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Enver Hadzihasanovic (BBC)
"Prosecutors have opened their case against the two highest-ranking Bosnian Muslims to face trial at the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague." This from the Voice of America. "Army commanders Enver Hadzihasanovic and Amir Kubura are accused of allowing the killing of Bosnian Croat and Serb prisoners of war during the Bosnian conflict in the early 1990s. Prosecutors say they did not act to stop their subordinates from mistreating and murdering the prisoners, or plundering and destroying villages.
"The two officers, who surrendered to the tribunal two years ago, have pleaded not guilty.
"Prosecutor Ekkehard Withopf told the tribunal Tuesday that this trial shows members of all sides in the conflict committed war crimes. He said among the war crimes were ritual beheadings by 'Mujahedin,' or Muslim holy warriors, who came from Islamic countries to fight in the war and were under the commanders' leadership.
"Prosecutors say at least 200 Bosnian Croat and Serb civilians were killed in Muslim attacks on Croat forces in central Bosnia-Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995."
In Onward Muslim Soldiers I trace how Bosnia became a magnet for international jihadists in the 1990s, and explain how jihad ideology poisoned prospects for peace there, as it has in so many other places. Now it seems that some of the truth is coming to light.
Posted by Robert at December 2, 2003 1:32 PM
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Robert, a commenter by the name of Gordon has been slandering you for a while over at lgf. Do you mind stopping by and setting him straight once and for all so we can tell him to shut the hell up about you in future? It would be most helpful :-)
Here's a sampling of the kind of stuff he says every time your name is brought up:
"Now I don't need to read Spencer's book (but I'll read it anyway, there may be more outrages within it) to know that he is a dishonest apologist for Serb ethnic cleansing. By his rights the Bosnian Muslims should have laid down like little lambs for slaughter instead of getting help from whatever source they could, and unfortunately that included foreign jihadis. To say that these jihadis prolonged the conflict is absurd. The only way they prolonged the conflict was by bolstering Bosnian Muslim forces and preventing the entire population to be massacred or deported by the Bosnian Serbs."
From comment #18 in today's lgf thread that links to this story.
Dear Evariste,
Thank you for your kind note. Unfortunately there is no satisfying some people. It is always wise not to answer mean-spirited and dishonest words, but I actually did answer Gordon once at LGF after a friend pointed out to me his repeated attacks. It made no difference.
In the quote you give from his postings, he leaps from my pointing out the fact that jihadis traveled to Bosnia to fight and spread radical Muslim rhetoric there, which is an undisputable historical fact, to claiming that I am a "a dishonest apologist for Serb ethnic cleansing." Yet neither he nor anyone else will ever be able to produce a statement by me coming remotely close to justifying anything of the kind. I am trying to call attention to jihad terrorism because I believe that it is a chief cause of conflict, and an aggravator of existing conflicts, around the world. That doesn't mean that I think no one else does anything wrong. I have never even written about Milosevic, much less apologized for him.
Perhaps "Gordon" is so ideologically blinkered that he cannot see that to point out wrongdoing by one side in ANY conflict is not to absolve the other side of all blame. Or perhaps he is simply as dishonest as he charges me with being.
In either case, it isn't worth my responding. You are welcome to paste this into the thread at LGF, but I am staying out of it!
Thanks again and best regards. RS
Posted by: Robert Spencer at December 2, 2003 6:19 PMThanks, Robert-I will.
Posted by: evariste at December 2, 2003 6:39 PMWell, I'm sure you read the thread but in case you didn't it's only polite to let you know. His response was to admit he was wrong (!). Of course he could not avoid claiming that you were backtracking-as if you had said anything that required you to backtrack.
That's as close to a mea culpa as Gordon gets, so I'll take it. I've put a link to his comment in my favorites; if he ever starts saying this kind of thing about you again when I'm around, as is his wont, I will be linking to it and refuting him.
Robert,
I have read in some places that at the begining of conflict in Bosnia some high Bosnian official had gone on radio or teevee calling for the establishment of a Muslim [only] Republic. Often the man is characterized as the president of Bosnia. However, I've never seen good footnoting of this claim (which I've seen multiple places).
Have you come accross anything like this?
In his "Islamic Declaration" of 1970 (long before he was Bosnian President), Aliza Izetbegovic advocated a "a struggle [jihad] for creating a great Islamic federation from Morocco to Indonesia, from the tropical Africa to the Central Asia" — ruled by Islamic law. That's not quite a Muslim-only republic, but it led to lingering suspicion of his bona fides as a "moderate." I go into the Declaration in depth in "Onward Muslim Soldiers."
Posted by: Robert Spencer at December 2, 2003 10:20 PM

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