ICD NATO/UN Political Prisoners & POWs

Message on the Death of Yassar Arafat by Slobodan Milosevic

2011-10-01T11:30:00.000-07:00

[Here is a message of solidarity with the Palestinian people from one of their great friends. This same solidarity extends to the people of Iraq, but some of the President's supporters find this comradeship impossible to reconcile with their personal (Zionist) agendas. Now that Yasser Arafat has been set free, let's redouble our efforts to free all the prisoners of the globalization wars, and off the ad hocs at The Hague and Arusha. --mc]

"Following the loss of Yasser Arafat, the historical leader of the friendly

Palestinian people, President of Palestine and one of the most important

symbols of the struggle for the rights of peoples in our times, I express

deepest condolences to his family, to the Palestinian leadership and people.

The Hague, 11 November 2004 Slobodan Milosevic"

FREE Dragoljub MILANOVIC! NOW!!

2010-12-18T04:56:00.000-08:00

Radio TV Serbia Bombed

FREE Dragoljub MILANOVIC!

PUBLIC PETITION

Freedom for Dragoljub Milanović!

To the President of the Republic of Serbia

To the Prime Minister of the Republic of Serbia

To International and Serbian authorities concerned

To Human Rights Organizations

At 2.06 a.m., in the night of 22-23 April 1999, NATO planes fired a heavily loaded missile at the Radio-Television Serbia building located at 1, Aberdareva street. The explosion killed 16 RTS workers and caused enormous damage.

Even though this was clearly a war crime against the civilian population, even though it is well known, bearing in mind the NATO command system, who ordered this attack, and even though it can be easily learned who actively commited this crime, not one of them was held accountable for this monstrous act. Criminal proceedings launched in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia against the NATO leaders with regard to this crime, among others, were terminated, the International Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia in The Hague found that there were no grounds for action against the responsible persons with NATO, and the European Court of Human Rights found it had no jurisdiction to deal with violating the right to life of the RTS workers.

The only person ever convicted for this crime is the then head of the institution that was the target of these air strikes, the RTS General Manager, Dragoljub Milanović, a man who, by some odd chance, escaped the fate of sixteen of his employees. Thus to this heinous crime another crime was added, and shamelessness soared to its peak.

In 2002 Dragoljub Milanović was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for a criminal offence, 'a grave offence against public safety,' under Article 194, paras. 1 and 2, of the then applicable Criminal Code of the Republic of Serbia. Such criminal offence, as was defined in the Criminal Code, could not have applied to Dragoljub Milanović,even if the factual statements made against him had been true, which they were not. In these shameless proceedings, the key evidence for the presumed guilt of Dragoljub Milanović was the alleged 'Order 37,' issued by the Government, represented as a state and military secret that Milanović allegedly refused to activate and move the employees to a reserve operations location in Koöutnjak, on the outskirts of Belgrade. However, such an order was not presented at trial as an evidentiary document, duly signed, stamped, registered and filed, but it seems the text of that 'order' was printed from a computer, bearing no signature or stamp, the text of unknown authorship, and time and intented receiver or the purpose for which it was composed.

According to the testimony of Slobodan Perisić, the then RTS assistant general manager, who, in early April 1998, had been assigned by Milanović all the powers related to defence and protection, along with the authority to sign documents, the original copy of that notorious order was burnt on October 5, 2000*, along with his bag. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of administration matters knows that no document, even if not of such importance, is ever copied only once, but that the signed and stamped originals of such a document would have to be kept also in the files of the authority proposing its adoption, the authority adopting it, and the organisation to which it applied. The last place such a document, moreover, its only original copy, would have been allowed to sit, a year and a half after its adoption, was in Slobodan Perisić's bag.

Therefore, the court sentenced Dragoljub Milanović to ten years imprisonment based on the piece of paper, probably printed from a computer, a paper that was not signed, stamped or filed!

But even so, that piece of paper, the so-called 'Order 37', contains point 6, granting the General Manager the right to approve its cancellation, in other words, the right not to execute this order.

In addition to all this, it should be taken into account that the Radio-Television of Serbia building is a civilian structure, that international humanitarian law prohibits military attacks against such facilities, that such attacks are a war crime, and that no one can be blamed for not foreseeing that somebody else will commit an illegal act, especially an act of such gravity, a war crime. Otherwise the responsibility for one's unlawful conduct transfers to the one who assumed and believed that law is to be upheld, which results in a negation of law. In Dragoljub Milanović's case, just such an inversion was performed, which undermines the very essence of law and justice.

Furthermore, both before and after the beginning of NATO air strikes, the RTS building in Aberdareva was the venue for rendering technical assistance to numerous teams of journalists from various countries, including the NATO member states, which meant that they used to spend considerable amounts of time in that location. It even so happened that the then minister for mass media in the Republic of Serbia Government, Aleksandar Vučić, was invited to make a live appearance on a famous TV show, 'Larry King Live' on the US TV network CNN (unlike the 'Order 37', this event is supported by clear material evidence: a telegram sent to Vučić by CNN). The minister's mother, Angelina Vučić, an RTS journalist, was in the building in Aberdareva at the time of the missile strike, and by chance survived it, unlike 16 of her colleagues. Even Dragoljub Milanović, himself, from the very beginning of bombing campaign, was in the building in Aberdareva every day, working until the early hours of the next morning. In the night of the hit, Milanović left the building a dozen or so minutes before the missile struck. Therefore, it is obvious that no one, including Dragoljub Milanović, thought that NATO would commit such a drastic violation of humanitarian law, and, with a highly destructive missile, target the RTS building, clearly a civilian facility in the very centre of Belgrade, where a large group of civilians were present at the
time.

The courts involved in actions against Dragoljub Milanović ignored all these clear-cut facts, admitting an invalid, actually a non-existent piece of evidence, and by wrongly applying law, i.e. a Criminal Code article applicable to completely different situations, issued the condemning judgement.

A particularly alarming fact is that even the parents and family members of some of those RTS workers killed became victims to a cunning manipulation, and, in grief and despair over the loss of their loved ones, accepted the claim that their deaths were the fault of the RTS manager and the Serbian Government, and not of those ordering the missiles fired at the building in Aberdareva and those executing that order.

Dragoljub Milanović started serving his prison sentence on April 1, 2003. Since the terms of his conditional release have been met, in accordance with Article 46 of the applicable Criminal Code of the Republic of Serbia, Dragoljub Milanović applied to the court for parole. To this day, no answer has been given with regard to this application.
(note: Shortly after the draft of this petition, on 27th of September 2010, the Higher Court in Belgrade denied the request for early release!)

Because of all that has been related above, we hereby demand the following:

We are demanding justice for Dragoljub Milanović! We call for his immediate release from prison!

We are demanding that those who ordered and executed the crime committed on April 23, 1999, by bombing the Radio-Television of Serbia building in Belgrade, be held accountable! Only then will justice be served for victims of this crime!

We are demanding the retraction of the monstrous message being sent to all the terrorist
criminals the world over in trying and convicting Dragoljub Milanović:

Kill freely, and your criminality will be laid off onto the victims of your crimes!

September 2010

Signed:
Dr. Patrick Barriot, Colonel (CR), toxicologist, Faculty of Medicine, Montpellier,
France

Peter Handke, Chaville, Frankreich

*During the notorious NATO/USAID et alia-instigated riots to overthrown the democratic process during the first popular presidential election in Yugoslavia.
_____________________________________

To sign, go to: http://www.free-slobo.de/

OPEN LETTER ON BOSNIAN SERB POW GENERAL RADISLAV KRSTIC

2010-05-28T01:32:00.000-07:00

[In order to move from the General to the Particular in the Defense of ALL Political Prisoners and POWs, The Committee presents the case of the brutal attack against General Radislav Krstic, an officer in the Yugoslav Army (renamed the Bosnian Serb Army) who, in 2001, was found guilty by the ICTY of 'the 1995 genocide at Srebrenica.’

The Krstic ‘genocide conviction,' the first and only such conviction yet achieved by the ICTY, is based on plea-bargained testimony from threatened co-defendant against an accused whose infirmity (he'd recently lost a leg and was heavily medicated) made it realistically impossible for him effectively to take part in his own trial.

This case caused the Tribunal's Appeals Chamber, and the ICTY and ICTR are in the habit of amending the rules of procedure with most disturbing frequency, to redefine the Trial Chamber's (evidence-lite) judgment on Krstic—who was born in 1948, had a 46 year sentence cynically reduced to 35 years.

This finding is as humbug a piece of judicial chicanery as any that this Kangaroo court (that the Kangaroos would despise) has yet come up with. Zivadin Jovanovic, President of the Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals, first informed us of the bloody attack on General Krstic by a trio of Muslims in the Britain's Wakefield prison (predominantly for sex criminals). With the trial of Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic beginning to heat up, it is not much of a stretch to see political motives for this attack lurking just beneath the tired suggestion of retribution for a 15- year-old mythic mass murder.

Our friends, the noted journalists Diana Johnstone and David Peterson, formed a petition, which almost instantaneously collected huge support, and transformed it into the Open Letter we have posted here.

It seems quite appropriate that General Krstic be the first individual Political Prisoner defended by The Committee.]

Voices of Concern for the Treatment of International Political Prisoners

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Press Release May 19, 2010

Today, May 19, the following Open Letter has been sent to the honorable Kenneth Clarke, Lord High Chancellor, United Kingdom.

It expresses the genuine indignation of over a hundred citizens of various countries who signed it within a mere 48 hours. [1]

OPEN LETTER

Voices of Concern for the Treatment of International Political Prisoners

As of May 19, 2010, over 100 persons from several countries have signed the following petition:

The vicious May 7 attack on General Radislav Krstic in Wakefield Prison (U.K.) is a dramatic illustration of the failure to ensure the safety of the prisoners of international tribunals.

A Serb native of Bosnia, General Krstic was sentenced to 35 years in prison by the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for complicity in 1995 Srebrenica massacres, although it is acknowledged that he was not directly involved in criminal executions. General Krstic repeatedly denied any knowledge of the massacres at the time, and his sentence is regarded as excessive and politically motivated by many informed observers who believe the case should be reopened.

On May 7, General Krstic was physically assaulted by three inmates identified as "Muslims." A 22-year-old ethnic Albanian named Indrit Krasniqi is reported to have slit the throat of General Krstic, narrowly missing the jugular.

Krasniqi was serving a life sentence under British law for the gang torture and murder of a 16-year-old girl. Wakefield Prison, in the north of England, is reserved especially for criminals serving long sentences for grave sex offenses.

We find it highly irresponsible of British authorities to incarcerate General Krstic, essentially a prisoner of war, in such an environment. Now 62 years old, General Krstic is disabled, having lost a leg in the Bosnian war. There is an obvious risk in imprisoning a Bosnian Serb accused of grave crimes against Muslims in a region of England with a particularly large Muslim population. The claim that the attack was motivated by "Muslim revenge" serves as a smokescreen to cover the responsibility of British authorities.

The near-fatal attack on General Krstic comes in the wake of an extraordinary series of deaths of prisoners held by the International Criminal Tribunals for former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda.

We, the undersigned, demand:

· An official inquiry into the May 7 incident.

· The immediate transfer of General Krstic to a country able to ensure his personal safety, for example to Norway, or to Serbia as requested by Belgrade authorities.

· An end to the indifference of governments, human rights organizations and the media to the fate of prisoners of ad hoc criminal tribunals, often exaggeratedly stigmatized by the media and without the benefits of the protection afforded by judicial process in normal national courts.

Samir Amin

Author, Director of the Third World Forum

Dakar, Senegal

Dragomir Andjelkovic

Historian

Belgrade, Serbia

Miroslav Antic

Nuclear Operator

Toronto, Canada

Dr. Patrick Barriot, MD

Colonel (CR), Former Blue Helmet in ex-Yugoslavia

France

Ariana Beatty

London, United Kingdom

Zeljko Bibic

(British Citizen)

Fairfax, VA United States

David Binder

Retired Newspaperman

Evanston, Illinois

Ambassador James Bissett

Ottawa, Canada

Christopher Black

Barrister, International Criminal Lawyer

Lead Counsel at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda

Canada

Jeffrey Blankfort

Journalist, Radio Producer

Ukiah, CA United States

William Blum

Author

Washington, DC, United States

George Bogdanich

Writer and Documentary Filmmaker

New York, NY, United States

Boba Borojevic

Director - Producer, "Monday's Encounter" Radio Program

Ottawa, Canada

Vincenzo Brandi

Engineer

Rome, Italy

Barbara P. Bresler

Retired

Bridgeport, CT, United States

Jean Bricmont

Physicist

Brussels, Belgium

Vladimir Caller

Peruvian Journalist

Brussels

Mick Collins

Editor, CirqueMinime/Paris

France

Louis Dalmas

Editor, B.I. Magazine

Paris, France

Olga Daric

Professor of Modern Languages

Paris, France

Dusan Djordjevich 

Technical Writer 

San Mateo, California (U.S. Native)  

Biljana Djorovic 

Journalist 

Belgrade, Serbia  

Djordje Djorovic 

Student (School of Medicine) 

Belgrade, Serbia  

Miodrag Dordevic 

Retired Engineer 

Verrieres, France   

Zvonimir Dorovic 

Graduate Electrical Engineer 

Belgrade, Serbia  

Dusan Dragic 

Hartsdale, NY United States   

Richard B. Du Boff 

Economic Historian and Writer  

Rhinebeck, NY United States

Françoise Dufour

Retired Teacher

Paris, France

Martine Duplaine

Paris, France

Prof. Peter Erlinder

William Mitchell College of Law

Lead Counsel at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda

United States

Vesna Farnden

Real Estate Agent

Edmonton, Alberta Canada

Sara Flounders

Co-Director, International Action Center

New York, NY, United States

Jane Franklin

Historian

United States

Wade Frazier

Accountant

Bothell, WA, United States

Darlene Gakovich

Madison, WI, United States

Antonio Ginetti

Artist

Pistoia, Italy

Andrej Glisic

Journalist and Economist

Retired Yugoslavia National Army Officer

Pancevo, Serbia

Ilija Glisic

Manager in the Telecommunications Industry

Sydney, Australia

Joachim Guilliard

Journalist, Forum against Militarism and War

Heidelberg, Germany

Dr. Jelena Guskova

Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts

Head of the Research Centre for Contemporary Balkan Crises,

Slavic Department at the Russian Academy of Sciences

Moscow, Russia

Dr. Philip Hammond

London South Bank University

London, United Kingdom

Klaus Hartmann

Vice President of World Union of Freethinkers

Offenback am Main, Germany

Ralph Hartmann

Author, Former East German Ambassador to Yugoslavia

Berlin, Germany

Edward S. Herman

Professor Emeritus of Finance

The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

Philadelphia, PA, United States

Marc W. Herold

Deptartment of Economics

University of New Hampshire

Durham, N.H., United States

Frances G. Hoenigswald

Invoice Clerk, Biddle Law Library

University of Pennsylvania Law School

Philadelphia, PA, United States

Mirko Ivancevic

Valley Village, CA, United States

(Canadian Citizen)

Ms. N. Jakovac

Artist

Toronto, Ontario Canada

Finn S. Jensen

Teacher

Odense, Denmark

Branka Josilo-Perry

France

Gordana Jovanovic

Professor of Psychology

Belgrade, Serbia

Nebojša Jovanovic

Bor, Serbia

Diana Johnstone

Journalist, Author

Paris, France

Slavoljub Kacarevic

Journalist

Belgrade, Serbia

Hans-Joachim Kahlke

Jurist

Heidelberg, Germany

Harald Kampffmeyer

Diplomat

Berlin, Germany

Stefan Karganovic

President, Srebrenica Historical Project

Belgium

June Kelly-Mullingar

County Westmeath, Ireland

Mara Kneževic Kern

Journalist and Writer

Beograd, Serbia

Jugoslav Kiprijanovic

Editor, Pravoslavlje (The official Magazine of Serbian Orthodox Church)

The Serbian Patriarchy

Belgrade, Serbia

Prof. Dr. Hans Köchler

University of Innsbruck

President, International Progress Organization

Vienna, Austria

Dragoslava Koprivica

Father Milun Kostic

Serbian Orthodox Priest

London, United Kingdom

Joel Kovel

Editor, Capitalism Nature Socialism

New York, NY, United States

Vladimir Krsljanin

Former Ambassador

Belgrade, Serbia

Beatrice Lacoste

Freelance Media Crisis Consultant

France

Dr. Donka Lange

Farstar Medical GmbH

Barsbüttel (bei Hamburg), Germany

Alessandro Lattanzio

Graphic Operator

Sicily, Italy

Stephen Lendman

Independent Journalist

Chicago, United States

Andrew Levine

University Professor

Denton, MD, United States

Godfred Louis-Jensen

Architect

Oktokerbevaegelsen, Denmark

Milanka Jevric

Ontario, Canada.

Dr. Giovanni Maccione

Teacher

Bari, Italy

J.P. Maher

University Professor

Chicago, United States

Nebojsa Malic

Balkans Columnist, Antiwar.com

Washington, DC United States

Bogdan Manojlovic

Writer

Paris, France

Sarah Martin

Women Against Military Madness (WAMM)

International Committee

Minneapolis, MN United States

David McReynolds

Former Chair of War Resisters International

Former Co-chair of the Socialist Party USA.

New York, NY, United States

Maya Milankovic-Atkinson

United Kingdom

Elizabeth Milanovich 

Canada

Minja Milojkovic

Professor

Montreal, Canada

Radmila Nastic

University of Kragujevac

Serbia

Miroslava Ness

Landenberg, PA, United States

Norman Ness

Professor Emeritus, University of Delaware

Newark, Delaware, United States

Ljiljana Nikolic

Mihajlo Nikolic

Miodrag Nikolic

Slobodanka Nikolic

Canoga Park, CA United States

Jan Oberg, PhD

Peace and Future Researcher

Director, Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research

Lund, Sweden

Audun Øfsti

Professor Emeritus, Philosophy

NTNU, Trondheim, Norway

Dimitri Oram

Writer and Researcher

Northampton, MA, United States

Thalia Pandiri

Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature

Smith College

Editor-in-Chief, Metamorphoses

Northampton, MA, United States

Michael Parenti, Ph.D.

Author, Lecturer

Berkeley, California, United States

Andrej Pavlovic

Belgrade, Serbia

Dragan Pavlovic, MD

Research Director

Paris, France

Drago Pejatovic

Washington, D.C., United States

Rev. Fr. Miodrag Peric

Dean of St. Lazarus Serbian Orthodox Church

Sydney, NSW, Australia

David Peterson

Writer and Researcher

Chicago, United States

Prof. Dr. Natasa Petronijevic

Institute of Biochemistry

School of Medicine, University of Belgrade

Bob Petrovich

Canada

Marie-Françoise Philippart

Retired

Seine Saint Denis, France

Peter Phillips

Professor Sociology, Sonoma State University

Citizen living in Northern California, United States

Rostislav V. Polchaninoff

Writer (Retired)

New Hyde Park, NY, United States

Anna J. Pullinger

Executive Assistant

Walnut Creek, CA United States

Doris Pumphrey

Berlin, Germany

George Pumphrey

Berlin, Germany

Marija Radmanovic

Sports Massage Therapist and full time university student

Sydney, Australia

Dragomir Radojkovic

Professional Engineer

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Richter

President of the European Peace Forum

Chairman of the Association for the Protection of Civil Rights and Human Dignity

Berlin, Germany

Robert Rodvik

Researcher in Political Studies

Gibsons, BC, Canada

Rick Rozoff

Chicago, United States

Rainer Rupp

Journalist

Saarburg, Germany

Mirjana Sasich

Retired Teacher

Milwaukee, WI, United States

Dr. Michael Schiffmann

Linguistics and Cultural Studies in the English Department

University of Heidelberg, Germany

Cathrin Schütz

Political Scientist, Journalist

Germany

Ljiljana Bogoeva Sedlar

Belgrade, Serbia

Michael Allan Slaughter

Pacifica, CA, United States

Lee W. Smith

Security Consultant (Retired)

Red Cliff, Colorado, United States

Michael Steven Smith

Co-host, "Law and Disorder" Radio Show, WBAI

Board of Directors, Center for Constitutional Rights

United States

John Steppling

Theatre and Film Artist

Los Angeles, CA, United States

Nikola Stojiljkovic

Vranje, Serbia

Eckart Spoo

Berlin, Germany

Zorica Surla

Teacher

Bad Soden, Germany

Tony Sutton

Editor, ColdType

Georgetown, Ontario, Canada

George Szamuely

Writer

New York, NY, United States

Srdja Tatic

Graphic Designer

St. Gallen, Switzerland

Mark Lewis Taylor

Professor, Religion and Society

Princeton Theological Seminary

Princeton, NJ, United States

Phil Taylor

Broadcaster, "The Taylor Report," CIUT

Toronto, Canada

Nadja Tešich

Writer, Filmmaker

New York, NY, United States

Taki Theodoracopulos

Journalist

123 East 71st Street

New York, NY, United States

Angie Tibbs

Canada

Gorica Trkulja

Economist

Prokuplje, Serbia

Prof. Dr. Velko Valkanov

Chairman of the Bulgarian Peace Council

Jacques Vergès

Lawyer

Paris, France

Enrico Vigna

Speaker for Belgrade Forum Italy

President of SOS Yugoslavia - SOS Kosovo Metohija Solidarity Association

Italy

Jean Toschi Marazzani Visconti

Journalist

Milan, Italy

Vera Vratuša

Sociology Professor

Belgrade, Serbia

Dr. Friedrich Wolff

Lawyer

Wandlitz, Germany

Mihail Yambaev

Ph.D. in History

Institute of Slavic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences

Jane Zahn

Heidelberg, Germany

Nikola Zivkovic

Writer

Berlin, Germany

[1] As of Thursday, May 27, 2010, a total of 140 citizens of various countries had added their signatures to this Open Letter. -- The complete list through May 27 appears above.

Me Black's response to Prof Kuzmarov's review of Herman & Peterson's 'The Politics of Genocide.'

2010-05-25T11:02:00.000-07:00

Kuzmarov Review of The Politcs of Genocide (#142972)

by Christopher Charles Black
May 24, 2010 at 5:29 PM

Professor Kuzmarov's generally positive review of this important book by Ed Herman and David Peterson is marred by a misapprehension of the facts of the history of Rwanda and the war that destroyed the country between 1990 and 1994.

He states that though Herman and Peterson's critique is thought provoking, they should "acknowledge the historical injustice faced by the Tutsi..." but fails to point out what injustice, exactly, he is referring to.

The entire history of Rwanda, from the 11th century on to the present, has been discussed and examined and analysed by expert after expert, by hundreds of witnesses to the events at the war crimes trials at the International War Crimes Tribunal For Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania. It is in the transcripts of these trials, which have gone on for more than ten years, that one will find the truth, and it is this:

Before the arrival of the Europeans, first the Germans, then the Belgians, in the 1890's, Rwanda was a conglomeration of petty chiefdoms with the Tutsi minority, a cattle-raising people, ruling with an iron fist over the majority Hutu peasants. Over the first decades of the twentieth century, the Tutsis, who were adopted by the European colonisers as the comprador class to rule on their behalf, expanded their control over all the chiefdoms and replaced Hutu leaders with Tutsis. From then until 1959, when the social revolution took place, the Tutsi aristocracy held sway over the Hutu people, by then reduced to serfdom. It was required by law that Hutus work for Tutsi masters several days a week without pay, forced labor. Hutus were not allowed to go to school or to serve in the government administration, and had no political, social or economic power.

In 1959, a small group of Hutus, inspired by the liberation struggles after the second world war, issued a manifesto demanding equal right to education, to serve in the government, for elected democracy, for the abolition of serfdom, abolition of the monarchy, the right to form unions, freedom of the press, freedom of association, freedom from arbitrary arrest and other quite standard democratic ideals. Essentially, it was a call for social, economic and political justice after centuries of minority Tutsi oppression.

The result was a build-up of pressure in the West for democracy in Rwanda, and the Belgians supported this. Elections were held. Hutu candidates swept away the Tutsi bosses, and, for the first time, the majority of Rwandans had control of their destiny. Soon after the elections, a referendum was held on the monarchy, which was abolished by an overwhelming majority. The Tutsi aristocracy, not willing or able to accept a role less than that of overlords, responded by murdering several local mayors, civic officials and other Hutus. The Hutu government called for help, and the Belgians returned with a military force from the Congo to restore order and to pursue and arrest the Tutsis involved. However, as it was the entire Tutsi aristocracy that was involved, instead of facing arrest for murder, they fled the county, most to Uganda. From 1961 until 1973, the Tutsis who had fled staged armed raids into Rwanda, during which they wantonly slaughtered Hutus until they were captured or forced back into Uganda. The UN was called in, and many UN documents at the ICTR as well as press reports fron that time establish beyond question that it was the Tutsis who could not accept the social and democratic revolution and were to blame for the killings and all the violence.

Until 1990, there was no further interference in Rwanda from Uganda. However, the Tutsis were still there, but now as one of the main elements of the Ugandan Army of Yoweri Museveni. Museveni had been picked by the US and UK to oust Milton Obote, the socialist. Many Tutsis joined his forces, and when Museveni took power a third or more of his soldiers were Tutsis and many of them held high rank, as did Paul Kagame.

The collapse of the USSR allowed the US and UK to target two remaining socialist countries, Yugoslavia and Rwanda: Yugoslavia as it was the last strong bastion of working socialism in Europe, and Rwanda as it was a model of socialist development in Africa, even called the "Switzerland of Africa." The US was also tired of Mobutu, as he was beginning to turn towards China, and so they wanted to remove him. Rwandan President Habyarimana had been approached to allow his country to be used as a staging ground for an attack on Zaire (Congo). He refused. This, with their wish to destroy a working example of socialism in Africa, caused the US to look for other agents they could work with and found the Tutsis in Uganda still thirsting for the restoration of their hegemony in Rwanda and, even more, for Hutu blood in revenge. Museveni wanted to be rid of them as he also felt uneasy about the Tutsis in his ranks.

So, with Belgium and the UK, the US supported the invasion of Rwanda by the Ugandan Army on October 1, 1990. One thing must be understood very clearly: This was not an invasion by a Tutsi liberation group, as the RPF has claimed. The RPF was in fact the Ugandan Army operating in Rwanda under that name. All the soldiers in the RPF at that time were, aside from mercenaries, members of the Ugandan Army, carried Ugandan Army id cards, and used Ugandan army equipment, vehicles and communication facilities. The RPF was never a liberation group and was never backed by China. It was, as everyone knows, backed by the United States and Britain, along with Belgium and Canada. The RPF did at one time claim to be a marxist liberation group but that was another of their cynical ploys to sucker in the left in the West to support what was and still is a fascist organisation.

Another thing must be clearly understood: There was no justification for this surprise attack in which thousands of Hutus were slaughtered in the cruelest manner. The RPF claims that it was necessary to solve the refugee problem and that the Habyarimana regime had refused the Tutsi refugees' right of return. This is completely false, a total rewriting of documented history. Before all the judges at the ICTR are all the agreements and minutes of meetings in which the UN, the Rwandan government, the OAU, the RPF and Uganda and Tanzania had all agreed that those Tutsis who wanted to return could do so en masse. Despite what the good profesor says in his review, individual Tutsis had always had the right of return, and many had returned, and the Rwandan government encouraged this, both to reduce the outside threat and to build more harmony. Mass return had been deemed impractical as it was not understood how a small, already densely populated country could take the sudden influx of 500,000 people, when every piece of land was being used, and there were no extra jobs or housing for them. But in September, 1990, a deal was reached between Habyarimana and Museveni, to which the RPF was signatory. The next step was for the RPF to send a team to meet with the Rwandan commission set up to deal with the refugees to discuss logistics. That team was due in Kigali at the end of September. That team never arrived. Instead the RPF wing of the Ugandan Army mounted a surprise attack, thus rupturing the deal for the return of the refugees and revealing that there never was a refugee problem.*

Many witnesses have also described life for Tutsis in Rwanda before 1990. A picture of oppression does not appear; it is, rather, one of privilege. The MRND party (seen as a peoples movement rather than a political party, as such), in charge of the government and and made up of both Hutu and Tutsi members, created an affirmative action program guaranteeing the Tutsis a place in education, government, public service and the army. The RPF claims this was 'a ceiling.' But all witnesses, and I will rely on the Europeans who worked in the systems as being the least biased, confirmed that the percentage guarantees were not a ceiling but a floor, and in the universities, for example, the number of Tutsis often exceeded their 15% (maximum) portion of the population, and in many schools Tutsis exceeded 20% of the total number of students. Outside of the state-owned industries, it was the Tutsis who predominated. The Tutsis were the wealthiest group in Rwanda and controlled most import and export businesses. One has only to read the transcripts of the testimony of the Tutsi prince and son of the last king, Antoine Nyetera, who testified in the Military II trial, where he states that all the RPF claims are pure propaganda and that it was the RPF that committed most of the massacres, both before and during 1994, to see how the world has been taken in by a pretty clumsy propaganda effort by the RPF and the US and its usual allies.

The Professor dares to compare Kagame to Castro and Guevara's acting against Batista. No. You have it completely backwards. Kagame is Batista. With the help of the US et al, he overthrew a democratic, coalition government set up under the Arusha Accords to which, again, the RPF was signatory. The Professor prefers to omit from his review the crucial testimony from 2006 of Dr. Alison Des Forges, also in the Military II trial, in which she stated that there was no plan by the government of Rwanda to commit genocide, as it was impossible for a coalition government composed of Hutus and Tutsis and including the RPF and its allied parties, and in which Habyarimana had been reduced to a figurhead, with real power resting with the pro-RPF prime ministers, to conceive such a thing.

He ignores the fact that it was Habyarimana who first got rid of the one-party socialist government and rewrote the constitution in 1991 and agreed to talks with the RPF to stop the war.

The Belgian and US ambassadors, senior Belgian army officers, Tanzanian and UN diplomats all confirm that every time the Rwandan government agreed to a cease-fire, it was the RPF that violated it with more slaughter using a "fight and talk" strategy, and that it was the RPF who did not want free elections and who prepared for their final solution, their final offensive of 6 April 1994 in which they launched another surprise attack, in breach of the Accords, with the connivance of the UN and the direct military support of the US and others.

It is also clear on the evidence that most of those killed in 1994 were Hutus not Tutsis, as the RPF claims in order to justify its seizure of power. RPF officers have testified and written letters to the UN stating that the RPF killed 2 million Hutus in those 12 weeks and then claimed the victim were Tustis.

It is also established beyond doubt that the first massacre of 1994, the murder of all those on the president's plane on 6 April, was committed by the RPF, which blew it out of the sky with help from its western allies. The Professor fails to mention something he must know: that the first body to determine who shot down the plane was the prosecution service of the ICTR in 1997. Michael Hourigan, the Australian lawyer who headed the team investigating the shoot down, reported to Prosecutor Louise Arbour that it was the RPF, that he had met with three members of the shoot down team and that he had the documents to prove it. Arbour quickly called him to The Hague and ordered him off the file and demanded he burn his notes. His notes lead to the CIA. This was revealed first by the National Post newspaper in 2001 and later by other journals. Hourigan left the UN in disgust. His testimony before the tribunal is recorded. So it is not just a French or a Spanish judge who has likewise determined this to be the case. Further, the intercepted radio message of Kagame telling his troops that President Habyarimana had been killed and that the offensive could go ahead were also filed as an exhibit in several trials. Just last June, this writer filed as an exhibit a letter from Paul Kagame to a Tutsi leader in Burundi, dated August 1994, in which he speaks of the thanks he has for the Americans, Belgians and British, for the taking of Kigali and the plans they have next for Zaire and the overthrow of the Hutu regime in Burundi. I am quite willing to share that letter with anyone who wishes to see it. The testimony of the General Augustin Ndindiliyimana, chief of staff of the Rwandan National Gendarmerie, in the Military II case, that US air force C130 Hercules aircraft dropped men and supplies to the RPF after 6 April, is something else to bear in mind in this regard.

I will not get into the charge of Mssrs Herman and Peterson's being too harsh on NGOs in Rwanda. Well, no, I will--they were not too harsh on NGOs. The role of these organizations was always damaging to peace and, as with Human Rights Watch, almost coincidental with the RPF strategy and the role of the Western mass media, was shameful. A slaughter of perhaps millions, certainly hundreds of thousands, of people was covered up and made to look like its opposite: Ethnic cleansing as a war of liberation; Mass slaughter of innocents as revenge for contrived grievances.

The saddest thing for me is the studied indifference to the war crimes trials that have taken place at the ICTR, and are still taking place there, and the shattering evidence that has been revealed to the world about what really happened to Rwanda and Rwandans and what is happening to them now under the fascist RPF military junta now placed in control of the country by the US and the UK. It is as if the most important criminal and political trials of the past century (I say this with all respect to the Nuremberg process, because they were very short and issues were never examined at any length.) have never taken place. Well, they have. They are still taking place. Anyone who is ignorant of the testimony and evidence in those trials has no claim to academic authority about the war in Rwanda. Anyone who claims he has such expertise, based on old saws from ten years ago, has been sadly left behind by time and events, and, to get back in the game, must go to the trials. There lies the reality.

Christopher Black
Barrister,
International Criminal Lawyer
Lead Counsel, International War Crimes Tribunal For Rwanda
Toronto, Canada

*From the irony file: The fact-finding mission that Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni was to send to Rwanda to look into the mass repatriation of Rwandan Tutsi refugees from Uganda was to be led by Ugandan Army Chief of Staff, Major General Fred Rwigema. But, instead, on 1 October 1990, the Ugandan National Resistance Army sent an invasion force into Rwanda. That invasion was led, however briefly, by Ugandan Army Chief of Staff, Major General Fred Rwigema.

The International Defense Committee for ALL NATO/UN Politial Prisoners and POWs.

2010-05-21T03:54:00.000-07:00

This blog is meant to be the site--literally, the meeting place--for the International Committee to Defend the Political Prisoners and POWs of NATO and the UN.

Though today the issue of the unjust and brutal unto murderous treatment of the victims of Western (US/UK/EU/Israeli) military adventurism, which since the Korean 'police action' in 1950 (2.5 million victims) has been fronted by the United Nations, is global in reach and involves everyone of the 171 nations where Western militarism has established its bases; this Committee intends to concentrate on two particular post-Cold War theatres of conquests that, from the beginning, have been effectively jointed in a uni-cephalic command, control and administrative structure: The two counter-revolutions initiated at the debut of the 1990s against Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

The media are seldom visited by individual horror stories about the bloody crimes against those who have been persecuted and prosecuted by the illegal ad hoc Tribunal system, the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda (ICTR in Arusha, Tanzania) and Yugoslavia (ICTY in The Hague).

But recently the shanking at Wakefield prison in Britain, by a trio of supposed Bosnian Muslim sympathizers, of General Radislav Krstic, who was working off a 35 year bid on humbug (and frequently amended) charges of having had something (anything) to do with the (unproven, though universally stipulated to) genocide at Srebrenica in July 1995, has gained significant public attention.

This incident is gory and sensational with its implications that the attack by Muslim sex criminals was in retribution for the mass murder (and implied rape) of Muslims at Srebrenica, and an understandable response to the on-going religious or ethnic conflicts supposed to have driven the Balkan wars (to have driven, in fact, all the 'post Communist' wars in both Yugoslavia and Rwanda), but, like so many of its ilk (the murders in custody of Presidents Milosevic and Babic, or the extra-judicial assassination and mutilation of an uncooperative ICTR witness, Juvenal Uwilingiyimana, at the order of current US Ambassador for War Crimes Stephen Rapp), it tends to distract from the banal, near quotidien occurence of such monstrous crimes against those whose sole real offense was to defend their homes, their families and their national revolutions against NATO/UN wastage.

The first effort of this Committee will be to reunify the Yugoslav and Rwanda tragedies in the public's considerations. The Western aggressors, in their military and judicial actions, already consider them two fronts of the same war against what remains of the rational and popular governments of the bi-polar Cold War world. We feel we can be most effective in correcting the on-going injustices of these commercial, financial and military occupations, if we consolidate our efforts into one movement.

You can join the Committee or express your views for or against its positions by commenting on this blog or sending an email to CirqueMinime/Paris at cirqueminime@gmail.com.

The Prisoners' Defense Committee

The Founding Members of The Committee

1. Christopher Black

International Defense Attorney--Toronto

2. Ramsey Clark

Former US Attorney General; Founder of the International Action Center--NYC

3. Edward Herman

Professor Emeritus in Finance at the Wharton School, U of Pennsylvania--USA

4. Ljubodrag Simonovic

Master of Law, PhD; former basketball legend with the Yugoslav Olympic team and Red Star Belgrade--Serbia

5. Faustin Ntilikina

Major in the ex-Rwandan Armed Forces [FAR], author of "La prise de Kigali et la chasse aux réfugiés par l'Armée du Général Paul Kagame"--Strasbourg, France

6. Jean-Christophe Nizeyimana

Chairperson, African Survivor International--Wilnis, The Netherlands

7. Dr. Patrick Barriot, MD

Former Colonel in the UN Forces in the ex-Yugoslavia--Montpellier, France

8. June Kelley

Stenographer, Irish Representative to the ICDSM--Mullingar, County Westmeath, Ireland

9. Gregory Elich

Historian, author of 'Strange Liberators'--USA

10. Sara Flounders

Writer, co-Director the International Action Center--USA

11. Tatyana Collins-Lehman

Film Industry Organizer--NYC

12. Alan Mandell

Theatre Artist & Film/TV Actor--NYC, LA

13. Joseph Goodrich

Playwright & Actor--NYC

14. John Steppling

Theatre and Film Artist, Educator--LA

15. David Barouski

Africanist, Political Analyst--Wisconsin, USA

16. Mick Collins

Artistic & Pedagogical Director, CirqueMinime/Paris--France