AVRAMOV CONCLUDES - JATRAS EXPOSES CLINTON'S LINKS TO BOSNIAN TERRORISM
www.slobodan-milosevic.org - September 8, 2004

September 8, 2004 - The testimony of Ms. Smilja Avramov was concluded today. Ms. Avramov defeated each of Mr. Nice’s attempts to trip her up in her testimony.

For example, Ms. Avramov had asserted that the former Yugoslavian Prime Minister, Ante Markovic, had unilaterally ordered the JNA to retake border posts in Slovenia when that republic sought to carry out its succession from Yugoslavia.

Mr. Nice attempted to trip-up Avramov by asking misleading questions, and asserting things that he definitely knew were not true. Nice claimed that Markovic could not send the JNA into Slovenia because it was not within his powers to do so, and on that basis he claimed that Ms. Avramov had lied when she said that Markovic had issued those orders to the JNA.

Here we can see Mr. Nice for the lying weasel that he is. Mr. Nice knows full well that Markovic issued those orders. How do I know that he knows that? He knows it from his own exhibit, Prosecution Exhibit 427, tab 6.

That prosecution exhibit is a transcript of an SFRY presidency session held on August 21, 1991. In that transcript the Slovenian President, Milan Kucan, says that Markovic’s Federal Executive Council sent the JNA to take over the border posts, and Markovic himself admits to sending in the JNA. (See Milosevic trial transcript of 23 October 2003 for more details).

It is an undeniable fact that Markovic sent in those soldiers. Mr. Nice knows that, but he was trying to trip up the witness by telling lies.

Mr. Nice, in addition to telling lies, took a very condescending tone towards Ms. Avramov. He spoke to her in a tone of voice that one would use when speaking to their dog or to a small child, and in doing so he exposed just what an obnoxious little man he is.

Mr. Nice does have one quality that I admire. He has a good poker face. He can say the most absurd thing in the world and keep a straight face while doing it.

It is Mr. Nice’s contention that Serbia and Montenegro, by refusing to accept the whole-sale destruction of Yugoslavia as laid out by Lord Carrington’s plan in 1991, were responsible for the wars that broke out.

In Mr. Nice’s world, the Croats, Slovenes, Bosnian-Muslims, and Kosovo-Albanians who all used violence as a means to dismember Yugoslavia are innocent victims; while Serbia, which strove to preserve Yugoslavia, is guilty for not accepting the dismemberment of the country as laid out by Carrington in 1991.

Ms. Avramov shot down all of Mr. Nice’s stupid suggestions, and she did so in a professional manner by citing facts and documents, and without having any emotional reactions.

After Mr. Nice was finished with his cross-examination, which by the way took longer than the examination-in-chief, Milosevic was invited to re-examine the witness, but he refused. He again demanded to have his right to represent himself restored.

Milosevic bitterly complained against Kay's handling of the witness's evidence, “If I had conducted the main examination I would have raised many questions which your counsel did not know how to raise and so this has nothing to do with my defense,” Milosevic said.

“I demand you return my right to defense, which you have stripped me of in violation of all international standards including your own statute,” and at that point Mr. Robinson turned off his microphone.

The next witness to testify was Mr. James Jatras. Mr. Jatras worked as a senior foreign policy analyst for the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee from 1985 until 2002.

Mr. Nice strenuously objected to Mr. Jatras being called, but he was overruled, and Mr. Jatras took the witness stand.

Mr. Jatras authored a report on the situation in Yugoslavia in 1991. Jatras said that he had tried to treat all of the sides in the Yugoslav conflict fairly. He said that he quoted from Croat sources, Serb sources, and various other sources. He claimed that he had written an even-handed report.

Mr. Jatras testified that he was not allowed to publish his first report. He said that he was forced to re-write the report in a manner which depicted the Serbs as being communists, and the Croats and Slovenes as being democratic.

According to Jatras, the Croatian Lobby is very strong in Washington, and it was a decisive factor in setting the tone of the debate. He said that the Serbian Lobby, on the other hand, is almost totally nonexistent in the U.S.

Mr. Jatras referred to the 9-11 Committee’s final report on the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against America, and the information that that report contains on the Balkans.

According to page 58 of the 9-11 Committee report:

Bin Ladin’s impressive array of offices covertly provided financial and other support for terrorist activities.The network included a major business enterprise in Cyprus; a “services” branch in Zagreb; an office of the Benevolence International Foundation in Sarajevo, which supported the Bosnian Muslims in their conflict with Serbia and Croatia; … He also made use of the already-established Third World Relief Agency (TWRA) headquartered in Vienna, whose branch office locations included Zagreb and Budapest.

Bin Ladin now had a vision of himself as head of an international jihad confederation. In Sudan, he established an “Islamic Army Shura” that was to serve as the coordinating body for the consortium of terrorist groups with which he was forging alliances.… Bin Ladin maintained connections in the Bosnian conflict… the groundwork for a true global terrorist network was being laid.

The 9-11 report also speaks of a certain Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM). On page 145 of the report it says:

No one exemplifies the model of the terrorist entrepreneur more clearly than Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks.

Page 148 the report tells of the same KSM’s role in Bosnia:

In 1992, KSM spent some time fighting alongside the mujahideen in Bosnia and supporting that effort with financial donations.

Page 155 outlines how deeply KSM was involved in the planning of the 9-11 terrorist attacks, and it reveals that two of the hijackers (Khalid al Mihdhar, and Nawaf al Hazmi) who hijacked American Airlines Flight 77, had also fought in Bosnia:

Bin Ladin reportedly discussed the planes operation with KSM and Atef in a series of meetings in the spring of 1999 at the al Matar complex near Kandahar. KSM’s original concept of using one of the hijacked planes to make a media statement was scrapped, but Bin Ladin considered the basic idea feasible. Bin Ladin, Atef, and KSM developed an initial list of targets. These included the White House, the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, and the World Trade Center. According to KSM, Bin Ladin wanted to destroy theWhite House and the Pentagon, KSM wanted to strike the World Trade Center, and all of them wanted to hit the Capitol. No one else was involved in the initial selection of targets.

Bin Ladin also soon selected four individuals to serve as suicide operatives: Khalid al Mihdhar, Nawaf al Hazmi, Khallad, and Abu Bara al Yemeni.During the al Matar meetings, Bin Ladin told KSM that Mihdhar and Hazmi were so eager to participate in an operation against the United States that they had already obtained U.S. visas. KSM states that they had done so on their own after the suicide of their friend Azzam (Nashiri’s cousin) in carrying out the Nairobi bombing. KSM had not met them. His only guidance from Bin Ladin was that the two should eventually go to the United States for pilot training.

Hazmi and Mihdhar were Saudi nationals, born in Mecca. Like the others in this initial group of selectees, they were already experienced mujahideen. They had traveled together to fight in Bosnia in a group that journeyed to the Balkans in 1995.

So here we have it in black and white from an official report of the U.S. Government. The self- same terrorists who massacred 3,000 American civilians, fought against the Serbs in Bosnia, and used Bosnia as a base to establish a global terror network. The mastermind behind the 9-11 terrorist attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, bankrolled the Bosnian Mujahedeen, personally took part in the war against the Serbs, and then came to the U.S. and organized the mass-slaughter of 3,000 Americans.

But according to Mr. Jatras, in spite of a report that he wrote outlining the radical Islamic nature of Izetbegovic’s Bosnian-Muslim regime, the prevailing insistence in Washington was that Izetbegovic’s regime was democratic.

According to U.S. Government documents cited by Mr. Jatras in his testimony, the Clinton Administration facilitated arms transfers from Iran, through Croatia, and on to Islamic fighters in Bosnia, at a time when a UN arms embargo was in effect.

According to the 1996 U.S. House of Representative’s “Green Light Subcommittee” report. U.S. officials even went so far as to inspect the Iranian weapons before sending them on to Islamic fighters in Bosnia.

Jatras said that the U.S. Government first became aware of radical Islamist infiltration in Bosnia in September 1992, when Yossef Bodansky, the director of the U.S. Congress Taskforce on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare issued a report on the subject.

Jatras, himself a Republican, said that the radical Islamist influence began while George H. Bush was president, but that it intensified and got much worse when Clinton was elected.

Jatras was more candid than one would expect. He said that the U.S. Congress never would have investigated Clinton’s “green light” on the Iranian arms shipments, if the media hadn’t found out about it, and reported on it.  

Mr. Jatras will conclude his testimony tomorrow. Although it is unknown who will testify after him. The third defense witness was to be Rollie Keith, a Canadian OSCE observer in the Kosovo Verification Mission. Mr. Keith is refusing to testify as a protest against the tribunal’s illegal decision to impose lawyers on Slobodan Milosevic against his will.
 

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