DID YOU KNOW?  -- Three years before the 1995 Srebrenica Genocide, Serbs torched Bosniak villages and killed at least 3,166 Bosniaks around Srebrenica. In 1993, the UN described the besieged situation in Srebrenica as a "slow-motion process of genocide." In July 1995, Serbs forcibly expelled 25,000 Bosniaks, brutally raped many women and girls, and systematically killed 8,000+ men and boys (DNA confirmed).

20 October, 2009

RADOVAN KARADZIC: HEARTLESS MASS MURDERER

Radovan Karadzic's promise to exterminate Bosniaks:
On October 12th 1991 Radovan Karadzic decided to exterminate the Muslims of Bosnia. "They will disappear, these people will disappear from the face of the earth," he said.


New charge sheet ready:
The ICTY prosecution in the genocide trial of Radovan Karadzic has filed a final 40-page charge sheet with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). New, shortened charge sheet, details 11 charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

According to the indictment, Karadzic was one of the authors of a plan to "permanently remove" Bosniaks and Croats from Bosnian Serb controlled territory. He is also charged with two counts of genocide, including the 1995 Srebrenica genocide which resulted in the massive ethnic cleansing of 30,000 Bosniaks and at least 8,372 well-documented summary executions.

The Krstic appeal judgement concluded that, "By seeking to eliminate a part of the Bosnian Muslims, the Bosnian Serb forces committed genocide. They targeted for extinction the 40,000 Bosnian Muslims living in Srebrenica... "

New charge sheet also lists various counts of persecution, extermination, murder, rape, and deportation committed in 19 Bosnian municipalities, as well as during the 44-month siege of Sarajevo that left some 10,000 people dead. The prosecution also included war crimes charges for taking hostage some 200 United Nations peacekeepers in order to prevent NATO air strikes against Bosnian Serb military targets.

The initial indictment had listed crimes in 41 municipalities, repeatedly reduced until the current 19 after ICTY judges ordered the prosecution to narrow the charge sheet down so as to speed up the trial.

In 2000, Radovan Karadzic has been ordered by a U.S. jury to pay $4.5 billion in damages for atrocities committed by his soldiers. The only problem - he was on the run. The U.S. Government placed $5 million bounty on his head.

Mastermind of the Bosnian genocide:
On October 12th 1991 he stated his plans to exterminate the Muslims of Bosnia. "They will disappear, these people will disappear from the face of the earth," he said.

A mere day later, on 13 October 1991, Karadzic, talking to Momcilo Mandic, said: "Within a few days there will be no Sarajevo, and there will be over 500,000 dead; within a month the Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina will be destroyed!"

Again, on 15 October 1991, Karadzic foresees the extermination of the Muslims in the event of war. Talking to Miodrag Davidovic and his own brother Luka, Karadzic said: "In the first instance, none of their leaders will remain alive, they will be killed within 3 or 4 hours. They will have no chance of surviving."

Although Radovan Karadzic failed to exterminate "Muslims of Bosnia", he succeeded in committing genocide in Srebrenica. As a side note, the Bosnian genocide is a legally established case of genocide (more details here).

Miroslav Deronjic, a former Bosnian Serb politician who has pleaded guilty to war crimes, said he met Radovan Karadzic in early July 1995, shortly before Serbs attacked the United Nations-declared ''safe area'' of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia.

''At one moment, he said the following sentence to me, 'Miroslav, all of them need to be killed -- whatever you can lay your hands on,''' Mr. Deronjic told a pre-appeal hearing for a former Bosnian Serb general, Radislav Krstic.

At the end of the war, Karadzic realized that his dream to exterminate "Muslims of Bosnia" had failed, so he focused on Srebrenica - lightly protected United Nations' enclave in eastern Bosnia. In March 1995, Radovan Karadzic, then President of Republika Srpska, issued a directive to the Bosnian Serb Army - known as “Directive 7” - which specified that the Bosnian Serb Army was to:

"Complete the physical separation of Srebrenica from Zepa as soon as possible, preventing even communication between individuals in the two enclaves. By planned and well-thought out combat operations, create an unbearable situation of total insecurity with no hope of further survival or life for the inhabitants of Srebrenica."

Two painful results of the Srebrenica genocide:
1. Massive ethnic cleansing of approximately 30,000 Bosniaks.
2. At least 8,372 men and boys summarily executed and dumped into mass graves, then exhumed and moved to secondary mass graves to conceal the crime.