Serbs Convicted of Burning Muslims alive in Visegrad

Sredoje Lukic was convicted of aiding and abetting his cousin Milan in one of the atrocities





THE HAGUE: A UN war crimes court convicted two Bosnian Serb cousins on Monday for a “callous” 1992 killing spree that included locking scores of Muslims in two houses and burning them alive.

Yugoslav war crimes tribunal judge Patrick Robinson said burning 119 Muslims to death in the eastern Bosnian town of Visegrad “exemplified the worst acts of inhumanity that one person may inflict on others.” He sentenced Milan Lukic to life in prison and Sredoje Lukic to 30 years.

Robinson said Milan Lukic was the ringleader in both incidents, helping herd victims into the houses, setting the fires and shooting those who tried to flee the flames.

The judgment said his cousin Sredoje Lukic aided and abetted in one of the blazes. Witnesses “vividly remembered the terrible screams of the people in the house,” Robinson said, adding that Milan Lukic used the butt of his rifle to herd people into the house, and said, “come on, let’s get as many people inside as possible

Milan Lukic also was convicted of murdering 12 other Muslims, shooting them in the back on the banks of the Drina River, which runs through Visegrad, so the current would sweep away their bodies. One of the victims was murdered in front of his wife and child.

Robinson said Milan Lukic “ignored the victims pleas for their lives,” as he and other Serb paramilitaries executed them with a single shot in the back before firing into the bodies of any men they believed were still alive.

Milan Lukic led a paramilitary group known as both the “White Eagles” and the “Avengers,” which terrorized Muslims in Visegrad. His cousin Sredoje was a local policeman and a member of the group. Both men were also convicted of cruelty for visiting a detention center to savagely beat Muslim inmates.

According to ICTY documents, based on the victims reports, some 3,000 Bosniaks were murdered during the violence in Višegrad and its surrounding, including some 600 women and 119 children. According to the Research and Documentation Center, 1661 Bosniaks were killed/missing in Višegrad.
According to the survivors and the report submitted to UNHCR by the Bosnian government, the Drina river was used to dump many of the bodies of the Bosniak men, women and children who were killed around the town and on the famous Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge, as well as the new one. Day after day, truckloads of Bosniak civilians were taken down to the bridge and riverbank by Serb paramilitaries, unloaded, slashed or shot, and thrown into the river. In one instance, during the murder of a group of 22 people on June 18, 1992, the Lukić's group tore out the kidneys of several individuals, while the others were tied to cars and dragged through the streets; their children were thrown from the bridge and shot at before they hit the water.The Bikavac and Pionirska case Many other victims were locked in a houses en masse and grenaded to death or burned alive. In one instance, 58 people (14 were men and the rest women and children) were identified as burned to death on the Serb holiday "Vidovdan" June 27, 1992, on Pionirska Street, leaving one female survivor - Zehra Turjacanin. Zehra testified a couple of times at the Hague Tribual:
Eliticide in Visegrad
Eliticide is defined as the systematic killing of a community’s political and economic leadership so that the community could not regenerate. After the Yugoslav People’s Army occupied Visegrad, the Serb Crisis Committee (”krizni stab” led by Serb Democratic Party) took control of the municipality. Leading Bosniak intellectuals, political leaders and activists, members of the Islamic Religious Community (Islamska Vjerska Zajednica) and Police officers were expelled from work, arrested, jailed, called for “informative talks”, or kept under house arrest. Serb Police officials gave Serb paramilitary groups lists of Bosniaks who possessed firearms, who then went individually man to man and asked them to turn in their firearms[11] Bosniak intellectuals were systematically murdered, these intellectuals included Safet Zejnilovic – Doctor; Fejzo Šabanija – Secretary at Party of Democratic Action (Bosniak political party); Zihnija Omerovic – leading member of the Territorial Defense; Himzo Demir – well- known Principal of Secondary School “Hamid Besirovic”; Salko Suceska – Engineer; Halil Ahmedspahic – Engineer; Behija Zukic – well-known owner of several businesses (Milan Lukic murdered Behija and her husband, stole her red Passat and drove it over the next couple of years); Tufo Tankovic – Principal of “Hasan Veletovac” School (This school would soon become a concentration camp); Safet Efendija Karaman – Imam (Muslim religious priest) at a mosque in Visegrad.
Milan Lukic was arrested in August 2005 in Argentina and sent for trial in The Hague.
Milan Lukic went on the run for seven years after he was indicted

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=124728&d=21&m=7&y=2009
isegrad
http://www.fuckfrance.com/topic/3480319/1/World/Bosnian-Serb-Cousins-Convicted-of-Burning-Over-100-Muslims-Alive.html&replies=4
http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/main/news/21196/
http://www.france24.com/en/20090720-hague-icty-international-tribunal-yugoslavia-bosnia-muslims-Milan-Sredoje-Lukic
http://belgrade.usembassy.gov/archives/press/2005/b050810.html
http://www.bosniak.org/

The Mercy Ship Spirit Hijacked by Israel Off Gaza Coast

The mercy ship Spirit of Humanity was hijacked by Israel off the coast of Gaza.
"The Israeli Navy took control of the Spirit of Humanity on 30 June, diverting it to Ashdod port in Israel. All those on board, were handed over to Israeli immigration officials. The Israeli authorities deported the detainees on 6 July."

Crashes on notorious Egypt road kill 22

Egypt's roads are among the most chaotic and dangerous in the world, with traffic laws flouted widely and roads not properly maintained.

Twenty-two Egyptians were killed on Tuesday in two separate accidents on the notoriously dangerous road between the capital Cairo and the southern city of Minya.

All 15 people in one microbus were killed when their driver fell asleep at the wheel, crashing into a parked lorry on the roadside near the town of Beni Mazar, a police officer said.

Just hours later, a microbus and truck crashed head-on further north on the same road killing seven people and leaving 20 injured.

In 2008, more than 8,000 people died from traffic-related accidents.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090707/wl_africa_afp/egyptaccidentroad_20090707112345

Riots in Xinjiang 140 Killed July-06-09

URUMQI, Xingyang. Violent street battles killed at least 140 people and injured 828 others in the deadliest ethnic unrest to hit China's volatile western Xinjiang region in decades, and officials said Monday the death toll was expected to rise.

Security forces have clamped down on the city of Urumqi and set up checkpoints to catch any fleeing rioters, state media reported, after tensions between ethnic Muslim Uighur people and China's Han majority erupted into riots.

Uighurs make up the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang, but not in the capital of Urumqi, which has attracted large numbers of Han Chinese migrants. The city of 2.3 million is now about overwhelmingly Chinese — a source of frustration for native Uighurs.

Many Uighurs yearn for independence for Xinjiang, a sprawling region rich in minerals and oil that borders eight Central Asian nations. Critics say the millions of Han Chinese who have settled here in recent years are gradually squeezing the Turkic people out of their homeland.

Voice of America
State-run Xinhua news agency says Sunday's fighting left more than 800 injured in the provincial capital Urumqi.
China tightly controls Xinjiang province, where it refers to some Uighurs as "violent separatists" looking to create an independent country called "East Turkestan."
Hundreds are believed to be killed after riots in the capital of Xinjiang on the 5th of July. There are reports of Han police firing indiscriminantly into crowds of protestors armed with kthe Uighur population of China's far West has grown increasingly resentful of Chinese rule which activists say discriminates against the local Muslim population in favour of Han Chinese. nives and other weapons.

Such is the scale of the influx that Han Chinese, who accounted for just six per cent of the Xinjiang's population in 1949 when China sent troops to 'liberate' the region, now make up more than 40 per cent of the total population.

Xinjiang is officially an autonomous region covering an area about three times the size of France in China's west.

Region is sparsely populated but has large reserves of oil, gas and minerals.

Xinjiang was formerly a key transit point on the ancient Silk Road linking China to Europe.

Region's Turkic speaking Uighur population number around 8 million.

Uighur activists say migration from other parts of China is part of official effort to dilute Uighur culture in their own land.

Uighurs say they face repression on a range of fronts, including bans on the teaching of their language.

Uighur separatists have staged series of low-level attacks since early 1990s.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090706/ap_on_re_as/as_china_protest
http://www.registan.net/index.php/2009/07/06/clhttp://www.voanews.com/english/2009-07-06-voa6.cfmash-in-xinjiang-july-5-2009/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/5755863/China-riots-worst-outbreak-of-ethnic-violence-in-33-years.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-EVRZEUyCM
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2009/07/20097641242376417.html

Neda Agha-Soltan, Tehran Iran

Neda Agha-Soltan, 26, was killed by a gunshot on June 19, 2009, near a protest organized by supporters of opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu Speech June-14 2009 "061409"

June 14 -- Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Sunday that he is willing to support the creation of a Palestinian state, for the first time making a commitment that the United States, Europe and the Arab nations have pushed for since he took office.
But in a prime-time address delivered at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv, he attached a weighty list of conditions dictated by his personal beliefs and by the need to satisfy his right-leaning coalition in the Israeli parliament: The Palestinian state would have to be demilitarized, with international guarantees that it remain so; it would have to cede control of its airspace to Israel; and it could be created only if the Palestinians recognize Israel as the Jewish homeland.
President Obama welcomed Netanyahu's speech as an "important step forward" and in a statement endorsed both key Israeli and Palestinian concerns. "The President is committed to two states, a Jewish state of Israel and an independent Palestine, in the historic homeland of both peoples," the statement said. "He believes this solution can and must ensure both Israel's security and the fulfillment of the Palestinians' legitimate aspirations for a viable state, and he welcomes Prime Minister Netanyahu's endorsement of that goal."
In his remarks, Netanyahu did not commit to a freeze. The West Bank, occupied in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, is home to nearly 300,000 Jewish settlers.
Netanyahu insisted that Jerusalem would remain under the full control of Israel instead of becoming a joint capital -- issues that the Palestinians say should be negotiated.
In his speech, Netanyahu said the prospect of Hamas taking over the West Bank was one reason Israel must attach security conditions to the creation of a Palestinian state. He also said that, ultimately, the government of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas would have to extend its control to Gaza and "defeat" Hamas.
It is clear that under the current situation with the Palestinian governments in the West Bank and Gaza are sharply split, that a resolution of such problem will lie in a Fedrated Palastenian Federation between these two entities.

Massive Demonstrations in Iran June-2009

http://tehranlive.org/2009/06/16/peaceful-demonstration-after-2-days-clash-videos/
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/world/middleeast/17iran.html?_r=1&hp