THE TELEGRAPH: A Bosnian Muslim has described how he watched men dig their graves before Serb killers slashed their throats as he came face-to-face for the first time with the warlord Radovan Karadzic in a UN war crimes court.
The former Bosnian Serb leader, who is on trial for genocide and war crimes, was confronted by a victim of the ethnic cleansing and killings he is accused of unleashing during the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1992.
Karadzic, who is defending himself, was repeatedly reprimanded by the UN judge for hectoring, trying to browbeat and interrupting Ahmet Zulic, a Muslim survivor of Serbian executions and detention camps, as he cross-examined him.
As Mr Zulic, 62, entered The Hague court with his head bowed, Karadzic subjected him to a baleful stare over his reading glasses before the prosecution's first witness began his, often, harrowing testimony.
The former mineworker described to the court how Serbs shelled Muslim houses in Sanski Most, in north west Bosnia, before he and many others were rounded up in June 1992 and held in horrific conditions, where they were regularly beaten or taken off to be killed.
"Two men would kick us in one part of the body and another would use a baton to beat you over the head until you became unconscious," he said. >>> Bruno Waterfield in The Hague | Tuesday, April 13, 2010
THE TELEGRAPH: A former Bosnian president facing extradition to Serbia to face war crimes charges yesterday accused the British Government of conspiring to "rewrite history" by allowing court proceedings to be brought against him.
Ejup Ganic, a university professor and friend of Baroness Thatcher, was arrested last month on suspicion of being involved in a 1992 massacre despite the charges having already been dismissed by a UN war tribunal.
Yesterday he appeared before Westminster magistrates after the Crown Prosecution Service accepted the Serbian extradition warrant.
It alleges that Mr Ganic ordered attacks that killed 42 Yugoslav soldiers despite a ceasefire in 1992. It also alleges that he was responsible for the torture and murder of captured soldiers and patients in a military hospital in 1992.
Mr Ganic, who spent 10 days in Wandsworth Prison following his arrest on March 1, claimed the warrant was a politically motivated abuse of the extradition arrangements between Britain and Serbia.
John Jones, his defence counsel, said that the charges had been examined and dismissed by the international tribunal investigating war crimes in the former Yugoslavia.
The 64-year old professor condemned the government's decision to accept the warrant.
"I am not happy with the decision of the British government, especially the Home Office, to initiate this process," he said. "It appears the British government volunteers to do the police job for the Milosevic regime which is still more or less in some way very active.
"The British government also volunteered to help Serbs to rewrite the chapter of Srebrenica and other places where genocide has been committed,"
He said the Serbian record was second only to "Nazi Germany in the books of genocide." >>> Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent | Wednesday, April 14, 2010
