Sokol
Senior Moderator
Македонецот
Posts: 653
|
Post by Sokol on May 15, 2013 20:58:54 GMT -5
Good to see these kind of regional agreements taking place. Added to these were Serbia's recent purchase of Mig fighter-jets from Russia, and her inclusion into the CSTO as an observer.
|
|
|
Post by Balkaneros on May 16, 2013 19:36:43 GMT -5
like in Bosnia ?? the good ole genocide days uh ? You got it bud
|
|
|
Post by Balkaneros on May 16, 2013 19:42:57 GMT -5
|
|
rex362
Senior Moderator
Pellazg
PELASGIANILLYROALBANIAN
Posts: 19,058
|
Post by rex362 on May 17, 2013 8:52:09 GMT -5
Profile 17 May 13 Zoran Raskovic - The Jackal Who Repented The Serbian paramilitary who became a key prosecution witness at his former comrades’ trial for war crimes in Kosovo says he had to speak out about the brutal massacres his unit committed. Marija Ristic BIRN Belgrade
Zoran Raskovic, former Serbian paramilitary
Zoran Raskovic has been called a hero and a war criminal, a patriot and a traitor, a crazy man and a genius. Asked by BIRN to describe himself, he said he was “a man of truth”. “I want to end this 15-year-long silence. I want to remove the burden from my chest and the cross I carry on my head,” said former Serb paramilitary Zoran Raskovic, now the prosecution’s key witness in the case against 13 Serbian fighters charged with committing war crimes in four Kosovo villages during the 1999 war. Raskovic, a former member of the Jackals paramilitary unit, has been a witness at the special court in Belgrade on several occasions, giving vivid testimonies about their brutal massacres in the villages of Ljubenic, Pavlan, Zahac and Cuska, all in the area around the Kosovo town of Pec/Peja. For the past two years, Raskovic has been under constant police protection, because when he decided to testify under his own name, he and his family started receiving threats from former Jackals and from the police protection unit. Raskovic said that all this has proved that the society “doesn’t want to hear the truth about Kosovo”. “I wonder if I was more manipulated back in 1999, when as an 20-year-old boy I proudly went to war, thinking that this is the way to defend my land from ‘evil Albanians’, or now, because I wanted to tell the truth and I endangered the lives of my closest, because I believed that the time had come for facing the past and for reconciliation,” Raskovic said. Twice a refugee
Raskovic as a 16-year-old in the town of Pec
Explaining what he meant by “manipulation”-in the 1990s, Raskovic said that “all these wars and that campaign from all sides that someone is taking our land made me think I was doing something right. You know, I was a refugee from Croatia and now from Kosovo.” Raskovic was born in the Croatian town of Rijeka while the country was still part of Yugoslavia. In the middle of the deadly Balkan war, as a fifteen-year-old boy, he fled from his hometown to Kosovo. “With my father, mother and young brother, as a refugee for the first time, we went to Pec, the town where my family comes from,” Raskovic said. In 1998, after finishing high school, he did his compulsory military service, serving as a guard for Vladimir Lazarevic, who at the time was the chief of the Yugoslav Army’s Pristina Corps. Lazarevic has since been sentenced to 15 years in prison for war crimes in Kosovo in 1999 by the Hague Tribunal. During his twelve-month service, the armed conflict between the guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army and the Serbian security forces started, and Raskovic says he witnessed disturbing scenes of Serb civilians being killed in Kosovo Liberation Army camp Klecka and Radonjic lake, which convinced him to join up and fight “for Kosovo’s land”. “When I came back, Pec was not the same town. Six Serb children were killed in Cafe Panda, hate and intolerance was everywhere,” Raskovic said. Working in a local coffee shop, he met Nebojsa Minic, alias ‘Mrtvi’ (‘Dead’), a notorious criminal and member of several paramilitary groups and a police unit called Munje (Lightning), which is suspected of committing some of the most heinous war crimes. The deadly Jackals
The Jackals during their military campaign in Kosovo
Minic recruited him to a new unit, called the Jackals, which consisted of dozens of Serbian fighters and according to Raskovic was “tasked for dirty and most dangerous work”. “I was impressed at the time because I was part of the unit. I was a kid back then, Mrtvi was respected and he liked me. That was enough for me. For me, he was the alpha and the omega,” said Raskovic. “He told us then, ‘We need men like you, the state needs us.’ At that time, that was enough for me because I didn’t understood what we were doing as I understand now,” he said. “For 100 days this unit was rampaging around the area of Metohija, spreading fear and horror among Albanians,” he added. In 2010, the Serbian war crimes prosecutor indicted fighters Toplica Miladinovic, Srecko Popovic, Slavisa Kastratovic, Boban Bogicevic, Radoslav Brnovic, Vidoje Koricanin, Veljko Koricanin, Abdulah Sokic, Milojko Nikolic, Sinisa Misic, Zoran Obradovic, Dejan Bulatovic and Ranko Momic for killing more than 100 ethnic Albanians in the villages of Zahac, Pavlan, Ljubenic and Cuska in Kosovo in 1999. At the trial, Raskovic, identified the majority of the men as the direct perpetrators of the massacres. All of them except Toplica Miladinovic, who was a Yugoslav Army commander, are alleged to have been members of the Jackals. The Jackals’ command structure is still a subject of dispute, as many of its members claimed during the trial that they were part of a regular army unit and not paramilitaries. Raskovic says that the leader of the unit was Minic, but he often consulted the Yugoslav Army command in Pec. “We had army symbols, benefits that the army had, like gas and arms. And Mrtvi had official documents saying that he was an officer. I don’t know if he was under Yugoslav Army command, but I know I took him at least ten times to the Yugoslav Army command for consultation,” Raskovic. Minic never faced criminal charges because he died of AIDS in Argentina in 2005. It is believed that he had close ties with the Serbian police and senior officials. Life after the massacres
Raskovic says he would like to return to Kosovo
Following the signing of the Kumanovo agreement on June 9, 1999, which ended the Kosovo war, Raskovic and his family fled to central Serbia. He then become a part of several criminal gangs and shortly after the war was sentenced to 12 years in prison for robbing a bank. In his defence, he says that he was only trying to “steal the stolen”, because the bank he robbed was owned by Serbian tycoon Miroslav Miskovic, who has since been charged with illegally earning more than 30 million euro from privatised road companies. While in prison, Raskovic led several uprisings, the largest one in 2006, when hundreds of inmates sewed and stapled their tongues to their mouths in a protest for better prison conditions. He escaped from prison twice, and when he finally left jail, he became a protected witness in the Jackals’ case. It was initially planned that Raskovic would testify under a codename to conceal his identity, but for the first time in Serbian court history, a protected witness decided to testify publicly so he could “tell the truth about the horrors in Kosovo”. “I wanted to look all of them in the eyes. This was not done by Serbia, but by individuals. I wanted to remove this burden from my soul. I wanted this to be heard in Pristina, Belgrade and Brussels. I don’t think it is patriotic to be silent about these crimes, especially if you burn and kill whole villages. This is cowardice,” Raskovic said. During the trial he received blatant threats from his former comrades. “I have become aware that a criminal is a criminal. We can not justify our acts by saying ‘they did this to us, so we will take revenge’,” he said. Today, he says he is effectively “stateless” because he has no official identity documents; he filed a request for an ID card two years ago when the last one expired, but the authorities are still refusing to give it to him. “I complained and asked for help from every possible institution – the police, the prosecution, the judge and the ombudsman. Everybody said they will help, but I am still without my ID,” Raskovic said. “I feel manipulated, or rather, double-crossed, because I am asking my own state to provide me with my basic human rights, while all the other Jackals are walking around Belgrade freely,” he said. In the future, Raskovic said he would like to return to Kosovo. “I have land there. I didn’t sell anything. I would like to return and start a new life. That is why I talked. It is time for a true dialogue, because I don’t have another 15 years to wait. “I want to return home,” he said.
|
|
|
Post by Balkaneros on May 17, 2013 13:51:13 GMT -5
Why do you like about what he says?
I think any sane mans' instant reaction to a scene like that would be to grab arms and go "on a rampage". the kla was committing crimes against Serbs on Serbian land. A "rampage" was pretty much what was necessary.
at the same time;
Absolutely, this is what I keep telling you people. A lot of people bearing arms during these conflicts did so because of exactly what they saw and/or what had happened to them, they took this on a personal level as if literally their own are dying and for many this was the case many soldiers lost family and in alot of cases in some of the most barbaic ways, so yea I totally accept that they were individuals taking matters into their own hands - which is totally separate from the Yugoslav policy at the time.
|
|