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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the March 13, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Bosnia hoax: "War crime victims" are alive and well

By Gary Wilson

The evidence continues to mount: The charge of war crimes in the Balkans was used primarily to promote an imperialist political agenda.

The New York Times-which resorted to tabloid-style sensationalism to promote charges of war crimes by Serbs in Bosnia-now admits that its reports were based on lies fabricated by the U.S.-imposed Bosnian regime.

In a March 1 report, the Times wrote that two Bosnian Muslims whose "murder" was the basis for the most famous war-crimes trial are in fact alive and well. The Times did not mention its own role in whipping up a worldwide frenzy calling for "justice" for a murder that never happened.

Two Bosnian Serbs were condemned to death by the tribunal that convicted them of the 1992 "killing" of two Muslim brothers. The Muslim brothers, who were made homeless by the civil war, actually lived as refugees from 1993 to 1996.

The uncle of one of the convicted Serbs was an old friend of the Muslim brothers. Kasim Blekic told the Times that when he and his brother returned to the Sarajevo suburb of Vogosca, the uncle saw them. "He told me his nep hew had been sentenced to death for killing my brother and me," Blekic said. "They all looked at me as if I was a ghost."

Although there was no murder, the two Serbs remain in prison on death row.

The frame-up was exposed by the joint efforts of the Muslim brothers and their Serbian friends.

The war-crimes trials have served to justify the military intervention of the United States and European imperialist powers through NATO and the United Nations. Both NATO and UN forces played a role in framing the two Serbs.

For example, the two Muslim brothers were registered with UN monitors as refugees while the Serbs were being tried for murder. There could be no confusion over this. No mistaken identity could be involved, the two Muslim brothers charge. "We are the only Blekic family in Vogosca."

There have been brutality and mayhem brought on by the civil war and outside military intervention in the former Yugoslavia. But the charge of war crimes has been used to justify a U.S.-run military occupation of the Balkans.

No war-crimes trials have been held by the United States and European powers since World War II. Even such wars as the Vietnam War where war crimes were fully documented never resulted in a war-crimes tribunal that had the power to imprison or punish those accused.

The Balkans war-crimes trials are not being carried out by an international court of justice. It is a de-facto court set up by the U.S. government and the UN Security Council.

The judges are appointed by the U.S. government. It is completely staffed by U.S. government employees.

It was set up to only put on trial those accused by the U.S. government.

In a related development, the German magazine Novo has exposed the big-business-controlled media's "concentration camp" hoax that was also used to promote imperialist military intervention in the Balkans.

A notorious picture of an emaciated Bosnian Muslim supposedly caged behind Serb barbed wire was used to show the horrors of what was happening in Bosnia. In fact, the picture was staged.

The photographer-with the British television network ITN--was inside a barbed-wire cage. The "prisoners" were in fact refugees in a transition camp.

This was never a "concentration camp" and no one was ever held behind barbed wire.

When the British magazine LM97 printed an English translation of the Novo story exposing the hoax, ITN attempted to have the magazine suppressed.

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