Topic: Crime and Punishment
Murdering Radovan Karadzic Does Radovan Karadzic have evidence linking high-level U.S. officials to Islamic terror groups? Will he live long enough to present his defense at The Hague, or will he die in the UN Detention Unit like Slobodan Milosevic and Milan Babic before him?by Andy Wilcoxson
(libertarian)
Monday, August 11, 2008
Former Bosnian-Serb president Radovan Karadzic claims to have made a secret deal with American diplomat Richard Holbrooke in 1996. Under the terms of the agreement, Karadzic would completely withdraw from public life and in return the United States guaranteed his safety and his immunity from prosecution at the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.
Holbrooke vehemently denies making a deal with Karadzic. He said, "That is a total fabrication. It would have been not only immoral, but illegal."
In spite of Holbrooke's denials, former Bosnian-Serb foreign minister Aleksa Buha told Belgrade radio that he was present when the agreement was signed. He said the deal was made "in the night between 18 and 19 July 1996" and that "Holbrooke strongly promised that The Hague tribunal would be history for Karadzic if he withdrew from politics forever."
The Serbian news media has also published copies of the document signed by Holbrooke and Karadzic.
Confirmation of Karadzic's claims of a secret deal also comes from a less likely source. Karadzic's sworn enemy Muhamed Sacirbey, the former Bosnian-Muslim envoy to the UN, claims that he learned about the agreement from US diplomat Robert Frowick on the day it was signed.
Former Hague prosecutor Carla del Ponte also believes that a deal was struck. In a meeting with Dragan Kalinic, the former speaker of the Bosnian-Serb parliament, Del Ponte said, "I am investigating the story of an agreement between Karadzic and Holbrooke." Kalinic asked "Do you believe that the agreement exists?" and Del Ponte replied, "Yes".
Former Tribunal spokeswoman Florence Hartmann echoed those claims. She said the deal would explain how Karadzic was able to live for years on Bosnian-Serb territory and be ignored by more than 60,000 NATO troops.
She told Belgrade's FoNet news agency, "Information about his whereabouts was abundant, however, it would always turn out that one of the three countries - the U.S., Britain or France - would block arrests. Sometimes arrest operations were halted by Chirac personally, other times by Clinton," she said adding that she spoke "based on authentic statements and documents".
William Stuebner, an American advisor to former UN war crimes prosecutor Richard Goldstone, told reporters after Karadzic was indicted that he "personally witnessed a group of Italian peacekeepers at a checkpoint literally turn their backs as a convoy carrying Radovan Karadzic came by with lights flashing, just so they wouldn't 'encounter' him."
Stuebner claims to have met with Karadzic in May 1996, shortly before the deal with Holbrooke was signed. He described the meeting with Karadzic to the Christian Science Monitor saying: "He was scared to death, he was really sure they were coming to get him and was seriously looking to turn himself in."
In an interview with the German news magazine Der Spiegel, Del Ponte said that at one point Karadzic sent a message to the Tribunal "saying that he would turn himself in voluntarily. But then he suddenly changed his mind."
It would appear that Karadzic wanted to surrender to the Tribunal, but the United States convinced him to sign the agreement with Holbrooke and withdraw from public life instead. One could certainly speculate that the United States was more interested in keeping Radovan Karadzic quiet than in putting him on trial for his alleged crimes.
Eventually, Karadzic's deal with Holbrooke turned sour. The Belgrade daily Blic reported that in November 2000 the CIA tapped Karadzic's phone and discovered that he was still controlling his political party from behind the scenes. The unnamed source, who claimed to be an official from a Western intelligence agency, said "In America they went crazy realizing Karadzic was making a fool of them." At that point the protection was withdrawn.
Not only was Karadzic's protection withdrawn, Del Ponte believed that he was in danger of being killed. In her meeting with Kalinic she said, "Karadzic knows very well that he is in danger because if they find him he will not be transferred to The Hague alive."
In an interview with the Bosnian newspaper Slobodna Bosna, Radovan Karadzic's wife said the U.S. ambassador for war crimes, Pierre-Richard Prosper, "told my mother-in-law that she would never see her son alive again and that they would kill him when they find him."
Again, the determination to kill rather than arrest Radovan Karadzic suggests that the United States was more interested in keeping him quiet than in bringing him to justice for his alleged crimes. The question is why. The answer may be that he has evidence incriminating U.S. officials.
The United States and NATO supported the Muslim war effort in Bosnia. So did the Iranian Government, Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and other Islamic radical groups. As the wartime leader of the Bosnian-Serbs, Radovan Karadzic may be in a position to prove that there was high-level collaboration between U.S. officials and certain Islamic terror groups in Bosnia.
Imagine the political ramifications if Karadzic were to present strong evidence linking high-level U.S. officials with terrorists such as Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, both of whom were active in Bosnia before masterminding the 9/11 terrorist attacks. If something like that were shown to be true, it would explain the U.S. determination to keep Radovan Karadzic quiet.
At his initial appearance before the Tribunal, Karadzic expressed concern for his safety. He said, "I must say that this is a matter of life and death. If Mr. Holbrooke still wants my death and regrets that there is no death sentence here, I wonder if his arm is long enough to reach me here."
The fact that high-level Serbian leaders have died suspicious deaths at the UN Detention Unit in the past should give Karadzic reason to question his safety.
On March 5, 2006 the Tribunal claimed that former Krajina-Serb leader Milan Babic hung himself with his belt. During the autopsy The Netherlands Forensic Institute noted that it was "exceptionally uncommon" that the ligature mark found on Babic's neck was narrower than the belt he supposedly hung himself with. Generally in a hanging, they would expect the mark to be roughly the same width or slightly wider than the belt.
In spite of the fact that the marks on his neck didn't match the belt he supposedly hung himself with, no criminal investigation was carried out. His death was declared a suicide and the books were closed.
Less than a week after Babic's death, former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic also died in the UN Detention Unit. Less than 72 hours before having a fatal heart attack, Milosevic wrote a letter to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs claiming to have been poisoned with a powerful drug that negated the effect of his high-blood pressure medication. His letter said, "In order to verify my allegations, I am presenting you a simple example which you can find in the attachment. This document, which I received on March 7, shows that on January 12th (i.e. two months ago), an extremely strong drug was found in my blood ... the fact that doctors needed 2 months to report to me, can't have any other explanation than we are facing manipulation."
In its report on Milosevic's death, the Tribunal confirmed that Milosevic was given a blood test on January 12, 2006 and that the suspicious drug was found. However, according to the Tribunal's report, "Mr. Milosevic was not told of the results until 3 March 2006 because of the difficult legal position in which Dr Falke found himself by virtue of the Dutch legal provisions concerning medical confidentiality."
Clearly the Tribunal is covering-up something, because there is absolutely no Dutch legal provision that prevents a doctor from telling his patient the results of their own blood test. Nonetheless, no criminal investigation was launched. The death was deemed "natural" and that was the end of that.
If Karadzic dies in the UN Detention Unit, he will be the third high-level Serbian leader to do so. If he has incriminating evidence against U.S. officials he would be well advised to get it out in the open as soon as possible, otherwise that information might go to the grave with him.
Andy Wilcoxson administers a website where he covered Milosevic's trial in The Hague. He recently finished writing a book about the break up of Yugoslavia based on the information that came to light during the course of Milosevic's trial. He was a founding member of Milosevic's defense committee in The Hague. He can be reached via e-mail.
Did you like this article? If you did, Thumb It! 79 thumbs so far
The views expressed in this
article are those of Andy Wilcoxson only and do not represent
the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. Andy Wilcoxson is
solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an
employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.
I usually don't like the articles that this journalist writes like the last one about karadzic being a "hero" but this article definitely brings up a few key points that might just well be true.....
From the standpoint of one who has labored to oppose the slander of the Bosnian Serbs - see articles at www.emperors-clothes.com/yugo.htm - Wilcoxson's piece "Murdering Radovan Karadzic" is unfortunate because, by mixing hearsay and falsifications with serious charges (for example charges of Hague criminal negligence, at minimum, in the deaths of Milosevic and Babic) Wilcoxson makes a burlesque of the defense of the Serbs.
Case in point: referring to Carla Del Ponte’s 2007 Der Spiegel interview Wilcoxson writes:
[Wilcoxson excerpt starts here]
"In an interview with the German news magazine Der Spiegel, Del Ponte said that at one point Karadzic sent a message to the Tribunal 'saying that he would turn himself in voluntarily. But then he suddenly changed his mind.'
"It would appear that Karadzic wanted to surrender to the Tribunal, but the United States convinced him to sign the agreement with Holbrooke and withdraw from public life instead. One could certainly speculate that the United States was more interested in keeping Radovan Karadzic quiet than in putting him on trial for his alleged crimes."
[Wilcoxson excerpt ends here]
Aside from the danger of using a liar like Del Ponte as a reliable source, Wilcoxson has doctored her words. As posted at http://spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,512188,00.html Del Ponte in fact told Der Speigel: "It's true that Karadzic sent a message to one of our investigators in 1999, saying he would come in voluntarily. Then he suddenly changed his mind. All other claims [i.e., regarding a deal - J.I.] are nonsense."
Note the year: 1999. Wilcoxson argues in favor of Karadzic's claim that he made a deal with the US in 1996. Rather than confirming the deal story, Del Ponte's assertion, that Karadzic said he wanted to surrender to the Hague Tribunal in 1999, contradicts Wilcoxson's view, that a deal, in force until 2000, protected Karadzic from the Tribunal.
And note that Wilcoxson has obviously not merely
failed to understand that Del Ponte's quote contradicts his arguments because, in 'quoting' Del Ponte, Wilcoxson has cut out the reference to 1999
and Del Ponte's assertion that "all other claims are nonsense." By cutting the evidence that contradicts him, then
posting the doctored quotation, Wilcoxson manifests consciousness of guilt.
Wilcoxson also uncritically repeats easily debunked claims. For instance, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that the claim that Karadzic would be shot before being brought to The Hague has been contradicted by the fact that Karadzic was *not* shot before being brought to The Hague. And similarly, if the US wanted Karadzic killed before he could speak then why didn't they kill him while
the CIA was allegedly guarding him, or at least kill him when they decided he supposedly broke the supposed agreement? Why
would the US remove his guards and let Karadzic walk away Scott free if they had vowed he would never live to testify?
The Bosnian Serbs have been viciously demonized. The website I work on, Emperor's Clothes,
has produced a movie showing how pictures were doctored to achieve that demonization.
The point regarding Karadzic’s seizure and incarceration in The Hague is not to sensationalize random speculations,
mostly on the level of gossip from highly questionable sources, about a possible deal (whose existence, though not necessarily as described, I happen personally to believe is likely), but to expose the lies about the Serbs.
Uncritical repetition of mutually contradictory rumors and the falsification of quotations are not positive contributions to this process.
Jared Israel Editor, Emperor's Clothes www.tenc.net
Posted By: Andy Wilcoxson
Date: 2008-08-14 13:44:57
Jared,
Are you claiming, as a defender of the Serbs, that Radovan Karadzic is a liar? This article doesn't make any claims that Radovan Karadzic himself didn't make either in open court or in written submissions to the Hague Tribunal. He's the one who said that he had a deal with Holbrooke. He said that the United States wants him dead. He said that he wanted to turn himself in to the Tribunal a long time ago.
I believe Radovan Karadzic is telling the truth. NATO did let him live relatively unmolested in Pale for a couple of years after the war, why else would they do that unless they had a deal with him?
How do you know that NATO just "let him walk off". Maybe he was rescued from NATO's "protection", perhaps Serbia helped him escape when he began to have doubts that NATO would hold-up its end of the deal. Afterall, he did have authentic government-issued identification documents for his alias when they picked him up. Somebody in the government had to set him up with that.
How do you know that he didn't see the Tribunal as a possible means of escape from NATO's "protection" in 1999? Maybe he thought that if he was at the Tribunal in full public view that they wouldn't be able to kill him.
I don't have all of the answers, but I certainly don't think you have cause to accuse Radovan Karadzic of lying when he says that his life is in danger.
In my remarks above, I did not in fact comment on Karadzic at all. I commented on what you had written. I wrote that your account mixes some truths with semi-coherent repetitions of gossip, some of it from notoriously dishonest sources, and even then, some of it falsified – by you.
I gave as an example that you lied about the content of Carla Del Ponte’s quote from Der Spiegel. As I wrote above, in ‘quoting’ her, you removed her assertion that the claim that Karadzic had made a deal was unsupported nonsense and you removed her assertion that it was in 1999 that he offered to turn himself in to The Hague. You then added your own paraphrasing and conclusion, completely reversing the thrust of the remarks of Del Ponte (herself a notoriously unreliable witness).
You wrote: “Del Ponte said that at one point Karadzic sent a message to the Tribunal "saying that he would turn himself in voluntarily. But then he suddenly changed his mind."
Note your substitution of “at one point” for Del Ponte’s actual words: “in 1999.” And then, immediately after this tricky falsification you give the following conclusion:
“It would appear that Karadzic wanted to surrender to the Tribunal, but the United States convinced him to sign the agreement with Holbrooke and withdraw from public life instead.”
Obviously, since Karadzic claims he was “convinced” to sign the alleged deal in 1996, Del Ponte’s Der Spiegel interview, in which she referred to what happened in 1999, did not refer to a period PRIOR to the alleged deal. (Not to mention that she states that all supposed evidence of an alleged deal is nonsense.) So you were knowingly lying about what Del Ponte said.
For myself, I am not saying Karadzic did not make a deal. (What I wrote was that I believe he probably did make some kind of deal.) I am saying that your dishonesty does mountains of harm to the Serbs who have nothing on their side except strict adherence to the truth. A ‘defense’ which is semi-coherent and includes falsified data is a provocation, causing ordinary people who are presently misled about the facts but who are intellectually honest (and capable of checking Der Spiegel) to conclude that a) what they have heard about the Serbs must be true because b) look at the lies put forward by those supposedly defending them.
I also pointed out that you quote statements from all sorts of sources (including notorious Islamists and Hague officials) without critically examining their reliability or logical coherence and then, as if they were all proven true, draw conclusions that are built on sand, thus again creating the impression that your dishonest methods and logically-challenged arguments are the best the Serbs can expect, i.e., that the charges against them must be true.
So: the criticism is of you, not Karadzic. That in your response you pretend otherwise and spray a lot of fog in the air to divert from the criticism of you is consistent with the dishonesty that I criticized above.
Jared Israel Emperor's Clothes www.emperors-clothes.com
Posted By: Andy Wilcoxson
Date: 2008-08-14 23:22:38
Jared,
I quoted the Islamists and the Hague officials because they corroborate Karadzic's story and they are his enemies. They have credibility in this particular circumstance because they don't have a motive to lie for him or against Holbrooke.
Second, you said that I "removed [del Ponte's] assertion that the claim that Karadzic had made a deal was unsupported nonsense". I removed that part of the quote because she wasn't talking about Karadzic's deal with Holbrooke, she was talking about a completely different deal that isn't discussed anywhere in this article. She was talking about an alleged deal with the Tribunal whereby the charges against him would be dropped if he turned himself in. She was saying that claims of THAT deal were nonsense, not that the deal with Holbrooke was nonsense. In fact in the same Der Spiegel interview she says that she had information to the effect that there was a deal between Holbrooke and Karadzic.
The fact that del Ponte says he offered to turn himself in in 1999 (which is a claim made not only by del Ponte, but also by his own family) does not mean that he didn't have a deal with Holbrooke in 1996. The Holbrooke deal may have gone bad before that. In fact, in his written submission to the Tribunal, he explains that he was tipped-off (after the deal with Holbrooke was signed) that NATO was planning to kill him so he sought to appear before the Tribunal -- all I do is speculate about why he never turned himself in.
I omitted the part of the quote about 1999 because it isn't important and I didn't want to derail the article with yet another speculative discussion about when the deal might have gone bad. None of us know when the deal went bad because Karadzic hasn't given a date. His Dragan Dabic identity papers were issued by the Serbian government in 1997 and that was roughly the time he disappeared from Pale so maybe things went bad then, he offered to turn himself in to the Hague in 1999 so maybe that was it, but then again we have this story in Blic where the CIA accuses him of breaking the deal in 2000 so maybe that was when it all went bad. I don't know when it happened and neither do you. None of us will know until Karadzic gives us a date.
It's the Stuebner quote, not the del Ponte quote, that proves that Karadzic wanted to turn himself in BEFORE the deal with Holbrooke was signed. All the del Ponte quote does is corroborate the fact that he was willing to turn himself in, it doesn't really matter if it was in 1999 or 1996. It's the fact that he was willing to go to the Hague, until something or someone made him change his mind that is important.
It is obvious to anybody who reads what you have written here that you are arguing that there wasn't a deal with Holbrooke and that the CIA didn't really want to kill Karadzic. In fact you say that claim that the CIA wants Karadzic dead by virtue of the fact that they haven't killed him. You are arguing against the very claims that Karadzic himself has made, therefore you are accusing him of lying. All I am doing is following his lead and finding corroboration for his story.
I suspect that the motive behind your criticism of this article is more personal. You don't care whether I took something del Ponte said out of context or not (and I didn't). You're upset with me because Nico Varkevisser and I wouldn't take your side when you attacked Milosevic and got into a fight with him on the phone that day. That is what this is really about.
One can evaluate the integrity of an article only by examining its actual contents. It is very clear, in your actual article, that you were attributing to Del Ponte the assertion that "at one point" (your words) Karadzic wanted to turn himself in, and you go on to say that at THAT point the US convinced him to instead go into hiding under US protection. So Del Ponte, herself totally unreliable, is being quoted as if supporting your time frame.
But the alleged Holbrooke deal is said to have taken place in 1996, and Del Ponte is in fact referring to an offer Karadzic allegedly made three years later. You are deliberately misleading readers into believing that Del Ponte supports your claim that Karadzic was persuaded not to turn himself in because the US didn't want him to testify. Whether or not the US wanted or wants Karadzic to testify, this is NOT what Del Ponte said.
Note that this is not simply a matter of taking Del Ponte's words out of context. It is a matter of misrepresenting supposed evidence, that is, of lying.
Such lies are often employed by advertising copywriters, for example, for book jackets in which a few words from a negative review are quoted to create the impression of a positive review. Positive, negative - what's the difference? It’s all just words.
You write, in an unwitting self-revelation, "All I am doing is following his [Karadzic’s - JI] lead and finding corroboration for his story.”
Actually, your self-description as a sycophant is an understatement, since what you can't “find” you invent.
Posted By: Andy Wilcoxson
Date: 2008-08-15 13:00:08
Jared,
This article doesn't mislead anybody because Del Ponte supports my speculation that Karadzic was persuaded not to turn himself in because the US didn't want him to testify. Del Ponte has said repeatedly that she believes Karadzic and Holbrooke made a deal. She also said that US/NATO forces would have killed (not arrested) Karadzic if they found him. Based on that, it is clear to me that the US didn't want him in The Hague otherwise they wouldn't have made a deal with him in 1996 or endeavored to kill (rather than arrest) him later on when the deal went bad. The fact that he offered to surrender to the Tribunal in 1999 does not prove that he didn't have a deal with Holbrooke in 1996, nor does it prove that nobody exerted pressure on him to change his mind. You're accusing me of twisting del Ponte's words to prove that she believed something that she actually believes -- namely that the U.S. didn't want Karadzic in The Hague. Your criticism that I took her words out of context is weak and totally pointless because I didn’t misrepresent her fundamental position on the issue.
Anybody who reads what you've written here can see that you're trying to debunk Karadzic's claims that he made a deal with Holbrooke, that he wanted to turn himself in, and that the US wants to kill him. You're just hiding that behind a flimsy and pointless criticism of me. I found strong corroboration of Karadzic’s claims and now you show-up and start calling me his “sycophant”. You’re criticizing me for using his enemies to corroborate his story when you know that corroboration from one’s enemy carries far more weight than corroboration from one’s friend.
You claim to be a defender of the Serbs, but here you are here trying to help Richard Holbrooke debunk Karadzic. Your role has been to stir the shit and turn the Serbs and their defenders against each other. You are a provocateur.
Spare me your moral outrage and the lectures about dishonesty. I’ve had the misfortune of working with you. I know how you operate. You go around secretly accusing everybody else of being a NATO spy or a traitor to the cause. Here you are pretending to be the personification of virtue – accusing me of misrepresenting Carla del Ponte - when I know how you doctored that tape recording of Vladimir Krsljanin because I helped you do it. You told me what to cut out of the tape and I cut it, then you sent the doctored tape to that pack of traitors in the SPS so that they would have a pretext to expel Krsljanin from the party (or worse). I knew it was dishonest, but you had me convinced that it was for the greater good.
You had me convinced that Krsljanin was a spy working to destroy Milosevic’s defense and that the SPS was the main organization supporting him so I gladly fought dirty against Krsljanin. But what happened later was that Milosevic kept Krsljanin around and you were the one who attacked Milosevic and got into a fight with him when he called you to arrange Francisco Gil-White’s testimony in The Hague. You were the one who betrayed Milosevic, you were the vice chairman of his defense committee, and then you accused him of being a traitor against his own people. You set yourself up as his friend, and then you attacked him. The SPS went on to betray Milosevic too, but when you sent me to Serbia to meet them they sang Milosevic's praises like they were the Hallelujah choir and they told me that you were wonderful, that I should trust you, and that Krsljanin was the real traitor and I believed them because I knew that Krsljanin was lying about Ramsey Clark. It never occoured to me that Milosevic might have changed his mind about Ramsey Clark (thereby exhonerating Krsljanin), or that you might have been an even bigger traitor than Krsljanin was (if he actually did defy Milosevic over Ramsey Clark).
Want to comment on this
article? Leave your comment here. Your email address is
required to track your comment. However, we will neither
publish your email address nor distribute it to other
organizations or persons. The only reason we might use
it would be if we needed to contact you regarding your
comment. All comments are subject to our
terms of use policy.
