A Place to Stand

Previously I put up a link to General Lewis MacKenzies's description of the massacre Ganic has been charged with but did not go further. I think it is worth quoting more of:

(Muslim President) Izetbegovic was in a box, and (JNA General) Kukanjac was holding the key. The President looked at me and said very carefully, "General MacKenzie, don't worry. I WILL ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE SAFETY OF THE JNA PERSONNEL."

I was surprised; this was quite a commitment. "YOU GUARANTEE IT?" I asked.

"YES," HE SAID.

I paused, and Colm and I exchanged glances again. "Okay," I said. "We'll give it a try." ...

We had gone about a kilometer when I thought I heard a shot. I turned around and looked at Steve. His SUSI was a lot taller than my VBL and he could see back down along the column of trucks. I knew from the look on his face that something was seriously wrong.

I jumped out of the VBL and started to run back towards the sound of the shooting, which no longer consisted of single shots but sustained bursts of machine-gun fire. I hadn't asked Steve to come, but within seconds he was beside me.

The heaviest shooting was about fifty meters away. I could see TDF soldiers sticking their rifles through the windows of civilian cars that were part of the convoy and shooting the occupants. As Steve and I ran by, we saw blood splattered over the windscreens of some of the cars.

When we reached a crowd of some twenty TDF soldiers, we realized they had driven a car across the road to split the convoy in half. The JNA soldiers were SITTING HELPLESSLY in the back of their trucks; the TDF were demanding that they throw out their weapons and military equipment. To make the point, one of the TDF soldiers, who had two grenades hanging from his teeth, was threatening to throw a third into the back of the truck full of JNA soldiers if they did not hurry up and surrender their weapons...

At the first TDF checkpoint... I asked (a TDF sentry) what had happened. He explained that the TDF soldiers had received an ORDER FROM SOMEONE IN THE PRESIDENCY TO ATTACK THE CONVOY. We never found for sure who gave the order, but my suspicion was that Vice-President Ganic wasa lot tougher than he wanted to admit, and had given the green light to carry out the attack...

Needless to say, we were not well received at the JNA camp. Word had been passed that the UN had guaranteed the safety of the convoy, but that we have failed our promise. This was not the time, however, to point out that we were merely accompanying the convoy as impartial witnesses and go-betweens, and that it was the President of Bosnia and his TDF commander who had guaranteed the convoy security...

Goulding held a press conference at the end of the day's activities. We fell it was important that he condemn the TDF attack on the JNA convoy, and so he made the following statement:

"I also went at my request to see the scene of a particularly horrible incident on Sunday evening, where, as I think a number of you know, some soldiers of the Yugoslav People's Army were killed in a cold blood when commanders of the Bosnian Territorial Defense had failed to honor a promise on safe conduct which they had given our people who were evacuating the HQ of the Yugoslav Army in Sarajevo."
Months later, when I have left Sarajevo for good, I was surprised to discover just how little media coverage Goulding's strong statement had received around the world. I couldn't help thinking that IF JNA HAD AMBUSHED THE TDF, INSTEAD THE OTHER WAY AROUND, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN FRONT PAGE NEWS..."

It seems Ganic was not personally involved in making the safe conduct promise but that it was a genuine guarantee he was bound to honour & that the order to break it came from his office & presumably from him.

A Bosnian Muslim witness has already confirmed Ganic's responsibility. M. Bozinovich | Former Minister of Interior of Bosnia, Alija Delimustafic, told the court in 2002 that Ganic commanded over Bosnian Muslim units that blocked the withdrawing ethnic Serbian soldiers who were slaughtered on the streets of Sarajevo.
Note that MacKenzie, though not firmly committed to the Bosnian Muslim view is also far from impartial let alone pro-Serb. His article starts with the quote from him "If I could convince both sides to stop killing their own people for CNN, perhaps we could have a ceasefire." This is disingenuous since, while it has been very widely reported from many unrelated sources that the Muslim Nazi forces regularly did indeed carry out killings of their own civilians to get on TV there is no evidence whatsoever of any Serbs doing so. Indeed the end of the article, in pointing out how heavily censored any reports of killings of Serbs were, makes it obvious that there would have been no point in Serbs engaging in that sort of obscenity.

It seems there are also a large number of other atrocities by Ganic for which not just Serbs but also our Croatian Nazi allies want justice. However this particular case is unique in that the victims were Yugoslav citizens & presumably mostly born in Serbia (as indeed was Ganic) which therefore, by normal judicial standards gives Yugoslavia/Serbia the right to try the murderer of its citizens.

The other atrocities are not & should not be part of the indictment. However they certainly should tend to discredit claims being put by friends in western media that he was really a nice multicultural moderate democrat (like his boss, Alia "neither peace nor co-existence with non-Islamicists" Izetbegovic if the BBC is in any way to be trusted.

Croat death camp veterans say Ganic responsible for atrocities.

As do Bosnian Serb survivors of Muslim death camps.

None of these, obviously, led to any attempt by the ICTY to bring him to trial though they have done so, or simply killed, very many Serbs on little or no evidence. The Bosnian Muslim Nazi regime hasn't even made a token attempt to slap the wrist of its own mass murderers. I hope the law is followed & Ganic brought to trial. The eyes of the world will then be on the Serbian judicial system. More important even that his conviction will be that the trial is seen to be fair. I think it is difficult to dispute that there is evidence warranting trial. IF they do this they will have proven their judicial system to be not only better than virtually non-existent one of the Bosnian Muslims but much better & less corrupt than the NATO funded ICTY & presumably its patrons.

Labels: Media, Yugoslavia