alongside the 'Butcher of the Balkans' 
(Milosevic)," the government statement added.
A staunch U.S. ally, Albania welcomed NATO bombing in 1999 that stopped 
Milosevic's ethnic cleansing campaign against Albanians in Kosova. It has 
strongly backs the ongoing United States campaign against terrorists and the 
countries that support them. Working closely with U.S. and Western secret 
services, Albania's government extradited a number of suspected Islamic 
extremists in 1998 – a cooperation that has been regarded as very effective 
and whole-hearted.
"As you are aware, in the past several years the Albanian government has 
taken commendable and concrete steps, applauded by the international 
community, to identify and expel foreign Islamic extremists from its 
borders," Joseph Limprecht, U.S. ambassador to Tirana, told a news conference 
on September 21.
Milosevic's claim that Bin Laden had been in Albania after the bombings of 
two US embassies in east Africa in 1998 clearly has not been substantiated by 
any other source other then his very own brother, Branislav Milosevic, a 
former Yugoslav ambassador to Moscow who currently has taken refuge in 
Russia. The former Yugoslav president obviously has an interest in linking 
his Albanian enemies with the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks 
on New York and Washington. 
In addition, Milosevic also unleashed a political tirade at the court, 
alleging that his trial was inciting a wave of terrorism by Albanians in 
southern Serbia. But his claim was rejected by Serbian Deputy Prime Minister 
Nebojsa Covic, who told The Associated Press that "someone misinformed him."
The former Yugoslav president stands accused of responsibility for the deaths 
of thousands of Kosovar Albanians, the deportations of 800,000 people and 
sexual assault by Yugoslav army troops.

Anti-Albanian Slav Propaganda Campaign Targets U.S. Peacekeepers 

Kosova Serbs are mystified by reports that mujahedin have set up a training 
camp in their village.

By Nehat Islami

ROPOTOVA
Bogus reports of bin Laden training camps in Kosova have been made before, 
but the latest claim has taken the Balkan propaganda war to the borders of 
the absurd. 
In the latest round of scare-mongering, it's been alleged that the village of 
Ropotova, in south-east Kosova, is a focal point of the Saudi dissident's 
al-Qaeda network.
Ropotova is, however, an ethnically-Serb village, a place where even a single 
mujahedin would, needless to say, stand out somewhat from the crowd. But try 
telling that to the Russian and Macedonian media
On October 16, the Moscow-based RIA Novosti news agency, citing an unnamed 
correspondent in Kosova, claimed a group of some 50 Algerian and Afghan 
mujahedin were training at a camp in the Kamenice municipality, located in 
the US KFOR sector.
The camp, RIA Novosti alleged, was being run by Ayman al Zawahiri, one of bin 
Laden's closest collaborators and employed as instructors Albanian deserters 
from the Yugoslav army. The trainees, the report went on, would make up 
terrorist units for operations in Kosova and Macedonia.
Three days later, Dnevnik, a leading Macedonian newspaper, quoted "reliable 
sources" as confirming the RIA Novosti reports and pinpointing the location 
of the camp in the village of Ropotova.
The reports failed to mention that Ropotova's 150 homes are all occupied by 
ethnic Serbs, who were mystified how anyone might imagine that their village 
was home to mujahedin - their sworn enemies. "What sort of mujahedin would 
dare to come to our village," one local told me. "Ropotova is surrounded from 
all sides with Serb villages."
Zoran Jovanovic, a Serb municipal official from Kamenice, said, "I am in 
permanent contact with the Serb and Albanian locals, but have never heard 
from Ropotova villagers about any such camp. This is a small territory. If 
there was something, we would know."
The claims of mujahedin activity have also been rubbished by US KFOR units 
patrolling the area. "The regular air and ground patrols conducted by the 
Russian and American troops in close cooperation with the Serb and Albanian 
communities in the region have not discovered such information," said KFOR 
spokesman Major Randy Martin.
Shaip Surdulli, head of the Kamenice municipality, believes the training camp 
claims were circulated to create tension between Serbs and Albanians ahead of 
the upcoming elections; to brand Albanians "allies of the 'terrorist' Osama 
bin Laden" and to discredit US troops operating in Kosova.
The Kamenice municipality is home to around 55,000 people, 18 per cent of 
whom are Serb. Kamenice town, with a population of 10,000, suffered few 
casualties during the 1999 war. Serbs and Albanians continue to live and work 
together there, in a rare example of ethnic tolerance. 
The municipal assembly has 11 Serb advisors on its books and 23 Serbs work in 
the local administration, two in senior positions. They also serve in the 
local police force and travel freely to their church and to a local market 
they share with Albanians. And, perhaps most significantly, since the end of 
the Kosova war, there has been no violence between the two communities. 


Nehat Islami is the IWPR project manager in Kosova.

Three More Mass Graves Found in Serbia

Another 400 or so Kosovars are still buried in a mass grave in Batajnica

By Indrit Muja

There are three additional mass graves on the police training grounds in 
Batajnica, in the suburbs of the Serbian capital Belgrade, Dragan Karleusa, a 
senior Serbian police officer told a press conference on October 31.The 
exhumation of corpses from them is supposed to begin soon, Beta news agency 
reported. 
In an interview published on November 1 in the Belgrade weekly ‘Vreme’, 
Captain Karleusa said that in addition to the 405 corpses exhumed from grave 
sites, another 400 or so people are still buried in the training grounds in 
Batajnica. According to him "Belgrade has become a city of mass graves".
The post-Milosevic authorities in Serbia admit the mass graves were an 
attempt by the Milosevic government to hide atrocities against civilians by 
moving hundreds of bodies out of Kosova and burying them in Serbia. 
"They are most probably Albanians, and they were most probably killed as a 
result of criminal, not military, activity. That is why they were brought 
here," Capt. Karleusa told the Serbian weekly, adding that that realization 
was "devastating and terrible".
At least three mass graves have been found in Serbia since the ouster of 
former President Slobodan Milosevic a year ago. All the exhumed were 
identified as Kosova Albanians, including three brothers Bytyci from Long 
Island, who were American citizens.
According to Capt. Karleusa, the bodies of Kosova Albanian civilians dug out 
of two mass graves in Petrovo Selo in eastern Serbia have been buried in an 
improvised cemetery. He said that the corpses uncovered in Batajnica have 
been placed "in cold storage in some underground passages on the scene of the 
crime," because "judicial and medical procedures have not yet been completed."
In an unprecedented statement for a Serbian high official, he called for 
those responsible for these crimes to be brought before justice. Although 
admitting that "Serbs as a nation, are - for the present and for the future – 
stained", he still tried to disassociate the killers from the formations they 
served into, like army, police and other units that committed these crimes in 
the name of his nation.




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