Naučna istraživanja

Research - who is Srdja Trifkovic

Research - who is Srdja Trifkovic

Trifkovic's testimony as a witness of fact called by the Beara defence in Popovic et al.

Trifkovic's status in relation to the Bosnian Serbs

ST had English-language media contacts through his work as a journalist - particularly after six years with the BBC World Service. He considered he could present information to the English-speaking media better than people in Pale could. Accepting a position as official spokesman would have severely curtailed his ability to work as a freelance journalist and provide analyses of the political background to the conflict in former Yugoslavia. So he asked Koljevic to arrange with Karadzic to have an informal arrangement allowing him to continue his other professional pursuits unhindered and not be bound by formal instructions when presenting and articulating positions and analyses. Page 25212

His job title was "the Balkan affairs analyst with close links to the Bosnian Serbs". He would correct anyone who referred to "the representative or spokesman for the Bosnian Serbs",

He held the position from September 1993 until the first week of September 1995 when the political leadership of the Republika Srpska decided to authorize Slobodan Milosevic to negotiate on their behalf. (Page 25214) [He seems to have given different dates to the Stakic trial - 1994? - after not mentioning the position initially - check]

Background to the visit to Pale

In July 1995 he happened to be on holiday in Serbia at his in-laws' place near Cacak and decided to pay a visit to Pale [Page 25226], because the Srebrenica military operation was in full swing and he wanted to hear what the Pale take was on what looked like an unexpected development. (He adds that he had intended to go even before the military operations started unfolding). He wanted to have a first hand account of what was going on and find out what the political leader's "take on the future course of events" was so he could speak to the media with some degree of authority. [?25214] His primary interest was to know the view in Pale, which he could then usefully employ in his own analysis, writings, and media presentations. [Page 25252]

He travelled to Pale with two friends of his from the United States, Tom Premovic and Slavica Ristic, who were also in Serbia, independently of one other. Both were very keen to make the visit [it's not clear whether this was just to Pale or specifically to meet Karadzic] and as "a sort of friendly favour" ST took them with him. [Page 25252]

The journey to Pale via Konjevic Polje

An urgent combat report (Ref. 2748) sent to Karadzic on 12 July 1995 stated that "the enemy has been attempting to withdraw from the Srebrenica enclave with women and children in the direction of Ravno Buljine and Konjevic Polje but ran into a mine field" and "On... "... important axes, parts of our units in the MUP have laid ambushes in order to destroy Muslim extremists who have not surrendered and who are attempting to break out of the enclave in the direction of Tuzla."

Asked if he had had any discussions on the 12th, or the 13th regarding the Muslims attempting to break out of the enclave, ST said that he had driven from the Karakaj border crossing to Pale along the road concerned on the 12th. He had been warned of the possibility of small armed groups crossing the road and told that the party were proceeding at their own risk but they weren't told to take a detour or not to proceed. There seemed no overt concern that the level of military activity would make their trip risky.

The drive "through the very area that [not completed] -- of Konjevic Polje and the vicinity of Bratunac and Tomorici and from there up to Vlasenici and on to Pale" seemed fairly uneventful and "maybe lulled him into a false sense that the military activity was practically over". The conversations at Pale proceeded with the assumption that the enclave had fallen and "it's over". ST wasn't aware at that time of any attempts by armed groups of a significant magnitude to break out. He maintained that nobody at Pale discussed this information with him in his conversations with members of the circle of the Presidency. [Page 25267-8]

In his conversation with Miovcic and Zametica on the evening of the 12th ST had remarked on seeing a number of civilian buses parked by the roadside as they drove from the Serbian border towards Pale. [Page 25258]. He hadn't seen much military or civilian traffic and emphasised seeing buses especially in the area where the road turns left towards Bratunac leaving the main road from Zvornik to Sokolac. He then emphasised that his own knowledge or understanding of what was actually going on was sketchy in the extreme [perhaps mindful that he might be giving too much away?]. He pointed out twice that even on the evening of the 13th Koljevic himself had talked of going to see the civilians in Srebrenica the next day.

ST did not find it unusual that he was not told about the small armed groups before crossing into Republika Srpska at Zvornik. In the immediate aftermath of what was at that time assumed to be a fairly major military operation, information about the road would have to be obtained from the military on the ground. The "Serbian" (subsequently confirmed to be VRS) soldiers at the checkpoint exiting Zvornik in the direction of Konjevic Polje told him to be aware of small armed groups. Although they knew about the "potential extremists" mentioned in the combat report and advised caution, ST considered their demeanour relaxed (they were some way away from the area where the operation was being carried out), and there was no serious warning of the likelihood of potentially dangerous encounters.

Length of stay in Pale

ST stayed in Pale from the evening of the 12th until the early morning of the 16th. On the 16th he drove to Belgrade, and then the following day or the day after flew to London. [For whatever reason he was vague about the date - he said he needed to look at the stamps in his old passports to be certain.]

Timings of meetings while in Pale

When shown Karadzic's appointments diary, ST noted that his appointment to see Karadzic with his two US travelling companions appeared to have been postponed, due to their late arrival, from 12 July to 13 July ["za se"]. It took place on the 13th, lasting from 1700 until 1840). On 14 July he saw Karadzic with Jovan Zametica [Karadzic's assistant] from 2305 until 0035. Bob Djurdjevic also met Karadzic on 14 July (5 p.m. to quarter past 7). Earlier that day Karadzic saw Miroslav Deronjic (ST didn't recall ever hearing his name or meeting him; in examining ST the lawyer Ostojic noted that it was important to establish that Deronjic was there and when - 1240 to 1310). Karadzic then saw "the delegation from Srebrenica" [apparently including Deronjic] from 1425 to 1825 [Page 25232]. Bob Djurdjevic spoke to ST at some point, as detailed in Djurdjevic's diary.

12 July in Pale

After arriving too late on the evening of the 12th for the appointment with Karadzic, the only persons ST recalled meeting that evening were Koljevic's Chief of Staff Zdravko Miovcic and Karadzic's advisor Dr. Zametica. [Page 25252] He knew them privately so didn't need to make a formal appointment to meet them. These were people he relied on to give him an informal behind-the-screens briefing about what was going on. [Page 25254].

Mrs. Ristic was tired and not present, Premovic would have been present at least part of the time, though ST couldn't be sure. The conversation would have been more of the nature of background briefing rather than any specific information that would preclude the desirability of a third-party presence. ST believed he did not meet with anybody else after the meeting with Zametica and Miovcic.

He had no precise recollection of his informal conversations with Miovcic but "guessed" they would have had been concerned with the "unexpected or seemingly unexpected collapse" of the defence of Srebrenica, the diplomatic implications and how Pale saw the significance of this event, and presentation of the issue which at that time was primarily focused on, or that was his personal interest, [presumably the presentation rather than the focus on Gorazde] whether there would be a move on Gorazde, whether the intention was to "try to wrap it up in one swoop", and what feedback, if any, was being received from the UN and other international powers.

ST maintained he couldn't be precise, this was the general kind of conversation he would have had with Zametica and Miovcic. He had a better personal rapport with them than with officials higher up and was able to be more frank with them about disagreements or differences of opinion than he was with people like Karadzic or even Koljevic.

Asked whether he got any sense in his discussions with Zametica and Miovcic of "what direction the operation was going in" he said that he had a strong sense - on both the 12th and 13th - that they [presumably the Bosnian Serbs rather than just Z and M] were generally surprised that Srebrenica fell effectively without a fight and that there was some difficulty getting information about what was happening on the ground (he mentions the problems Karadzic experienced after the meeting on the 13th was interrupted and he tried to phone someone at Han Pijesak but was told "the line is down"). Zametica and Miovcic gave ST the impression they really didn't have any detailed information about the fall of Srebrenica. Page 25256-7

ST, Zametica and Miovcic discussed humanitarian concerns, and the importance for "the Serbian side" to make sure there were no complaints about the treatment of civilians. ST noted how the Serbian side had been damaged by reporting of previous episodes at Gorazde, Bihac, and Sarajevo, which he observed may have been exaggerated, but had been to some extent based on real events. He had the impression Zametica and Miovcic agreed with him (he also remembered Karadzic's insistence the following day that he would issue orders that nothing should happen to the civilians "that could be used in the media against the Serbs".)

[Concerning the civilians, having commented on seeing civilian buses parked by the roadside as they drove from the border towards Pale [Page 25258], he noted seeing buses especially in the area "where the road turns left towards Bratunac leaving the main road from Zvornik to Sokolac". This was the point at which he emphasised that his own knowledge or understanding of what was actually going on was sketchy in the extreme. Apparently emphasising the lack of information available, he also noted that on the evening of the 13th Koljevic was intending to visit Srebrenica on the 14th to see the situation for himself and was clearly not fully aware that the civilians had been or were in the process of being removed at that time).

ST insisted that it was his understanding from the conversations on the 12th (followed up with Dr. Karadzic on the 13th) was that it was important at least from the point of view of the Western press that the refugees should not just appear to be being given humanitarian treatment but that such treatment should be substantive, to avoid media "presentation of -- or rather, misrepresentation of" the appearance of mistreatment. [Page 25260] {It is not clear whether his impression was formed from what Zametica and Miovcic were saying or from what he himself was saying].

Karadzic's television interview on 12 July - Western Slavonia

On 12 July Karadzic gave a television interview in which he was asked what information he had on the humanitarian situation in Srebrenica. He replied that "Our commissaria for refugees" had rushed to help, the refugees looked obviously well-fed and there were no problems at all. He then drew a comparison between the bevaviour of the Croats in Western Slavonia and the Serbs at Srebrenica: "If you compared what happened in western Slavonia where the Croatians were allegedly liberating with what has happened in Srebrenica where the Serbs are doing the liberating, there is such a difference that it is impossible to talk about war at all."

ST was asked whether he had discussed western Slavonia at all during his conversations with Zametica and Miovcic. He couldn't remember having done so and could only say that if he had, he would have remarked that the way western Slavonia fell seemed consistent with his suspicions of a deal between Milosevic and Tudjman and his concern that the authorities in Belgrade were striking deals detrimental to the western Serbs. [Page 25260]

He didn't "have any memory" of discussing with Karadzic at some point what his thoughts were about how what happened in western Slavonia related to what had happened at Srebrenica. [There seemed to be an unspoken suggestion of a connection between Karadzic's reference to Western Slavonia and Trifkovic's presence in Pale.] ST simply remembered that in the meeting on the 13th he stressed that the treatment of the Muslim civilians in Srebrenica would be such as to put the Serbian side beyond any reproach even by the "non-benevolent media". (ST said Karadzic regarded most of the western mainstream media as not friendly to the Serbian side in their reporting or analysis).

ST was asked about whether he himself had referred to the situation in western Slavonia a number of times in interviews. In a BBC TV Newsnight interview on 28 May, 1995, ST was asked "What is going on? Have the Serbs now thrown all restraint to the wind?" ST replied, "If mockery is made of UN-protected zones, it is of the UN's own making. They are not enforcing their own resolutions when it is the Croats and the Muslims who are violating them. The Serbs are fed up. They are feeling very irritated because only three weeks ago in western Slavonia we had a slaughter of Serb civilians. We had a mass exodus of Serb civilians, and the UN did nothing. They did not even castigate the Croatians in the security counsel; ditto with the misuse of the safe havens." ST emphasised that he had neither sought nor received inputs from Pale for his presentation of [he failed to say of what]. He suggested that his information about "the mood of the Serbs" was more than amply supplied by the Serbian and RS media. He emphasised that written reports were easily available on the internet, even if video-streaming hadn't been common usage. He had had no need to rely on. Karadzic's assessment to judge what had happened in western Slavonia - if their views had coincided, it was probably because there had been some substance to their impression - "an attack in violation of UN rules that was brutal and indiscriminate when it came to the treatment of Serb civilians".

Page 25262-3

In another live interview, "from London news radio" on 17 July 1995, after ST had claimed that, "These places have not been demilitarised" and Paul Reynolds had responded by asking "But is that an excuse to have the Muslims of Srebrenica ethnically cleansed?", ST answered that "In the Balkans, one ethnic group does not trust soldiers belonging to another ethnic group. In the hundreds of years of civil and religious wars in the Balkans, this has been a regular feature. Only two months ago we had a tragedy on a much greater scale in western Slavonia, also nominally a UN-protected area, where the Croat army attacked the Serbs, drove them out, and massacred hundreds of them. There are 600,000 Serb refugees in both Serbia and the Serb republics of Krajina and Bosnia."

Questioned whether ST's statements were "predicated upon" his conversations with Karadzic or his understanding of what Karadzic hada been referring to in the interview on 12 July, five days earlier, ST maintained that he had been making a factual statement, consistent with the empirical evidence that in the wars of Yugoslav succession, an ethnic group in a conquered territory would seek to leave "because of a historical lack of trust", hence "when the Serbian army advances Muslims would feel more comfortable going to Tuzla or Zenica than staying put". He describes this as a descriptive factual statement rather than analysis or a value judgement.

In his interview on 12 July, Karadzic had criticised the hypocrisy of the international community as it applauded "whenever Muslim forces from these safe havens advance through the Serb territory from Bihac, Tuzla, Sarajevo and even from Gorazde … But when the Serbs undertake counteroffensives and neutralise their opponents, then the world starts to wail and mourn over the losses. You can see that the Muslim civilians haven't lost anything, but the Muslim army has." When ST was asked if he had any information about the Muslim civilians when he spoke to Miovcic and. Zametica on 12 July, he replied that other than agreement on the need to act in a way that was beyond reproach and Koljevic's indication that he believed that the civilians were still there on the evening of the 13th, he did not, but he "was becoming aware that the evacuation was underway or had already taken place at the tail end of my stay" (learned mainly from the BBC World Service rather than from being told first hand by anyone over there).

13 July meeting with Karadzic

There wasn't really a discussion, more a fairly long and detailed monologue giving Karadzic's rather optimistic view of developments and his confident expectation that the fall of Srebrenica and Zepa could lead to a diplomatic solution to the war (understood by ST to mean that the Western powers - primarily the US - would realise that the Serbs were capable of winning the war by military means so they would come up with a better proposal than the Contact Group's solution (described as no more than an unacceptable map). Thinking this might be a "rose-tinted view" for the benefit of his US companions ST hoped he might get a more realistic appraisal at another meeting. [Page 25240 - check]. (ST's overall impression from both the meetings was that Karadzic was upbeat at the prospect of an improved political package that would give Republika Srpska "the elements of sovereign statehood within whatever Bosnian package was finally negotiated". (ST did not agree with the analysis, but given previous similar encounters he did not argue the point). [Page 25241]

ST described an overall sense of deep frustration and misgivings inspired by Karadzic's inability to see the predicament of Republika Srpska in the context of a complex wider international situation and when asked to recall the content of the meeting thought that it "would have been another occasion for such sense of frustration".

Mr. Premovic and Ms. Ristic had been present. Zametica came in and out but was not present throughout. Karadzic tried to make telephone calls two or three times but there appeared to be problems getting a line. The meeting was occasionally interrupted when the phone rang, but in any case it wasn't a particularly structured meeting.

Asked about the meeting, ST said that a computer crash meant that he had no notes of either of the meetings with Karadzic. The meeting on the 13th consisted mostly of a summary for the visitors of Karadzic's view of things. Page 25274 According to ST's "best recollection" after 13 years Karadzic was upbeat, optimistic that the success of Serbian[sic] arms/military might at Srebrenica would convince the outside world of the need for a political package "it" could live with and this might end the war.

Pressed about what else Karadzic might have said during the course of the meeting ST said that his conversation with Zametica and Miovcic had made him curious about the military details of what seemed the rather sudden, unexpected, and swift fall of Srebrenica but Karadzic "didn't really enlighten him" about the fall. He thought that the reason he didn't get answers in Pale to the question as to what actually happened to make the fall of this enclave so swift and so unexpected was simply because it had been unexpected.

Again pressed to say what Karadzic had actually told him, rather than give his general impressions of what Karadzic said, ST claimed that he had to limit himself to overall impressions because he didn't have minutes, and "memories tend to acquire the character of overall impressions rather than specific snippets or quotes".

He was reminded that he had been able to testify in very specific detail about a conversation in 1993 concerning Beara, for which he had no notes either, but said that this had been a memorable experience - his first encounter with grassroots soldiers from the ranks and the first time he had sensed a latent mistrust, even animosity, between the two traditions among the Bosnian Serbs - caricatured as the partisan tradition versus the Chetnik tradition. [Page 25277]

The treatment of military prisoners hadn't been discussed, the conversations were solely concerned with the treatment of civilians. ST only realised that had happened to the men of military age was an issue and that the western media were concerned after he returned to London.

ST considered that the visit hadn't been useful when it came to articulating positions in media interviews because he didn't share the general optimistic view. [Page 25278] Reminded that he had gone to Pale to find out specific details about the Srebrenica operation for the purpose of his dealings with the foreign media and had spoken to Karadzic on the subject but nevertheless seemed to have no recollection what Karadzic told him, even though he now knew what had happened that same day, ST insisted that the 13 July meeting "had not been particularly fruitful or useful as regards either gaining a closer understanding of what was happening on the ground or getting an insight into the political background and the realistic scenario of "the end game" that might follow on from Srebrenica". He did not managed to get a clear picture of what had caused Srebrenica to fall so quickly and unexpectedly, just an upbeat story of the war entering its final phase on terms favourable to the Serbs.

He had asked about why Srebrenica had fallen but he didn't inquire what happened to the Muslim soldiers because he had no reason to believe that this was an issue. His understanding was that "in all previous operations" prisoners were considered valuable assets who could be exchanged for one's own side. He had raised the question about civilians and had stressed to Karadzic, as he had to Miovcic and Zametica on the first evening, that it was extremely important to avoid "any incidents or exercise" that would be detrimental to a very sensitive political situation. Karadzic had given him assurances on this point and ST was asked, in Zametica's absence, to translate a press release in Serbian about these assurances into English for distribution by the SRNA news agency. As far as he remembered the press release contained specific guarantees that the civilians would be looked after and had nothing to fear.

When ST's reference to Karadzic having said something about Zepa on the 13th, ST said he had no recollection whether Zepa had already fallen or was about to, but it was pretty much taken for granted that it would. Karadzic had said that Srebrenica and Zepa had proved that the strength of the Serbs' weaponry and military prowess was such that it could no longer be assumed that the Serbs would accept any terms of final settlement that did not address their key interest. ST maintaineed that he didn't even know on what specific day Zepa fell, but he thought Karadzic assumed that it was going to happen as a matter of course.

ST was reminded that despite being asked a lot of questions about what Karadzic had told him on the 13th all he said that he recalled was Karadzic's long discourse on an "end game" that was expected to be "favourable to the Serbian point of view" and his agreement with ST when ST had insisted that it was extremely important ("substantially and in terms of media relations") to avoid any incidents in the treatment of the civilian population that would be "reminiscent of the early stages of the war".

13 July - following the meeting with Karadzic

Karadzic's diary showed an appointment with Tomo Kovac following the meeting with ST, Ristic and Premovic. Asked if he knew "who Toma Kovac was at that time", ST said no - the name rang a bell but he didn't have a precise recollection of his function [my speculation: is this when Kovac - deputy Interior Minister - resisted deploying police to Srebrenica because he was unwilling to be involved, knowing what was up and the possible consequences? The question may have been asked in order to indicate that ST might have met and spoken with Kovac in Karadzic's office and discussed Srebrenica. However the question is not followed up. ST appears disingenuous in disclaiming knowledge of Kovac]

ST then had a meeting with Koljevic, Zdravko Miovcic (Koljevic's assistant), and Zametica. Koljevic shared Karadzic's optimism. He was planning to go to Srebrenica on 14 July, as he put it, "to provide reassurance to the civilians that they would be treated properly", (a point that ST noted was strongly emphasized by Karadzic). ST had the impression that Koljevic believed the civilians were still there. He himself was not in a position to know what was happening on the ground, but nevertheless he found it remarkable that Koljevic was planning to go to Srebrenica on the 14th believing that the civilians would still be in Srebrenica. [Page 25243]

14 July meeting with Karadzic

ST had what he initially called a " fairly short" meeting late in the evening of 14 July with Zametica present. When questioned about the length of the meeting, ST acknowledged that it was an hour and a half though his impression was that it had been shorter - it hadn't felt like an hour and a half.

It was quite late at night, with Jovan Zametica, and the specific purpose of it as far as ST was concerned was to try and see if Karadzic had a more nuanced and a more critical appreciation of the overall political and diplomatic situation than the upbeat assessment he had provided the previous afternoon for the benefit of the Serbian-American visitors prominent in their local community or whether it was what he actually believed.

He had said that the war was coming to a close, the Serbian military success in Srebrenica would present the world with a reality that could no longer be denied, and there would be diplomatic movement based on the realisation that the Serbs could not be defeated and would not accept a settlement that failed to address their key concerns. However in the more private meeting, in a different setting, with just Karadzic's advisor Dr. Zametica in attendance, he essentially repeated what he had already said - ST described it as "the same-old, same-old".

It was pointed out that ST recalled very specifically what Karadzic believed, but he only recalled the overall tone, flavour, of what he had said at the meeting on the 14th

Meeting with Bob Djurdjevic on 14 July

ST describes a brief encounter with Bob Djurdjevic in Zametica's office where ST was using Zametica's computer. As Zametica was feeling unwell ST went to the office to write a letter from Karadzic to A.M. Rosenthal (former editor of New York Times) and translate a press release into English that "he -- no, sorry, Zametica asked me -- he, meaning Zametica, asked me" to write and send to the SRNA news agency. (Regarding the content of the press release ST observes that the precise wording might be confirmed if there was an archive of SRNA press releases for that period, but his memory was that "it contained specific guarantees that their safety would be -- that they would be looked after and they have nothing to fear").

ST says he had no other meetings with Karadzic on 14 July.

15 July

ST says he had no meetings with Karadzic on 15 July, all he remembers worth mentioning that day is taking Mrs. Ristic and Mr. Premovic "just for walks around". They may have driven up to Jahorina. It wasn't a day filled with substantive meetings, and he didn't "have much of a memory of that last day". It wasn't significant in terms of conversations or encounters. [I mention this because ST's comments often give the impression of deflecting attention away from areas of potential interest]

No notes of the meetings

What ST referred to at one point as his "precise notes about the meetings" had been lost when his computer crashed. ST said he had had some notes concerning the conversations with Karadzic on the 13th and 14th. He said he had brought his new laptop to Serbia with him but did not bring it with him to Pale. He would have written up notes on the basis of brief scribblings made at the end of the day.

The notes on the computer had not been destroyed but the hard disk of ST's laptop had crashed in 1997 - late 1996/early 1997 - and he did not have copies of the files. He had not been doing timely backups. His backup diskettes had not covered what he referred to as "some of these" [presumably some of his notes]. He had not kept any handwritten notes. He tried to get the hard drive fixed but was unable to recover anything. A Best Buy technician had told him there had basically been a catastrophic failure. As he recalled, defragmentation (he didn't know the technical jargon) was beyond their ability. A specialist company might have been able to do this at considerable expense but, regrettably in hindsight he decided not to pursue this and the computer had been discarded. He had not kept the hard disk because that would have meant dismantling it. The computer had crashed in winter 1996, early 1997 and it was pointed out to ST that he had it for a good year after the events in [July 1995] [the significance of the "timeliness" of ST's back-ups was not pursued]. ST noted that it had been brand new when he took it to Serbia.

ST gave the absence of notes as his explanation for his inability to give precise details of what Karadzic had said, just general recollections. When pressed on the issue, he said that he did particularly recall a letter he drafted from Karadzic to A.M. Rosenthal (former editor of the New York Times) praising an editorial published a few days previously containing specific suggestions concerning the renewal of direct contacts between the Clinton administration and the Republika Srpska leadership. That was the closest he could get to some "specifics of our conversation that were contingent upon his overall favourable assessment of the situation" (Karadzic was confident that the situation was ripe for some kind of diplomatic solution and approached Rosenthal in order to explore the possibility of such contact).

ST had not consulted with Mrs. Ristic or Mr. Premovic to compare "not notes but memories".

Asked if he produced any articles based on the information he had in the computer - "the notes that you took", he said because the meeting with Karadzic was disappointing in terms of his analysis and not particularly informative in terms of the background to the specific military circumstances surrounding the fall of Srebrenica, ST had not written or published anything.

He did not think that his comments to the press subsequently would have been much different if he had not gone to Pale at all. All that he had got out of it was the assurance that the civilians would be treated well, and reiterated insistence that the military operation was necessitated by the failure of the UN to demilitarise the enclave (a repeat of the situation in early spring 1994 relating to Gorazde).

The historian with general impressions

ST was asked whether a historian by profession, with a PhD in history would remembers dates, events, places and things of that nature very well, and recall them? He replied that it was far more important in the study of history to remember the essential underlying intent of the key participants rather than their verbatim quotes. ST was reminded that he had been at the centre of an historic event concerning the former Yugoslavia, full-out war.

He had had a note pad and a computer, and gone for the specific purpose of gaining access to information that would help him discharge his obligations to the civilian authorities of the Republika Srpska. And yet, a historian, he had no specific recollection of what. Karadzic had told him on two separate occasions on the 13th and 14th of July, even though he knew full well looking back what had been occurring on those days. Asked if he knew that on 13 July 1995 people were being killed, ST answered that he knew now, he hadn't known then. He was reminded that he knew that in 1996.

He claimed he had tried to give a fairly detailed and comprehensive answer about the essentials of the conversation and his inability to reproduce verbatim quotes was really based on his view that it was more important to understand the character of the meeting rather than try to and reproduce unreliably specific verbatim segments of it.

Page 25287

Rationale for Serbs' failure to respect Srebrenica's status

[Without saying when he noted this - before going to Pale or in Pale] he observed that the political leaders (Karadzic, Koljevic, and their advisors) [he regularly points to divisions on the Bosnian Serb side - particularly between military and political leaderships, but also between Chetniks, ie Serb nationalists, and partisans, ie Yugoslav integralists] were particularly insistent that UN failure to demilitarise the UN-protected zone had compromised the protected status of Srebrenica and the military operation was made necessary by the UN failure to prevent its further use as "an armed camp" when raiding surrounding Serb villages and a UN-protected zone when the Serbs threatened retaliation.

To summarise, tThe focus of both conversations was on Karadzic's view of the political / diplomatic aftermath of Srebrenica's fall, on the first day what was, in his opinion, an excessively optimistic assessment, and on the second, in the absence of the visitors, a similar outlook rather than a more realistic conversation (he noted that discussions based on the non-acceptance of favourable assessments were not welcome or encouraged.

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The crucial thing is to follow Trifkovic's activities related to the Rockford Institute and in particular when he's lecturing to a sympathetic audience.

Trifkovic’s lecture to Youth for Western Civilization at Providence College which you'll find on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CL4GU5miS-c (first clip - for subsequent parts look in the sidebar on the right and click the next number). The sound is poor quality but we found the full transcript at http://www.theblogmocracy.com/2010/11/07/srdja-trifkovic-speech-censored-by-providence-college-newspaper/

Sample: 'The view of Islam as the existential foe of Europe and its civilization – its outre-mer offspring included - is based on Islam’s own teaching and 14 centuries of blood-soaked practice. That Islam is utterly incompatible with Christian, European culture and civilization, and that it is "other" than our culture and civilization, is a fact that will not change even if the West eventually succumbs to the ongoing jihadist demographic and psychological onslaught.'

You can also get to the clip via

http://www.westernyouth.org/articles/providence-college-newspaper-censors-dr.-trifkovic/#

At around 6:00, dealing with Ground Zero Mosque, he questions Clinton's reference to the number of Muslims killed on 9/11

But generally check out Youth for Western Civilization, Chronicles and Rockford Institute.

Also his evidence to the ICTY in Stakic and Popovic et al are illustrative.

http://www.kejda.net/2009/02/23/robert-spencers-connections-the-srjda-trifkovic-file/

Link provides routes to original quotes from Trifkovic published elsewhere including references to the Stakic ICTY trial.

At the Stakic trial Trifkovic admits that he served as "representative of the Republika Srpska between 9 November, 1993, and July, 1994, in London," after omitting the fact from the C.V. he submitted to the Tribunal. In Popovic et al he admits that he served till September 1995 but is very careful to make the unofficialness of his position very clear.

In the Stakic trial Judge Wolfgang Schomburg comments on Trifkovic's testimony, which he described as showing "the clear lack of tolerance, the poor basis of facts relying on secondary instead of primary sources.

And not going into details, we discussed some examples yesterday. This is clear. But as I said yesterday, this has nothing to do with Dr.

Stakic being the accused here in this Tribunal." - ie he implies that Trifkovic's opinions were so extreme they should be excluded in order not to prejudice Stakic's defence.

The Times, 19 April 1994 - GORAZDE'S FALL SPEEDS SEARCH FOR SETTLEMENT - EUROPEAN NEWS by Eve-Ann Prentice and Joel Brand THE Serb conquest of Gorazde may paradoxically have brought peace closer in Bosnia, although another bout of "ethnic cleansing" is almost certain to take place first.

...

General Ratko Mladic and his Bosnian Serb army are unwilling to leave the town in Muslim hands in any negotiated settlement, and now that Gorazde has been cowed his next step will be to try to move the Muslims out.

Dr Srdja Trifkovic, Bosnian Serb representative in London, said

yesterday: "In the end, the Muslim enclaves are not viable. We will let the Muslims come and go, but when the roads are open again the traffic will be in one direction only."

A 1994 interview with Adam Nicolson in the Sunday Telegraph (UK):

"In the press the Serbs have been portrayed in a Manichaean way, as the perennial and only culprits, demonised as a collective monstrosity. It was this which induced me to give up my other career pursuits and become a spokesman for Dr. Karadzic, which is not much easier at the moment, I must say," he smiled, "than being the spokesman for the Afrikaner Republican Party." The Serbs' main shortcoming, as he saw it, had been in public relations. "There is a Serb reluctance to manipulate the truth," he said. "A sense of propriety. The concept of public relations is morally repugnant to the Serbs, to manhandle people's minds in that way we believe the truth will become known by itself. The result was a lack of preparedness for this aspect of the war from which we have suffered."

CBS EVENING NEWS (6:30 PM ET) May 26, 1995, Friday:

HEADLINE: BOSNIAN SERBS HOLD UN PEACEKEEPERS HOSTAGE IN RETALIATION FOR NATO AIR ATTACKS ...

BARRY PETERSEN (reporter, CBS News, London): The Serbs chose a somewhat different response to yesterday's air strike: a massacre; artillery blasting a crowded street in Tuzla lined with sidewalk cafes. More than 70 were killed. The youngest victim was two months old. The Serbs know they can't stop the warplanes militarily. They think if they can make the price of the air strikes high enough in human terms, that will stop the UN generals.

Mr. SERGE TRIFKOVIC (Bosnian Serb spokesman): The next time there is a call for stern action against these dastardly Serbs, if it is known that it will result in 2,000 shells falling on the so-called protected areas, people will think twice.

PETERSEN: The shells rained down on Sarajevo today, another of those so-called protected areas that isn't.

and

http://serbianna.com/analysis/archives/592

Srdja Trifkovic, 'The Genocide Myth: Uses and Abuses of "Srebrenica"'

(Serbianna, 9 July 2010)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Muslims are the only group that harbors a substantial segment of individuals who share key objectives with terrorists. They are the immigrant group least likely to identify with America."

Trifkovic has also suggested that, like the Japanese during World War II, Muslim Americans be registered and monitored by the government, and be barred from holding positions that require security clearance.

(quote & paraphrase from Trifkovic, cited in a review of his book Sword of the Prophet)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles-2009/Trifkovic-Barack-Hussein-Obamas-Happy-Muslim-Rainbow-Tour.php

Finally here's a few more odds and ends

Trifkovic interviewed on BBC Newsnight, July 1995 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMYT2Trbvnk

http://www.srpska-mreza.com/WarCrime/ST-Hague.html

http://listserv.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0910&L=JUSTWATCH-L&P=R17518&D=1&H=0&O=D&T=0&m=88029

http://listserv.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0307&L=JUSTWATCH-L&P=R78600

http://listserv.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0307&L=JUSTWATCH-L&P=R78600&D=1&H=0&O=D&T=0

http://listserv.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0103&L=JUSTWATCH-L&P=R142277&D=1&H=0&O=D&T=0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAojq5CJaWM

(interview with Russia Today re Karadzic's arrest including apologia for

Stakic)

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001081.html

BBC quote re Trifkovic defending Mladic's hostage-taking, reference to Andras's response to Book choice

http://novakeo.com/?p=7465#

Useful recent summary of views - July 2010 (ref to Canadian Parliamentary Motion - describes Srebrenica as a UN Protected Jihadist camp

Here are a few items, mostly from Trifkovic's Rockford Institute "paleoconservative" journal Chronicles, some of his anti-Islamic pronouncements but also a bit more information about his "keynote" address at Yad Vashem, which appears to have been pushing Jasenovac propaganda rather than discussing seriously reality.

http://barthsnotes.wordpress.com/2009/02/01/serge-trifkovic-bnp-councillor-and-scientific-racialists-to-discuss-preserving-judeo-christian-heritage/

Trifkovic links

http://www.baltimorereporter.com/?p=5422

A priori hostility towards Islam should not be “used to justify discriminatory practices towards Muslims.” Quite the contrary, an education campaign about the teaching and practice of Islam should result in legislative action that would exclude Islam from the societies it is targeting – not because it is an intolerant “religion,” but because it is an inherently seditious totalitarian ideology incompatible with the values of the West.

http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=1781#

The first verses of the Qur’an, the textbook teaches 12 and 13-year-old Americans, “were revealed” to Muhammad in AD 610, and the initial revelation came from “a being he later identified as the angel Gabriel.” Such quasi-factual statements would befit a textbook used in a Pakistani medressa, but not one used in an American public school. More egregiously, Across the Centuries states that “some Jewish leaders would not accept Muhammad as God’s latest prophet,” and blithely glosses over the fact that Muhammad reacted to the Jews’ refusal to accept his prophetic claims with a host of violently Judeophobic “revelations” in the Kuran. Such injunctions from Allah paved the way for the ethnic cleansing and eventual extermination of all Jews under Muhammad’s domain. To omit his Endloesung from the history of early Islam is equal to the history of the rise of Nazism purged of the Kristallnacht and the Nuremberg Laws.

The manner in which the media routinely misrepresent Islam tends to be more insidious, especially when it is wrapped in the guise of scholarship. Take the 2002 PBS mini-series Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet, financed mostly with our money, which offered an uncritical hagiography on par with the Soviet state television’s treatment of Lenin. Just as the comrades routinely glossed over some two million innocent victims of the 1917-1921 Bolshevik terror, the PBS glossed over the matter of slaughtered Jewish tribes, of the razzias, murders, rapes, of poll tax and dhimmitude. All Muslim battles were presented as defensive. Nine “specialists” vied with each other to praise Muhammad in extravagant terms. The result bordered on the ridiculous: e.g. “he deeply, deeply loved” his first wife Khadija, and each of his many subsequent marriages was “an act of faith, not of lust” – nine-year-old Aisha included for sure. Muhammad was presented as the liberator of women, and no mention was made of many Kuranic verses and Hadiths that allow, even sanctify rape, violence against wives, and discrimination.

Barred from Canadistan

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2011/02/25/banned-from-canadistan/

On Thursday, February 24, I was denied entry to Canada. After six hours’ detention and sporadic interrogation at Vancouver airport I was escorted to the next flight to Seattle. It turns out I am “inadmissible on grounds of violating human or international rights for being a proscribed senior official in the service of a government that, in the opinion of the minister, engages or has engaged in terrorism, systematic or gross human rights violations, or genocide, a war crime or a crime against humanity within the meaning of subsections 6 (3) to (5) of the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act.”

It appears that my contacts with the Bosnian Serb leaders in the early nineties make me “inadmissible” today. As it happens I was never one of their officials, “senior” or otherwise, but the story has been told often enough (most recently in one of my witness testimonies at The Hague War Crimes Tribunal). The immigration officer at Vancouver decided that what was good for The Hague was not good enough for Canada; but her decision evidently had been written somewhere else by someone else well before my arrival. (She was so out of her depth that she asked me if President Vojislav Koštunica had been indicted for war crimes.)

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2011/02/15/the-tragedy-of-american-education/

GENOCIDE DENIAL—The morally outrageous part concerns Mr. Holloway’s dismissive reference to the Ustaša-instigated holocaust in Croatia, a gruesome yet relatively little known chapter of the Second World War which killed, by conservative estimates, half a million men, women and children… “simply because of their ethnicity or religion,” to paraphrase his rhetoric. Try to imagine Mr. Holloway instructing his students as follows: “Jewish leaders published photographs of atrocities allegedly committed by Germans during WWII, reviving a conflict from 50 years earlier” and thus instigating the Jews to commit mass murder, rape, and ethnic cleansing of innocents. Mr. Holloway would be clearing his desk and contemplating a new career in fast food catering by now, and justifiably so.

As I noted in my keynote presentation at Yad Vashem Center’s June 2006 symposium on the Holocaust in Yugoslavia, presided by Professor Yehuda Bauer, the most widely respected living authority on the grim issues of the period,

The number of victims at the Croatian death camp at Jasenovac—the only Quisling extermination outfit entrusted to the locals—is still uncertain. The lowest estimate with any pretense to seriousness—tens of thousands of victims—was made by the late Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, famous for saying “Thank God, my wife is neither a Serb nor a Jew.” Tudjman’s “estimate” on Jasenovac fits in with his other assessments:

“In his book Wastelands: Historical Truths, published in 1988, Mr. Tudjman wrote that the number of Jews who died in the Holocaust was 900,000—not six million. He has also asserted that not more than 70,000 Serbs died at the hands of the Ustashe—most historians say around 400,000 were killed.” (The New York Times, August 20, 1995)

Other sources provide estimates tens of times greater than Dr. Tudjman’s: “Jasenovac”—entry by Menachem Shelach in Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Yad Vashem, 1990, pp. 739-740—says, “Some six hundred thousand people were murdered at Jasenovac, mostly Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, and opponents of the Ustasa regime.” The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team estimated “that close to 600,000 … mostly Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, were murdered at Jasenovac.”

So much for the Jewish sources. Let us look at what the contemporary German allies of the Croatian Ustaša regime had to say on the subject. Hermann Neubacher, Hitler’s foremost political expert for the Balkans, in his book Sonderaufrag Südost 1940-1945. Bericht eines fliegenden Diplomaten (Goettingen, 1957, p. 18) wrote: “The prescription for the Orthodox Serbs issued by the leader and Führer of Croatia, Ante Pavelic, was reminiscent of the religious wars of the bloodiest memory: One third must be converted to Catholicism, another third must be expelled, and the final third must die. The last part of the program has been carried out.” [I.e., one-third of cca. 1.9 million were killed.]

Here are some interesting observations on Trifkovic's ?latent anti-Semitism or the argument that he is pandering to moderate anti-semitism among the paleoconservatives:

http://www.trifkovic.mysite.com/index.html

Here are some interesting observations on Trifkovic's ?latent anti-Semitism or the argument that he is pandering to moderate anti-semitism among the paleoconservatives:

(the text needs to be read pretty carefully, to follow the argument properly - that Trifkovic was less careful than he often imagines himself being in giving away where he's actually at)

http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/017032.html

These extracts are just to give an indication

e.g.

If Trifkovic had written his contribution with more care and more qualifications, he might have saved himself from the appearance of anti-Semitism. However, my feeling about his essay, with its sweeping portrayal of the Jews as the enemy, is that he is expressing something within himself which he has long held back. His sloppy outpouring is as revealing of his inner thoughts as Mel Gibson's drunken rant in the back of a police car that all wars have been caused by the Jews.

and

Thank you for capturing what was also my reaction. I would have thought that Trifkovic would have had a nuanced and balanced account of the Jewish problem. Instead, he said that Jews qua Jews are waging a relentless and ever-escalating war against the West. I cannot overstate the shock and horror I experienced as I read his article. It was as though he had gone in one step from being the Trifkovic I was familiar with to a Trifkovic who is indinstinuiguishable from any number of whacked-out anti-Semites, with the exception of his call for Jewish / Gentile reconciliation, which, given his nuance free portrayal of the Jews as the Enemy of the West, was totally contradictory and unconvincing. It was as though he had changed the diagnosis half of his argument, turning it into an anti-Semitic argument, and didn't realize that as a result of that change, the prognosis half of his argument (that Jews will come to see the need for supporting the West against the non-West and Islam) was no longer believable. If the Jews are as aggressive and hostile toward the West as Trifkovic says, they are not going to join with Western Christians no matter what.

and

However, I ask that you look at Trifkovic's contribution from another perspective. You have noted that Trifkovic has never demonstrated any indication of anti-Semitism in the past. Is Trifkovic falling under the influence of MacDonald, Duke, and Linder? I personally do not think so; a while back he published a bold pro-Israel article on AltRight, much to the outrage of AltRight's anti-Semitic readers. I don't think Trifkovic has had any recent conversion; rather I think he's trying to throw a bone to the many anti-Semites that make up the paleocon/white nationalist community. His concessions to them are as follows:

- Jews are unique, with a special religion that makes them stand out amongst gentile whites. This lead to a sense of "otherness" which inevitably leads to division. This is not a damning insult to Jews, but rather acknowledging the reality of group differences.--"since the late 1800's the Jews have had a disproportionate impact on a host of intellectual trends and political movements which have fundamentally altered the civilization of Europe and its overseas offspring in a manner deeply detrimental to the family, nation, culture, racial solidarity, social coherence, tradition, morality and faith." This is controversial, and yet by saying since the late 1800's, rather than since time itself, Trifkovic is not aligning himself with biological reductionist anti-Semitism. Nor is he blaming all Jews, rather he is acknowledging that many people of Jewish background were involved with early leftist/radical movements. It would have been better if he made himself more clear, but I think I see what he is trying to say.--"Only one group and one nation-state remain exempt from the dictates of pluralism and diversity, and from the condemnation (heading towards

criminalization) of any form of group solidarity based on blood, culture and faith." Jews have accomplished what many on the Euro Far-Right dream

of: an ethnostate. While I disagree with the premise of Jews being immune from the forces of multiculturalism (Israel is regularly demonized, and no doubt the persecution will increase), it can be argued that the Jews were given a green light on something that we on the Far Right desire, and that's what leads to a sense of unfairness.

and

D. from Seattle writes:

I read your brief response to the Alt-Right symposium and then went and read the articles by Taki, Trifkovic and Gottfried. Taki's was what you'd expect from him--sour, self-righteous tone, cheering for the Palestinians; deja vu. Gottfried is long-winded and sometimes difficult to follow, and has his constant theme of "neocons screwed me out of my professorship" but I didn't notice anything really anti-Semitic; I would have to read it again carefully to see if I can find something of the kind.

However I am surprised by your characterization of Trifkovic's article as anti-Semitic; I really don't see any animus for Jews qua Jews there. He is critical of leftist Jewish disproportionate influence various -isms that have harmed the West, but I thought what he wrote was so descriptive and non-prejudiced that it could have been written by you. Just to make sure, I have searched for a phrase "criticizing Jews"

on VFR and scanned the first page of results and thought that what you have written in the past about Jews advancing non-Western positions is pretty much in line with what Trifkovic wrote for the Alt-Right symposium.

I will look forward to further posts on this topic.

LA replies:

I have already addressed your question somewhat in this thread and will address it more fully in a subsequent post. For the moment, I would say, look at the total thrust of Trif's statement. To my mind, that total thrust is not merely a repetition of rational statements he has made in the past. To me, it is utterly unlike anything he has previously said. However, there is obviously a difference of opinion between us on this, and I'm going to have to go through Trif's statement line by line to explain to you why I see it the way I see it.

John McNeil replies to LA:

I am not being desperate; I am trying to understand Trifkovic, who is a man who has never expressed any anti-Semitic beliefs, and has taken positions in opposition to anti-Semitism. I just don't see how a staunch Israel defender and someone who has endured the verbal slings and arrows of the anti-Semites could all of a sudden become an anti-Semite. This is what leads me to think that Trifkovic has an ulterior motive as far as expressing his opinions to the AltRight readers.

Note that in a comment below this article, Trifkovic has become dismissive of Griffin's hopes of power. Griffin is the focus of a lot of dissent within the BNP now, and the English Defence League are making the running ahead of BNP as far as anti-Muslim sentiment is concerned.

By this stage in autumn 2010 Trifkovic may have decided Griffin is a man of the past, or else too compromising a characteer to be associated with. Trifkovic could be asked about his opportunism and how he washes his hands of people he seemed happy to be cosy with in the past.

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2010/10/15/an-ambiguous-victory-for-wilders/

Here's a (bit outdated - end of 2006) link that will give you a bit of background about Griffin.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/nicholas_griffin/biography.php

Here's the Trifkovic/Griffin chit-chat:

http://www.mail-archive.com/sorabia@yahoogroups.com/msg09032.html

It seems to have disappeared from the Chronicles archive itself.

We recommend you follow Andras's Kejda Gjermani link to http://www.kejda.net/2009/02/23/robert-spencers-connections-the-srjda-trifkovic-file/

and read through it.

KG's got her finger firmly pointed at Trifkovic, particularly with reference to his acknowledgment that he was an adviser to Biljana Plavsic. As he acknowledges being an adviser to Plavisc Trifkovic can be asked publicly whether he discussed matters relating to her public pronouncements and activities.

As you know, the Canadian immigration authorities denied entry to Dr Trifkovic because they determined him to be “inadmissible on grounds of violating human or international rights for being a proscribed senior official in the service of a government that, in the opinion of the minister, engages or has engaged in terrorism, systematic or gross human rights violations, or genocide, a war crime or a crime against humanity within the meaning of subsections 6 (3) to (5) of the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act.”

Genocide denial is illegal in some European countries, BUT it is not illegal under Canadian law. The infamous Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel for many years operated a website, based in Canada, on which he posted statements denying the Holocaust and claiming that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz. In the absence of any legislation outlawing genocide denial, the Canadian government was powerless to take any action against Zundel on account of the website. Zundel only got into trouble when he was foolish enough to accept an invitation to go to Germany to address a neo-Nazi group. He was arrested as soon as he got off the plane in Germany -- which does have legislation outlawing Holocaust denial.

The grounds on which Dr Srdja Trifkovic was barred from entry into Canada last month did not include 'hate speech' or genocide denial. It’s not a matter of his having expressed unpopular or distasteful views. Dr Trifkovic was denied entry not because of what he said, but because of what he did.

From November 1993 until September 1995, Dr. Trifkovic was the London representative of Radovan Karadzic’s self-proclaimed ‘Bosnian Serb Republic’ and he acted as an advisor to Radovan Karadzic. In his testimony in the Beara case, Dr Trifkovic admitted that he was present in Pale at the time of the fall of Srebrenica, for the purpose of advising Karadzic on how to handle the 'public relations problem' resulting from the events at Srebrenica. On his way from Belgrade to Pale and back, Dr Trifkovic actually passed through Konjevic polje, at a time when the mass slaughter of Bosniaks and the digging of mass graves was actually going on. In his testimony at the ICTY, Dr Trifkovic claims he cannot remember anything about his travel to and from Pale in July 1995.

Of course, Dr Trifkovic now claims that he was acting as Karadzic's wartime representative in London in an 'unofficial' capacity. But that is a transparent dodge. In fact, Dr Trifkovic had no chance of acting as an 'official' diplomatic representative, since Karadzic's self-proclaimed RS government was not diplomatically recognized by the UK, nor by any other sovereign state anywhere in the world during the course of the 1992-1995 war (not even Belgrade was willing to grant the 'Republika Srpska' official diplomatic recognition).

Trifkovic's actions during the 1992-1995 war should be enough to settle the argument. The rest -- about genocide denial and 'hate speech' -- makes him morally reprehensible, but it does not have any legal implications in Canada, as far as I know.

Trifkovic interviewed on BBC Newsnight, July 1995 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMYT2Trbvnk

http://www.srpska-mreza.com/WarCrime/ST-Hague.html

http://listserv.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0910&L=JUSTWATCH-L&P=R17518&D=1&H=0&O=D&T=0&m=88029

http://listserv.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0307&L=JUSTWATCH-L&P=R78600

http://listserv.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0307&L=JUSTWATCH-L&P=R78600&D=1&H=0&O=D&T=0

http://listserv.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0103&L=JUSTWATCH-L&P=R142277&D=1&H=0&O=D&T=0

http://www.icty.org/x/cases/popovic/trans/en/080904ED.htm

http://www.icty.org/x/cases/popovic/custom5/en/100728a.pdf

[...] In addition, witness Srdja Trifkovic indirectly confirmed these documents testifying that he was at Pale in July 1995 as reflected in the Djodjevic diary. Namely, Trifkovic testified that he saw briefly Mr. Robert Bob Djurdjevic in [Jovan] Zametica's office in July 1995. [...] As far as witness Trifkovic’s duration of stay at Pale is concerned according to his testimony he was there from the evening of 12 July until the early morning of 16 July 1995. The dates given by Mr. Trifkovic were also further confirmed by the Radovan Karadzic appointment calendar where Mr. Trifkovic’s name can be found both on 13 and 14 July 1995. Trifkovic affirmed as accurate the Djurdjevic diary entries according to which on 13 July 1995 he had a meeting with President Karadzic and on 14 July he had a meeting with Jovan Zametica from 23.05 until 00.35.

http://www.kejda.net/2009/02/23/robert-spencers-connections-the-srjda-trifkovic-file/

(do not refer to Kejda Gjermani's blog directly - she's too polemical to be a 'neutral' source; use her blog to identify and track down original quotes from Trifkovic publ. elsewhere),e.g.

There are some illuminating points in Trifkovic's testimony in the Stakic case. At page 13757 in the transcript, Trifkovic admits that he served as "representative of the Republika Srpska between 9 November, 1993, and July, 1994, in London," a fact that he had omitted from the CV he submitted to the Tribunal. In his later testimony in the Beara trial, Trifkovic admitted that he continued as Karadzic's representative and advisor until September 1995.

...

On March 19, 2003, presiding judge Wolfgang Schomburg commented on the character of Trifkovic's testimony in the Stakic case, which the Judge described as showing "the clear lack of tolerance, the poor basis of facts relying on secondary instead of primary sources. And not going into details, we discussed some examples yesterday. This is clear. But as I said yesterday, this has nothing to do with Dr. Stakic being the accused here in this Tribunal."

That is, the Judge states that the opinions of Trifkovic should not be attributed to the defendant Stakic. The opinions of Trifkovic were so extreme they should be excluded so as not to prejudice the defense of a man who in the end was given the first life sentence handed down by the ICTY, for his crimes against Bosnian Muslims!

---

Dr Trifkovic, in a 1994 interview with Adam Nicolson of the London Sunday Telegraph:

Dr Trifkovic, as featured on CBS EVENING NEWS (6:30 PM ET) May 26, 1995, Friday:

HEADLINE: BOSNIAN SERBS HOLD UN PEACEKEEPERS HOSTAGE IN RETALIATION FOR NATO AIR ATTACKS

DAN RATHER, anchor:

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization stepped up its air attacks against Bosnian Serbs today, but the Serbs are still very much in control on the ground, and they came back with even more terror against civilians and United Nations' soldiers. Correspondent Barry Petersen begins our report.

BARRY PETERSEN reporting:

American and NATO strategists expected the air strikes to change the course of the war. They were right; it got worse. Serbs reacted by imprisoning unarmed UN observers.

Unidentified Man #1: Our lives are in danger.

PETERSEN: Some were turned into human shields at the ammunition dumps NATO was targeting. There was a desperate radio message, apparently sent by a UN hostage.

Unidentified Man #2: If the bombing stops, we will be set free. Otherwise, we will be--we will be killed, over.

Unidentified Woman: (Foreign language spoken.)

PETERSEN: The Serbs chose a somewhat different response to yesterday's air strike: a massacre; artillery blasting a crowded street in Tuzla lined with sidewalk cafes. More than 70 were killed. The youngest victim was two months old. The Serbs know they can't stop the warplanes militarily. They think if they can make the price of the air strikes high enough in human terms, that will stop the UN generals.

PETERSEN: The shells rained down on Sarajevo today, another of those so-called protected areas that isn't.

Mr. MARTIN McCAULEY (Eastern European specialist): The military must now consider whether it's worth using military force against military objects if the result is the death of innocent children and men and women.

PETERSEN: The UN now stands at a terrible crossroads about what to do next. It has never stood up so strongly to the Serbs, and Bosnia has never paid so dearly. Barry Petersen, CBS News, London.

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http://www.westernyouth.org/articles/providence-college-newspaper-censors-dr.-trifkovic/#

Around 6:00, dealing with Ground Zero Mosque, he questions Clinton's reference to the number of Muslims killed on 9/11 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_for_Western_Civilization

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAojq5CJaWM

(interview with Russia Today re Karadzic's arrest including apologia for Stakic)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In this June 5, 1995 interview with the BBC, a month before 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in the UN "safe haven" of Srebrenica were massacred by Bosnian Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic with Karadzic's blessing, Srdja Trifkovic defends Gen. Mladic's taking UN peacekeepers in Bosnia hostage:

BBC: You sit in the outside world here, a long way from your home country, and you see what's going on. You talk to General Mladic on the phone. Don't people like you want to say to him, or shouldn't you say to him: "look, the way to do this is not by taking hostages"?

S Trifkovic: What I personally think is neither here nor there. What I am trying to do here is try and provide an analytical background to this situation, and ingredients for its resolution; and I think that if and when the U.N. realise that its treatment of the Serbs over the past few weeks in particular - under American pressure - reflected more this Albrightesque strain of gung-ho diplomacy of dropping bombs, then we may be on to a good thing.

Here, Trifkovic defends Mladic's not giving the Red Cross access to the UN peacekeepers he has taken hostage:

BBC: [ .... ] Why do you think General Mladic will not allow the Red Cross access to people who have been taken and who are being held hostage at risk to their lives?

ST: I think it is in reaction to what they perceive as an attempt by "the international community" to resolve this one through Milosevic, and not through a dialogue with Pale.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://novakeo.com/?p=7465#

Useful recent summary of views - July 2010 (ref to Canadian Parliamentary Motion - Trifkovic describes Srebrenica as a UN Protected Jihadist camp

Nebojsa Malic: http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/

Savitch, Bozinovich: http://serbianna.com/blogs/bozinovich/archives/1176).

http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/world-mainmenu-26/north-america-mainmenu-36/6511-canada-ejects-serbian-american-scholar-stops-speech-at-university

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23446

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.8868/pub_detail.asp

http://lukaserb3.wordpress.com/2011/02/23/bosnian-jihan-group-congress-of-north-american-bosniak-markin-analyst-for-atacck/

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2011/02/25/banned-from-canadistan/

Other web sites. Atlas Shrugged, Julia Gorin, Jihad Watch.

Bosnian Jihad Group- Congress of North American Bosniaks – Mark Analysts for Attack

FEBRUARY 23, 2011

by lukaserb1

The Al-Qaeda Media Committee, once led by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and used to coordinate the attacks on September 11, is now targeting Western intellectuals, experts, professors and analysts that expose Islamic terror activities, says Ilan Weinglass, Editor of the Terror Financing Blog, a website whose panel of experts have given expert testimony to the US Congress..

“It became clear that al-Qaeda’s committee now targets our intellectuals, experts, professors etc…recently there has been an ongoing Internet War against Dr Darko Trifunovic, from the Faculty of Security Studies, University of Belgrade, who discovered existence of ‘White Al Qaeda’ in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” and Srdja Trifkovic writes Weinglass. Read More…..

http://lukaserb3.wordpress.com/2011/02/23/congres-of-north-american-bosniacs-al-qaeda-connection/

Congress of North American Bosniaks – Al Qaeda Connection

FEBRUARY 23, 2011

by lukaserb1

Although Al Qaeda birth place was in Afganistan during Soviet Afgan war modern Al Quaeda as we know today was established during Bosnian Civil war against Christian majority in Bosnia.

On February 29, 1992 Bosnian Muslim declared independence and started political and violent ethnic cleansing of non Muslims, specially Christian Serbs and Croats who one their part started to protect themselves . Poorly armed and trained and not enough motivated Muslim started to lose battle after battle. In an attempt to change situation they were looking for help of brother Muslims from all around a world and most obvious and natural partner were well trained and established organization Al Queada. Read More…..

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Character Assassination, Part 2

Back in 2009, I first took notice of the "Srebrenica Genocide Blog," and later outed it as the outfit behind the propaganda project called "Palluxo." They responded with a vicious campaign of character assassination, using link farms and fake feeds to Google-bomb my name.

Their favorite "official academic", Marko Attilla Hoare chimed in, mocking me as a "romantic nationalist" (thank you for the compliment! - and no, I won't link to his blog, either). On his own blog, Hoare says that "some or all" of the labels used to describe him: "neoconservative, Trotskyite and Croat nationalist and a supporter of Islamism and Western imperialism", depending on definition, "may be accurate."

[edited for clarity: the labels are invoked by Hoare to describe himself, not me]

In March 2010, they tried again, declaring an essay I had written here to be an incendiary comment I'd left on SGB (as if!). I documented the lie.

Last year, the Congress of North American Bosniaks and something calling itself "Institute for Genocide Research" lobbied in Ottawa to get a Canadian parliamentary resolution recognizing the "Srebrenica genocide." I wrote against such a foolish decision, but it ended up passing on the sly in September. In December, the "Institute" re-published a libelous attack against Major-General (ret.) Lewis MacKenzie, accusing him of raping Muslim women during the war in Bosnia. And just last week, they launched an effort to prevent Srdja Trifkovic from speaking at UBC in Vancouver (British Columbia). For more about that sordid affair, I recommend the essay by Ambassador James Bissett, over at the Lord Byron Foundation.

Today, I got word that TV1, a TV station in Bosnia, ran a "news report" about my alleged "genocide denial" right after the headline news on the crisis in Libya. They used my clips from RT interviews, and images of my articles, but their accusations against me were taken straight from Hoare and the SGB. That leaves no doubt in my mind who was behind this character assassination. (TV1 is a relatively new station; set up last year by "Sanela Diane Jenkins" of the Ganic affair fame.)

Now, if it were just another attempt to libel and slander me, I'd be perfectly happy to denounce it here and expose its authors as liars and scoundrels. America still legally guarantees freedom of speech, and we're on equal footing here. However, the attackers were merely using me to get at my family, which still lives in Bosnia. My mother is an official of the Social Democratic Party, and currently chairs the parliament of Canton Sarajevo. It is the SDP, and my mother, that are the real targets of this smearbund.

Let me repeat here: They went after my family.

Think about this for a second. Even if my mother and I share the same politics (which we do not), how would she be responsible in the slightest for what I think or do, having lived nearly half my life halfway across the world? What sort of Dark Age values motivate TV1, that they impugn my mother's politics because of what a grown son of hers thinks or does?

They went after my family.

They didn't go after me, on the (still, relatively) level and fair playing field of the USA, where free speech is still in the Constitution and there are still certain rules of conduct and debate. They ran a hit piece on me on a TV channel in Bosnia, without ever calling for comment, without offering me any recourse or opportunity for rebuttal. If they take issue with things I've said or done, they ought to take that up with me. Instead, they went after my family.

Particularly disgusting is the fact that this is part of an intra-Muslim political conflict, between the SDP (whose membership is mostly Muslim) and former governing Muslim parties, or those that aspire to govern but - unlike the SDP - never got enough of those pesky votes in those pesky democratic elections. Yet who is the target of the anti-SDP campaign? An ethnic Serb.

Well, my American readers, this is the kind of Bosnia your government created and has nurtured for the past 15 years. This is the kind of "freedom of speech" that exists there, the kind of "tolerance" and "multiethnicity" and "democracy." I hope you're proud of it.

As for the smearbund, I have a simple message:

You went after my family. I will end you.

http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2011/02/character-assassination-part-2.html

Monday, June 29, 2009

Character Assassination

I'm a firm believer in freedom of speech. But there's freedom of speech, and then there is calumny. A debate, however heated, is one thing - an anonymous, ad hominem screed, quite another.

Back in April I wrote a couple pieces about a surprise spike in propaganda appearing on an otherwise innocuous-looking website named Palluxo. For all its claims to be a news portal, it turned out that every single article in Palluxo's "International" and "Special Reports" sections was unrestrained Serbophobic propaganda. From pronouncements by Bosnia's top Islamic cleric about the "joint experience" of genocide with the Jews (even though it was Muslims who helped the Croat Ustasha exterminate the Bosnian Jewry in WW2) to the latest article titled "Albanian Kosovo Marks Another Victory Over Serbia". Well, at least they are straightforward, right?

Having eventually tracked down these uncredited pieces to the "Srebrenica Genocide Blog," the "Congress of North American Bosniaks" and professional Serbophobe Marko Attilla Hoare, I dismissed Palluxo as an attempt to smuggle crass propaganda as news, and paid them no mind since. That is, until someone sent me a link today to an article calling me a "disgraced Srebrenica genocide denier."

The entire piece is an ad hominem attack on yours truly. But it gets better. Apparently, I'm not to be trusted not only because I'm a Serb, but because I do "not have any PhD qualification in history, [have] never held an academic post, published his work in an academic journal, or even visited an archive."

This here leads me to believe the author of the invective in question is Hoare, since he routinely boasts about his academic background and links to respectable government institutions.

So I don't have a PhD. Many people who do have embraced the worst kind of lies about the Balkans, and some - like Hoare, for example - are peddling them enthusiastically. I happen to have a Bachelor's in history, an analytical mind, and a lot of experience in the region (and the Empire) that various hacks championing Official Truth could only dream of. I have even visited archives - but they must not count, because Hoare wasn't there to check?

The mystery author claims his "sources in Sarajevo" could not confirm my diplomatic and media connections. He should find better sources. Should I list the ambassadors, charges d'affaires, political officers and other officials I've met during the Bosnian War? Or the journalists who hired me to translate for them? I could, but I won't. Because unlike certain people, who draw their legitimacy and credibility from their names and people they know, I let my arguments speak for themselves. It's much easier to ignore the arguments and focus on the person making them, dismissing him or her because they don't belong to the ranks of those allowed to have an opinion.

The Palluxo piece doesn't attack just me. It goes after John Laughland, Germinal Civikov, and pretty much anyone who dares challenge the Official Truth as handed down by the Hague Inquisition and its willing executioners. Anonymous appeals to the authority of ICTY verdicts, and dismisses those who challenge them on purely ad hominem grounds. Oh, this guy is a Milosevic supporter. This one's "obscure." That one's a Marxist, did you know? And this Nebojsa character, why he's a Serb!

Ultimately, the worst Anonymous could come up with was that a "long time Jewish friend of ours described Nebojsa Malic as 'insensitive pig'."

Oh wow. Anonymous has a Jewish friend. And he called me insensitive! I am crushed! My life is over!

Or not. Honestly, I couldn't care less. Whoever wrote this garbage - and given the source of Palluxo's features, I've got a couple of decent guesses - deserves pity and contempt. Maybe not in that order. After all, they don't even dare sign their words with a fake name. By contrast, everything I've written over the past decade has my actual name on it. I don't even hide it on this blog, though I don't throw it into my readers' faces either.

In today's world, information is cheap. It's credibility that's expensive. And it takes a lot more to impugn my credibility than the anonymous rant of a character assassin.

Nice try, dirtbag.

Posted by Gray Falcon at 18:29

http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2009/06/character-assassination.html

Friday, March 19, 2010

Lies Liars Tell

Some time last year, the professional victim and proprietor of the "Srebrenica Genocide Blog" (no, I'm not going to link it) seems to have made me an object of his personal little jihad. Time and again, he's been Google-bombing me with claims I'm a "discredited genocide denier" and so on.

Following my latest post, he went on a comment spree (guess what I did with those), and then finally put up a piece denouncing me on the SGB. Normally I wouldn't pay this much heed, but the way he did it amused me to no end, and I thought I'd share it here. Namely, he said that I had sent in a comment to the SGB - which he deleted - and then offered a response allegedly proving me wrong (by quoting the ICTY, the old fallacy of appeal to false authority again).

Except I did no such thing. My alleged "comment" was copy-pasted from the actual essay, "Bleiburg in Potocari." It wasn't deleted. It didn't violate his comments policy. It did not exist. But SGB spun a whole yarn about it nonetheless. Kind of like the whole "Srebrenica genocide," actually.

Here's a pro tip: if you are trying to paint someone as a liar, it helps to not be one.

Posted by Gray Falcon at 14:09

http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2010/03/lies-liars-tell.html

Serbian Youth League post of the CTV news item at YouTube.

"SerbianYouthLeague - Feb 25, 2011 -

February 24, 2011 (SYL) - Serbian-American professor Dr Srdja Trifkovic was denied access into Canada after being accused of holding a senior position in the Government of Republika Srpska during the Bosnian war by the Vancouver airport immigration authorities. Srdja, who was a foreign affairs expert with links in the Bosnian Serb Government, never held any position in that Government, let alone a senior one. The fabricated reason for deportation was likely the result of lobbying by the extremist organization "The Institute for Research of Genocide in Canada", which is notorious for inventing stories, such as the disproven lie that Canadian General MacKenzie raped a Bosnian woman at a time when he wasn't even in Bosnia, as well as denying the Holocaust in Yugoslavia during World War II. Also, there are strong indications that higher factors in the Canadian government are involved in this scandalous and dark chapter in Canadian history, the investigation is under way."

http://www.rightsidenews.com/2011022612934/life-and-science/culture-wars/banned-from-canadistan.html

Banned From Canadistan

SATURDAY, 26 FEBRUARY 2011 17:31 SRDJA TRIFKOVIC

On Thursday, March 24, I was denied entry to Canada. After six hours’ detention and sporadic interrogation at Vancouver airport I was escorted to the next flight to Seattle. It turns out I am “inadmissible on grounds of violating human or international rights for being a proscribed senior official in the service of a government that, in the opinion of the minister, engages or has engaged in terrorism, systematic or gross human rights violations, or genocide, a war crime or a crime against humanity within the meaning of subsections 6 (3) to (5) of the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act.”

Why should the Canadian authorities suddenly decide to keep me out of the country now, and for transparently spurious reasons?

Well, because the Muslims told them so. The campaign started when a Bosnian-Muslim propaganda front, calling itself The Institute for Research of Genocide of Canada, demandedto have me “banned” from speaking at the University of British Columbia on February 24. The ensuing campaign soon escalated into demands to keep me out of Canada altogether. The authorities have now obliged.

As Ambassador James Bissett noted last week, what is outrageous is that, over the years, this “Institute” has indulged in the denial of a real genocide in the former Yugoslavia. It has also attempted to blacken the reputation of one of Canada’s most highly respected soldiers by posting (last December 26) “The Shocking Account by Raped Bosniak Women and Criminal Undertakings of Lt. General (Ret.) Lewis Mackenzie”:

During the war in Bosnia, the Muslim leadership in Sarajevo became furious when General Mackenzie—who was representing the UN—was not deceived (as many journalists were) by the blatant propaganda generated by the Muslim side and by his insistence at remaining impartial. In an attempt to have him replaced, the Muslims concocted false charges of rape and misconduct against him. These charges were so obviously fabricated they were summarily dismissed by responsible authorities. As the general was able to prove, he was not even in Bosnia when many of the alleged offences took place. Despite the facts, the “Genocide Institute” continues to slander the good name of General Mackenzie. Its web site contains a long list of so-called rape victims who relate in lurid detail how they were raped … by the Canadian officer. They even claim that during some of these rapes the general was “protected ‘– not by UN troops but by heavily armed “Chetniks.” The stories are so obviously fabricated that to those who know the General personally—as I do—can only wonder at the seriously psychotic nature of individuals who would repeat these lunatic charges.

General Mackenzie is a Canadian so he cannot be deemed “inadmissible,” but who knows what unpleasantness could await him upon arriving in another country with a powerful Muslim lobby. Extradition for trial in Sarajevo? A long and arduous legal battle to prevent such outcome?

Let it be noted that the “Institute for Research of Genocide of Canada” uses for itself the acronym “IRGC.” That acronym is more commonly associated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. While conceivably accidental, the coincidence is not altogether inapt. The Canadians will learn, in the fulness of time, the price of kowtowing to these people’s demands. They will become less free with each act of surrender, and the demands will have no end.

Comments

0# Controversy — Dzustin Vascric 2011-02-26 19:02

This article is the first I've heard of you, so I did a google search...like most topics, the first result was your wikipedia article - but after reading it, I came away more suspicious than before...it looked suspiciously nondescript for someone who "the Muslims" would (rightly or wrongly) protest. But, one trip to the discussion page revealed that there is indeed a lot more controversy than the article (in its current form) would reveal.

There it is mentioned that one of the items repeatedly removed is that you testified as an expert *for the defense* of a one or more people later convicted of war crimes.

Now, it would be idiotic to take as fact claims of such magnitude on the discussion page of a controversial wikipedia article, but they don't seem like the kind of thing that one would fabricate -- and neither are they contradicted by either the article or what you've said above.

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