UNDER PRESSURE

Jihad’s Balkan Connection Censored at the Hague

While a well-known British journalist, Eve-Ann Prentice was waiting in Izetbegovic's foyer both she and a journalist from Der Speigel, saw Osama bin Laden being escorted into Izetbegovic's office (November 1994). This evidence did not sit well with the tribunal. Mr. Nice immediately objected and Judge Robinson cut off the testimony immediately declaring it "irrelevant."

By Srdja Trifkovic

The jihad is continuing and the war against America will not be confined to Iraq, says Usama bin Laden in his latest tape, 11 minutes long, that was released on February 20. He also pledged never to be captured alive, and - implicitly denying any links between al-Qaeda and the former Iraqi leader - accused U.S. forces of "barbaric" acts in Iraq, comparable to those committed by Saddam Hussein. Segments of the tape, released by an al-Qaeda-connected website, were initially broadcast last month by al-Jezeera, and the CIA said at the time that the voice was indeed bin Laden's.

The news of the tape has been promptly carried by thousands of media outlets in the United States and all over the world. Such diligence was in marked contrast to another, far more interesting news item concerning bin Laden, the one that has been either overlooked or else deliberately ignored by the mainstream media. It concerns the testimony of a well-known British journalist, Eve-Ann Prentice, at the trial of Slobodan Milosevic before the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal at The Hague and the manner in which Judge Robinson stopped her testimony the moment she disclosed having seen Osama bin Laden walk into the office of Alija Izetbegovic in November 1994. According to a published report,

The most explosive part of her testimony dealt with an interview that she scheduled with Alija Izetbegovic in November 1994. While she was waiting in Izetbegovic's foyer both she and a journalist from Der Speigel, saw Osama bin Laden being escorted into Izetbegovic's office. This evidence did not sit well with the tribunal. Mr. Nice immediately objected and Judge Robinson cut off the testimony immediately declaring it "irrelevant."

Any seasoned media professional would look at this story as potential front-page material. Did it happen? Was bin Laden really received at the highest level in Sarajevo during the Bosnian war? What exactly was he doing there? What were the implications of that meeting, if indeed it had taken place? How credible is the witness? And most important of all, why did the Tribunal interrupt her testimony?

The first noteworthy fact is that, as of this writing, there is no official transcript of Ms. Prentice's testimony. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) website still states merely that "on 3 February 2006, the following witness was examined by the accused, subsequently cross-examined by the Prosecution and then re-examined by the accused: Eve-Ann Prentice (a journalist and reporter)."

The credibility of the witness is confirmed by her impressive track record. She reported for The Times of London from the Balkans as a hands-on journalist - unlike the Sarajevo Holiday Inn media pack - and risked her life under NATO bombs while touring Kosovo in 1999. Her experiences have resulted in one of the best books on the wars of Yugoslav succession published in any language, One Woman's War.

As for the connection between Alija Izetbegovic and Usama bin Laden, it has been known to our readers for some years and needs no recounting here. It has been known to the U.S. military, too: contrary to their propaganda, "President Izetbegovic and his cabal appear to harbor much different private intentions and goals," concluded Lt.Col. John E. Sray in a study for the U.S. Army Foreign Military Studies Office (Selling the Bosnia Myth to America: Buyer Beware) At times it trickled into the mainstream media, e.g. The Washington Post, which reported in November 1995 that "the core of Bin Laden's Balkan network are the veterans of El Moujahed brigade of the Bosnian-Muslim army," which included volunteers "from all over the Islamic world whose passage to Bosnia was facilitated by Al-Qaeda. The unit was distinguished by its spectacular cruelty to Christians, including decapitation of prisoners to the chants of Allahu-akbar. El Moujahed was the nursery from which an international terrorist network spread to Europe and North America." The brigade's cadres, let it be added, were given Bosnian citizenship and issued passports, including bin Laden himself.

So much on whether Izetbegovic and bin Laden had reason to meet. That leaves one unresolved issue: why did the ICTY censor Ms. Prentice?

As we know, ICTY is a quasi-judicial political institution that acts in accordance with its paymasters' wishes. We suggest that it censored Ms. Prentice because after all these years, it is still undesirable to the U.S. government that the connection between its various Muslims proteges be revealed. This ongoing reluctance was noted on February 18 by a Counterpunch analyst who has grown tired of various conspiracy theories concerning bin Laden. "More dispositive than these speculations," he writes, are the very real connections between Washington and Islamic jihadists in the Balkans throughout the 1990s. The 9-11 Commission's report hints at this relationship by mentioning the presence of charity fronts of bin Laden's 'network' in Zagreb and Sarajevo; but in fact, the U.S. government engaged in a massive covert operation to infiltrate Islamic fighters, many of them veterans of the Afghan war, into the Balkans. The "arms embargo," enforced by the U.S. military, was a cover for using military force to keep prying eyes from seeing what was going on:

A key Washington fixer for the Muslim government of Bosnia was the law firm of Feith and Zell. Yes, Douglas Feith, one of the principal conspirators involved in launching the Iraq war under the banner of opposing Islamic terrorism, was a proponent of introducing Islamic terrorists into South Eastern Europe… Frankenstein's Monster that has slipped the control of its creator.

The only part of the above statement that is wrong is the suggestion that the monster has slipped the control of its creator. Quite the contrary: the creator still hopes to rein in the monster, to make him user-friendly by appeasing and cajoling him. The same report of the 9-11 Commission, for instance, asserts that America "does stand up for its values" by supporting Muslim causes around the world: "The United States defended, and still defends, Muslims against tyrants and criminals in Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. If the United States does not act aggressively to define itself in the Islamic world, the extremists will gladly do the job for us."

Eight years of the Clinton-Albright Administration's covert and overt support for the Islamist camp in the Balkans have been a moral disaster and a foreign policy debacle. That this debacle is contining under Bush indicates the extent to which the creators of foreign policy in Washington, like the late Bourbons, learn nothing and forget.