Recently in Kosovo Category

Why does the Wall Street Journal publish terrorists?
by Julia Gorin

This year brought the Council of Europe’s report on the murder-for-organs scandal involving top echelons of the Kosovo Liberation Army, now wearing suits as Kosovo’s “legitimate” rulers. While top Albanian and Kosovo officials are being indicted for corruption, war crimes and deep mob ties, a Brooklyn man from Albania was arraigned on charges of providing material support to terrorists and planning to join a radical group in Pakistan -- just months after an Albanian Kosovar shot five American servicemen in Frankfurt, killing two. (Which hearkens back not only to last year’s “North Carolina Eight” that included two Kosovo Albanians and targeted a Marine base, but also to the 2007 Ft. Dix plot in which three Albanian-Americans wanted to “kill as many American soldiers as possible”.)

And so one is almost tempted to the fanciful hope that The Wall St. Journal might finally feel a tinge of reservation if not shame about unequivocally following the Foggy Bottom line on the Balkans, which unconditionally implements the maximal Albanian agenda in the Balkans.

Instead, the newspaper publishes the terrorists who won the Balkans, this time "Prime Minister" Hashim Thaci -- criminal alias “The Snake.” With no irony whatsoever, on August 29th The Journal treated us to “A Better Future for the Western Balkans,” by Thaci. This is despite his internationally long-known connection to drug- and organ-trafficking, his notoriety in Greater Albania for running every kind of racket, not to mention his intimidating witnesses in the organs affair and ordering untold murders. ( “Cadavers have never been an obstacle to Thaci’s career,” explained Bujar Bukoshi, of the late Ibrahim Rugova’s 1990s government-in-exile.)

Take it from a narco-terrorist prime minister now suppressing the press in “liberated” Kosovo on what constitutes “a better future.” And yet it’s the “rampant criminality” of Kosovo's Serb-populated north that Thaci wants to bring under his “rule of law” (the “rampant criminality” being a resistance to rule by the criminality of the rest of Kosovo). This is a gangster solidifying his turf.

North Mitrovica is the last part of Kosovo that we’re trying to submit to the thugocracy, and it’s also one of Kosovo's last multi-ethnic remnants, where a non-Albanian can leave his immediate vicinity without risking dismemberment. Ergo the Serbian “stubbornness” that our bureaucrats — and The Journal — regularly scold.

The 2008 Italian documentary “Infinite War” shows a Serbian monk serving liturgy surrounded by NATO tanks and troops. “In liberated Kosovo, this is the maximal possible freedom for Christians to profess their faith,” narrates journalist Riccardo Iacona, adding that 223,409 Serbs were cleansed after the 1999 war (the number has grown since).

It was done with the help of the never-disbanded KLA, which answers directly to high-level Kosovo politicians. “And this is how they finance themselves,” Iacona summarizes a classified UN report, “by trafficking of drugs and arms, and by extortion…They smuggle oil and practice destruction…Then, there is a list of the superiors of this organization, and the links between this military structure and politicians in PDK, Thaci’s party.”

Albanian journalist Bardulaj Ajeti was writing for the daily Bota Sot, investigating “the relations between the ex-KLA fighters and Prime Minister Hashim Thaci. He was shot in the head on June 7, 2005…[One Ajeti article] speaks about a shadow government, controlled by Thaci, giving names of those who comprise it. All of them are ex-KLA commanders. Then there is one incredible interview with Mr. Ymer Ymeri…whose brother was killed by the UCK (KLA)…[He says] the UCK erected dozens of prisons in Albania where Rugova’s men were being tortured and killed, and Thaci, the current prime minister, knew about it…”

Iacona asks Ymeri’s wife (Ymeri had fled to Germany after giving the interview), “Do all the opponents of Thaci’s UCK get killed?” She replies, “Yes, it’s like a mafia.”

According to a 2007 Institute for European Policy report, Kosovo "'is a Mafia society' based on 'capture of the state' by criminal elements...[The authors] quote a German intelligence service report of 'closest ties between leading political decision makers and the dominant criminal class' and name Ramush Haradinaj, Hashim Thaci and Xhavit Haliti as compromised leaders..."

Leading up to the war crimes trial of Haradinaj, Thaci’s predecessor and also a former KLA commander, witnesses started dropping dead, going missing, or dropping out to prevent either fate. In 2003 two Kosovo police officers who insisted on investigating the murder of witness Tahir Zemaj (found in a well with his father and cousin) were likewise killed and a third wounded.

The U.S. has systematically blocked international investigations and prosecutions of our favored mobsters and has tampered with evidence from their crime scenes, such as when officials from Camp Bondsteel removed bullets from the walls at the scene of a Haradinaj gunfight and then helicoptered him to Germany, denying UN investigators access to him. A British ex-soldier who described our Haradinaj as ‘a psychopath’ terrorizing his own men and locals into loyalty told the UK Sunday Observer in September 2000, “Someone would pass him some information and he would disappear for two hours. The end result would be several bodies in a ditch.” The charred remains of Suad Qorraj, “who had operated a satellite telephone for a rival KLA commander…were found in a nearby forest. The burial notice said he had been ‘killed by Serbs.’”

In 2001, detective Stu Kellock asked for a special task force on a bus bombing of Serbs visiting a cemetery (11 dead, 40 injured). Instead, “‘evidence from the scene was suppressed and destroyed,’” Kellock said in an interview which also quoted Washington Post: “‘NATO paved over the crater on the Nis highway within hours.’ Furthermore, NATO did not share intelligence with the UN police, phone logs of suspects’ calls were hidden in Monaco, where Kosovo’s main mobile operator is based, and the main suspect miraculously escaped from the most secure location in all of Kosovo — the American Camp Bondsteel.”

(Indeed, the European Policy study called the U.S. out for "'abetting the escape of criminals' in Kosovo as well as 'preventing European investigators from working.' This has made Americans 'vulnerable to blackmail.'")

The Italian documentary offers a post-script on the escaped suspect in question, Florim Ejupi. “For three years Florim remained at large. And then in 2004 he reappeared on this road that leads toward Pristina, wearing a Serbian uniform, in the company of three other Albanians. They wanted to commit an attack and ascribe it to the Serbs. In the end, they killed a police officer of the United Nations. Now Florim is in prison. He was sentenced to 40 years, but he never spoke. So we don’t know who the others were, and above all who gave him the orders to blow up the bus.”

Ejupi served just a year or two of that sentence when in March 2009, as its very first ruling, a EULEX (EU rule of law mission) appeals court released him. The only explanation offered was the Kosovo usual: “not enough evidence.”

Hashim Thaci, whom The Journal sees fit to print (as it did his equally ruthless predecessor and war crimes indictee Agim Ceku) is among Kosovo’s “elite that operates above the law,” as a February Foreign Policy article titled “Thug Life” summed up, adding:

Kosovo’s thugocrats owe their rise and continued impunity to the toleration or outright support of the international community — particularly the United States…In 1999, the U.S. endorsement of Thaci as hero was sealed with a kiss planted on his cheek by then Secretary of State Madeline Albright…In 2004, every American staffer at the U.S. Embassy was invited to attend Haradinaj’s wedding — and, despite his links to organized crime and impending indictment on war crimes, they went. Most recently, the night after the raid on [Transportation Minister Fatmir] Limaj’s home and offices, U.S. Ambassador to Kosovo Christopher Dell was seen laughing and chatting with the minister at a well-attended party in Pristina. [Limaj was also twice indicted but not yet convicted of "inhumane acts during the war.”]

It is difficult to see how democracy or respect [for] the rule of law could develop and flourish amid such overt displays of American support for a corrupt and criminal leadership…The war crimes taking place throughout the 1998-1999 conflict and in the immediate aftermath have never been fully investigated — in fact, in some cases they have been covered up…UNMIK (UN Mission in Kosovo) ran an incomplete investigation into the organ trafficking case brought to light by [Council of Europe rapporteur Dick] Marty in late 2010. The documents date from 2003 — when UNMIK was in full control of the internal war crimes investigations and prosecutions.

As the Italian journalist Iacona speaks with locals who won’t tell him or investigators anything they know about the “unsolved” murders whose perpetrators boast of their crimes, he realizes that “liberated” and “democratic” Kosovo is ruled by fear.

When Thaci writes about the still Serbian north as “the creation of a sort of state-within-a-state…evident trafficking of drugs, people and arms, and daily intimidation of both Albanians and Serbs by private armies who are the only ones benefiting from the absence of the rule of law,” the man is writing about how Kosovo itself was won. A classic case of projection.

He also has a bit of a Freudian slip when he refers to an internal issue “that once again pitted Serbs against Kosovars.” Clearly, by “Kosovars” he means Albanians, tacitly admitting not only that he -- a leader ostensibly representing all citizens -- does not consider Serbs Kosovars, but that the nationality the U.S. concocted to help wage the KLA’s war for independence is just another word for “Albanian.” It is also an admission of what Serbs and Albanians alike have been telling us: that Kosovo is just one leg of the plan to consolidate parts of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Greece into a Greater Albania.

Julia Gorin writes at Republican Riot.

Convicted of misunderstanding Islam

Betim Kaziu "became interested in the Koran and said he wanted to dedicate his life to God." Funny how becoming interested in the Qur'an led him to want to kill U.S. troops. How could he have misunderstood the book's beautiful message of peace?

"High school dropout convicted of trying to join terrorist group so he could kill U.S. troops," by John Marzulli for the New York Daily News, July 7 (thanks to all who sent this in):

A Brooklyn high school dropout was convicted Thursday of conspiring to join a foreign terrorist group so he could kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Betim Kaziu faces life in prison for the jihadi adventure that took him to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and finally Kosovo - where he was arrested in 2009. [...]

Kaziu, 23, wanted to become a member of the Taliban or the Somali-based Al Shabbab so he could die a Muslim martyr on a battlefield in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine or Africa.

"The defendant desired to wage jihad," Assistant U.S. Attorney Ali Kazemi said in his closing argument.

"He never intended to return to the United States. He hoped to die a martyr. "

Flush with cash from a court settlement for a playground accident, Kaziu traveled overseas with a buddy from Mill Basin who chickened out of the scheme and returned to Brooklyn to eventually became a government cooperator.

Defense lawyer Joshua Dratel argued that a trove of militant videos - including some from hate-spewing Osama bin Laden and Anwar Al-Awlaki - found on Kaziu's laptop computer don't make him a terrorist.

"Millions of people watch these videos and don't fight jihad," Dratel said.

Oh, that makes it all right, then.

Kaziu had made a so-called martyrdom video in Albania before he was arrested.

"I came here with the brothers to chill before I, God willing, depart," Kaziu said as he stood on a cliff above the sea.

Arid Uka is a Kosovar Albanian Muslim. For some odd and unexplained reason he was neither moderate nor brimming with gratitude towards Americans, as every learned analyst knows that every single Kosovar Albanian is. "Charges filed in slayings of U.S. airmen in Germany," from CNN, June 22 (thanks to Harry):

(CNN) -- A man accused of killing two United States Air Force servicemen outside an airport in Germany was charged on Tuesday in a formal complaint filed by the U.S. Department of Justice.

The suspect, Arid Uka, also known as "Abu Reyyan," was arrested in March after he allegedly opened fire on an Air Force bus outside Frankfurt International Airport on March 2.

Uka, 21, is accused of shooting and killing Nicholas Alden and Zachary Ryan Cuddeback of the U.S. Air Force and injuring two other servicemen. He is in German custody and will be brought to New York for trial, according to U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.

According to the complaint filed Tuesday, Uka shot Alden in the head before boarding the bus and shooting Cuddeback. He then continued to fire, injuring two other servicemen while shouting "God is great," the complaint said.

When his weapon jammed, Uka ran from the bus and was later arrested by German police, the complaint said.

According to German officials, Uka later confessed to the shooting and said he was motivated to carry out the attack after watching an Internet video he said showed U.S. soldiers raping Muslim women.

Uka is a Muslim from Kosovo who was influenced by radical Islamist websites, German authorities said....

It sure is great that the U.S. fought to "liberate" these people!

Islamic Tolerance Alert from modern, moderate, pro-American Kosovo: "Church in Smodreza turned into public toilet again," from emg.rs, June 11 (thanks to Hugo):

The Orthodox Christina [sic] temple in the village of Samodreza, near Vucitrn, in northern Kosmet, has been desecrated again.

The Kosmet Strategic Network NGO, which gathers 70 Serb organizations of that type, has communicated that few days ago the church was broken into and turned into a public toilet and waste dump.

The attacks on this church have been going on constantly even after the arrival of international forces in 1999, when the sanctity [sic] was burned from inside.

The Strategic Network reminds that in the previous period the Albanian community has, on several occasions, blocked the process of renovation of the church in Samodreza, while some 20 families that used to live in the village have been forcefully expelled.

Bogdanovic condemned desecration of church in Kosmet

Serbian Minister of Kosmet Goran Bogdanovic has severely condemned the desecration of the Orthodox church in the village of Samodreza in Kosmet, and asked for perpetrators to be found and punished immediately.

The desecration of the church prior to the great holiday of St. Vitus day represents a message to the Serbs, i.e. what is the attitude of the local Albanian community and the provincial government towards them, pointed Bogdanovic.

He has added that it has once more been shown that the Kosmet police is unable, and often unwilling, to protect the Serb churches, monasteries and cultural monuments....

Islamic supremacist persecution of Christians in Egypt, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Indonesia? No problem. A statue of Mother Theresa? Now that's going too far!

"Kosovo Muslims Resent New Mother Teresa Statue," by Petrit Collaku for Balkan Insight, May 26 (thanks to Twostellas):

Muslims in the western town of Peja are far from happy with the town council's decision to let a US-based Albanian society put up a statue to Mother Teresa.

A Muslim youth group in Peja, the Muslim Youth Forum, has asked the mayor to withdraw the decision, saying it does not represent the interests of the Muslim community and is an insult to a town that is 98 per cent Muslim.

The group said it had collected 2,000 signatures already on a petition opposing the statue, and if statues were to go up at all, they should be of heroes from the independence war with Serbia.

"This decision by the authorities has been lobbied for and financed by the Catholic Church's service service, Opus Dei," Noli Zhita told Balkan Insight.

He said that many Muslims of Peja felt insulted by the decision, which formed part of an ongoing plan to Christianise the public space in Kosovo.

The youth group said a further point was that Mother Teresa was neither a true Albanian, nor from Kosovo.

"She was of Vlach origin, born in Macedonia. She is not an Albanian," Zhita said.

The celebrated and now beatified Catholic missionary, famed for her work in the slums of India, had done nothing for Kosovo or Peja but had spent her life serving a foreign religious organisation, they said.

So far, the mayor of Peja is no mood to back down.

The municipality responded positively on March 11 to the request from a group known as the Council for Mother Teresa Statues, run by Catholic Albanians in New York, asking for space in town to put up the statue.

Mayor Ali Berisha said he had received the letter of protest from the Muslim youth group on Wednesday.

But, downplaying the relevance of Mother Teresa's religious identity, he said her work for the poor and dying transcended the whole issue.

“I think that there should not be a religious connotation to this question, but a humanitarian one alone,” Berisha told Balkan Insight.

One might have thought so, yes.

He said the request for the statue had been discussed several times in the local assembly and a majority of councillors had decided in favour.

He also said he had discussed the matter with head of Islamic Community in Peja who showed no sign of disagreement.

“We will go ahead with our plan,” Berisha said.

The Muslim community in Kosovo has felt on the backfoot lately. Although comprising the vast majority of the 2 million or so population, the small Catholic community has often been better at headline-grabbing initiatives in recent years.

A new Catholic cathedral, also named after Mother Teresa, was inaugurated in the centre of the capital, Pristina, last September, and is still under construction.

The Muslim community claimed the cathedral was far too large for the needs of such a small religious community, while adding that Muslim believers often could not get into mosques for prayers because they were too few and too small....

"The Muslim community claimed the cathedral was far too large for the needs of such a small religious community." That's interesting. The same thing could be said of the Ground Zero Mosque. Indeed, the leaders of the Ground Zero Mosque initiative have done their best to obscure the small size of their community, even going so far as to close some neighboring mosques in order to swell the numbers at the Ground Zero Mosque site.

But no one seems particularly interested in how or why. "Islamist shooter radicalized in Germany," from The Local, March 3 (thanks to C. Cantoni):

Arid Uka, the 21-year-old Kosovar who has admitted to killing two US airmen in Frankfurt, was a loner only recently turning to radical Islamist ideology, according to investigators.

German federal prosecutors continue to piece together a profile of the man responsible for what is increasingly believed to have been a terrorist attack on US military personnel at Frankfurt Airport on Thursday.

Born in Kosovo but raised in Frankfurt, Uka is being described by investigators as a loner who took to radical Islam over the course of just a few weeks.

Why? Might he have found the jihadists' claims to represent authentic Islam compelling? Does anyone know? Does anyone care? Or is that question fraught with implications that law enforcement and government authorities find too terrible to contemplate, and thus the question is never asked?

Armed with a Belgian Fabrique Nationale semi-automatic pistol and a large quantity of ammunition, the ethnic Albanian attacked a bus used to transport US military personnel outside the airport terminal. He shot dead one US airman in front of the bus before also killing the driver. Two other servicemen were seriously injured.

He then fled into the terminal building before being subdued and arrested. The man admitted early on during his interrogation that he wanted to kill US soldiers. Working at the airport’s international postal centre, Uka knew his way around the facility, and likely observed the US military bus service beforehand.

Though his ultimate motive for the attack remains unknown and there were no indications he was part of a terrorist cell, it appears he had recently started calling himself a jihadist named “Abu Reyyan” on the social networking website Facebook.

Under his Islamist handle he spread jihadist hymns on YouTube online, professed hatred of Jews and Shiite Muslims and took part in violent computer games.

Within just four or five weeks, Uka is thought to have established contact to radical Islamist preachers including the Moroccan Sheik Abdellatif and German Muslim extremist Pierre Vogel.

Though his family are devout Muslims, they are not considered to be Islamist radicals.

It would have been helpful if The Local had troubled to explain what exactly "Islamist radicals" believe that "devout Muslims" do not believe, and vice versa, but that crucial bit of information is absent from every media story that draws such a distinction.

Roland Desch, the head of the Verfassungsschutz domestic intelligence agency in the state of Hesse, said on Thursday it was still too early to call Arid U. a home-grown terrorist. But he admitted the incident was likely proof how quickly individuals can be radicalized.

Why, it can happen as quickly as it takes for a believer to read through the Qur'an!

“This is an attack that came from nowhere,” said Hessian Interior Minister Boris Rhein....

No. It came from somewhere. It just came at least in part from a source at which no one wants to look.

Yet another unsavory use for Islamic charities. "Albanians deposited Serb organ profits in Islamic charities, prosecutor," from Serbianna, December 17 (thanks to Julia Gorin, who has a great deal more information and background about the entire Kosovo organ trafficking story here):

Serbian war crimes prosecutor says that the Kosovo Albanian criminal boss, Hashim Thaci, used bank accounts designated as Islamic charity to deposit profits he earned by selling organs he extracted from captured Serbs....

Names of some of those accounts are Help For Kosovo, Medicare, Caravan, Al- Haramajin, Taibah International. etc.

Serbian prosecution says that the FBI has also uncovered these accounts after the 9/11 attacks but it is not specified why the FBI withheld the information about Thaci....

Um, maybe because the FBI was on his side -- since, after all, the U.S. has been on the side of the Balkan jihadists since the 1990s?

They'll get you in the end: "The Muslims then say, you can become Protestants, but in the end you have to come to us to get buried, because there is no other place to go." Islamic Tolerance Alert from that model of Islamic moderation, Kosovo: "Kosovo Protestants tell of hardship, survival," by Linda Karadaku for Southeast European Times, December 22 (thanks to Julia Gorin):

The small Protestant church in downtown Pristina has been around since 1985. Since then, its flock has grown to around 6,000 faithful, and 21 additional churches have been built around Kosovo.

But the denomination faces ongoing barriers in a country where the majority religion is Islam, says the community's spiritual leader, Pastor Arthur Krasniqi.

"In this part of the Balkans, among Albanians as well, religion has always played a role in, or [rather] has been abused by, politics for electoral or other purposes," he told SETimes.

Protestants, he said, have to deal with an atmosphere of unease. "They are visited at home, threatened there will be no place for them to be buried when they die, and their families are frequently isolated," he said.

Sometimes, the pressure takes the form of physical violence. In Prizren, Krasniqi says, Muslim extremists beat a Kosovo Protestant, Besim Ajeti, earlier this year. Six people were arrested but released for lack of evidence.

In what the Protestants say was another example of intimidation, the Islamic community in Gjakova decided to post a list of Protestant missionaries and leaders, together with their addresses, on a website.

The information was taken down after complaints to authorities.

According to Krasniqi, Protestants face legal obstacles when they seek to build churches and, in some cases, do not even have the right to bury their dead.

Instead, he said, they must ask Islamic imams to perform the burial and pay a fee to the Islamic Community for this service.

"The Muslims then say, you can become Protestants, but in the end you have to come to us to get buried, because there is no other place to go," he said.

The community has challenged what it says are onerous restrictions and is presenting its case before the Supreme Court. A particular concern, Krasniqi says, is the current law on religious freedom.

"The law clearly says religious communities aren't legal entities in Kosovo. That means we don't have the right to have properties or employ people."

Similarly, the group plans to challenge the education ministry's financing of an Islamic madrasa in the capital. Calling for clear separation of religion and state, they say the government should not be in the business of funding religious communities.

Be sure to check out the highly illuminating photos here.

Here is some background on the KLA. From "Al Qaeda's Balkan Links" by Marcia Christoff Kurop in the Wall Street Journal Europe, November 1, 2001:

[...] Islamist infiltration of the Kosovo Liberation Army advanced, meanwhile. Bin Laden is said to have visited Albania in 1996 and 1997, according to the murder-trial testimony of an Algerian-born French national, Claude Kader, himself an Afghanistan-trained mujahideen fronting at the Albanian-Arab Islamic Bank. He recruited some Albanians to fight with the KLA in Kosovo, according to the Paris-based Observatoire Geopolitique des Drogues.

Controversial Relationship

By early 1998 the U.S. had already entered into its controversial relationship with the KLA to help fight off Serbian oppression of that province. While in February the U.S. gave into KLA demands to remove it from the State Department's terrorism list, the gesture amounted to little. That summer the CIA and CIA-modernized Albanian intelligence (SHIK) were engaged in one of the largest seizures of Islamic Jihad cells operating in Kosovo.

Fearing terrorist reprisal from al Qaeda, the U.S. temporarily closed its embassy in Tirana and a trip to Albania by then Defense Secretary William Cohen was canceled out of fear of an assassination attempt. Meanwhile, Albanian separatism in Kosovo and Metohija was formally characterized as a "jihad" in October 1998 at an annual international Islamic conference in Pakistan.

Nonetheless, the 25,000 strong KLA continued to receive official NATO/U.S. arms and training support and, at the talks in Rambouillet, France, then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright shook hands with "freedom fighter" Hashim Thaci, a KLA leader. As this was taking place, Europol (the European Police Organization based in The Hague) was preparing a scathing report on the connection between the KLA and international drug gangs. Even Robert Gelbard, America's special envoy to Bosnia, officially described the KLA as Islamic terrorists.

Thaçi is now the Prime Minister of Kosovo. He is not only a jihadist, but is involved in organ trafficking and international organized crime. Here is more on this story. "Follow-up to Kosovo ORGANized Crime," by Julia Gorin at Republican Riot, December 20:

It looks like crying “Serbian Propaganda! ™” can fool people for only 12 years. Or so one hopes. This has yet to play out, and the rapporteur Dick Marty is handing the evidence-collection and prosecution over to the EU “justice” mission in Kosovo. So we know what that usually means for the welfare of evidence (or else for the welfare of those collecting it).

The follow-ups to the breaking Albanian organ-trafficking story have continued all week since the EU Council released its report on Tuesday.

Medicus clinic linked in Council of Europe report to alleged Kosovo Liberation Army organ harvesting atrocities

…EU prosecutor Jonathan Ratel told the court the organs had been illegally removed from victims and transplanted into wealthy recipients in the clinic, known as Medicus. Those who paid up to €90,000 (£76,400) for the black-market kidneys included patients from Canada, Germany, Poland and Israel, Ratel said.
…
The story would be shocking enough if it ended there. But what the court did not hear is that the Medicus clinic has been linked in a Council of Europe report to a wider network of Albanian organised criminals. They are said to have had close links to senior officials in Kosovo’s government, including the prime minister, Hashim Thaçi. Their supposed links to the underground organ market allegedly go back more than a decade when, in its most gruesome incarnation, the operation is said to have involved removing kidneys from murder victims.…

The claims initially surfaced two years ago, when the former chief war crimes prosecutor at The Hague, Carla Del Ponte, said she had been prevented from properly investigating alleged atrocities committed by the KLA. Marty’s report suggests the KLA held Serbs and other captives in secret detention centres in Albania for almost a year after the war ended…

…Kosovo’s guerrilla army formed “a formidable power base in the organised criminal enterprises” in Kosovo and Albania. A group known as Drenica, led by Thaçi, became the KLA’s dominant faction and senior KLA figures from the group hold senior positions in Kosovo’s government today.

In 1999, Thaçi was identified as the most dangerous of the KLA’s “criminal bosses” by intelligence reports, according to Marty…A KLA medical commander based in Albania, Shaip Muja remains a close confidante of Thaçi’s, and is currently a political adviser in the office of the prime minister, with responsibility for health. “We have uncovered numerous convergent indications of Muja’s central role [in] international networks, comprising human traffickers, brokers of illicit surgical procedures, and other perpetrators of organised crime,” the report states.

There is much, much more. Read it all.

A few years back, when I posted here at Jihad Watch some material from the intrepid Julia Gorin and others showing that the "moderate Muslims" of the Balkans were a bit more jihad-minded than most of the learned analysts had been saying, the calumnies came thick and fast. Internet libel artists, one of whom -- in a new low even for that clueless dhimmi publication -- now works for Commentary, began a guilt-by-association smear campaign, claiming that to point out the jihadist character of the Muslim forces in Bosnia and Kosovo was tantamount to supporting Milosevic, fascism, genocide, etc. That's like saying that to oppose Communism made one a Nazi, since the Nazis were anti-Communist (except during the years of the Hitler-Stalin Pact), but many were taken in -- and one of the chief charges by those screaming "Fascist sympathizer!" was that the claim that Kosovar jihadists trafficked in Serbian organs was a fabrication.

Well, it wasn't.

Travel has led me to be a bit late with this, but it is worth revisiting: "Richard Holbrooke Dies, and the Next Day his Legacy Comes to Life: Latest 'Serbian Myth' Proves True: Organ Extraction," by Julia Gorin at Republican Riot, December 15:

I’ll tell ya, Albanians give a whole new meaning to the term ORGANized crime.

It’s an interesting day for Balkans observers when one headline comes in reading “Kosovar Leader says People Lost a Friend in Holbrooke” and the one immediately following it reads “Kosovo PM is head of human organ and arms ring, Council of Europe reports” .

Of course, readers of this blog knew that all along.

Allow me to personally leak the U.S. diplomatic cables from yesterday and today, which I can hear from here: “F************************ck!”

(And not because our officials didn’t know about all this, but because it got out.)

In a follow-up to this story last month — which underscored the involvement of an individual who had been a senior-level official (it wouldn’t be an Albanian racket if it didn’t!) — the UK Guardian was the first to report yesterday:

Two-year inquiry accuses Albanian ‘mafia-like’ crime network of killing Serb prisoners for their kidneys

Kosovo’s prime minister is the head of a “mafia-like” Albanian group responsible for smuggling weapons, drugs and human organs through eastern Europe, according to a Council of Europe inquiry report on organised crime.

Hashim Thaçi is identified as “the boss” of a network that began operating criminal rackets in the run-up to the 1999 Kosovo war, and has held powerful sway over the country’s government since.

The report of the two-year inquiry, which cites FBI and other intelligence sources, has been obtained by the Guardian. It names Thaçi as having over the last decade exerted “violent control” over the heroin trade.

Figures from Thaçi’s inner circle are accused of secretly taking captives across the border into Albania after the war, where a few Serbs are said to have been murdered for their kidneys, which were sold on the black market. [Note: The “a few” clearly doesn’t include the couple hundred who were kidnapped and killed for organs during the war, though not all of the 300 captives at the time were Serbian.]

Legal proceedings began in a Pristina district court today into a case of alleged organ trafficking discovered by police in 2008. That case - in which organs are said to have been taken from impoverished victims at a clinic known as Medicus - is said by the report to be linked to Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) organ harvesting in 2000....

There is much more. Read it all.

Without the consent of the local Orthodox Church, whose fate now lies in the hands of local police. What could possibly go wrong under the new "protection" (read: "dhimmitude") arrangement? The article gives some indication to what has happened already, but chalks it up to strictly ethnic rivalries. And nothing else.

"Kosovo: Serb monasteries 'at risk' as NATO exits," from AdnKronos International, August 6 (thanks to Twostellas):

Belgrade, 6 Aug. (AKI) - Serbian government and police officials on Friday voiced concern over Kosovo police taking over the protection of medieval monasteries from NATO soldiers in Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia two years ago.

Serbian monasteries in Kosovo, some of which are listed by UNESCO as world cultural heritage, have been under the protection NATO contingent (KFOR) since 2004, when many were burned or damaged by ethnic Albanian demonstrators.

As NATO has been cutting its 10,000-strong presence in Kosovo, it started turning over the protection of monasteries to Kosovo police (KPS) on Thursday. Serbian minister for Kosovo, Goran Bogdanovic, said the decision would not help the security situation in the area.

"It will breed more uncertainty and mistrust among Kosovo Serbs," Bogdanovic was quoted as saying by Belgrade media. The move will only encourage Pristina "to keep making unilateral moves" in an attempt to present the situation in Kosovo in a better light before the world, he added.

About 100,000 Serbs remain in Kosovo, among some 1.7 million ethnic Albanians. More than 200,000 Serbs have fled Kosovo after NATO bombing pushed Serbian forces out of the province, which was put under United Nations control in 1999.

Belgrade and Kosovo Serbs oppose independence and Serbia is fighting a diplomatic battle to keep the region under its control.

Serbian Orthodox Church Kosovo bishop Teodosije told media the removal of KFOR soldiers from monasteries "will put in danger both the holy sites and the clergy". He regretted that the decision was made without the consent of the Church.

"It has never yielded any dividends, of course, but repeated failure only prompts the architects of the policy to redouble their efforts."

Indeed. And that goes also for Pakistan, and so many, many other venues.

"ICJ Ruling: Blow to Serbia, Boon to Tadić & Jeremić," by Srdja Trifkovic at the Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies, July 22 (thanks to George):

[...] Aiding and abetting Muslim designs in the Balkans, in the hope that this will earn some credit for the United States in the Islamic world, has been a major motive of American policy in the region since at least 1992. It has never yielded any dividends, of course, but repeated failure only prompts the architects of the policy to redouble their efforts.

It is virtually certain that Washington will be equally supportive of an independent Sanjak that would connect Kosovo with Bosnia, or of any putative Islamistan, from western Macedonia to southern Bulgaria to northern Caucasus. The late Tom Lantos must be smiling approvingly wherever he is now, having called, three years ago, on "Jihadists of all color and hue" to take note of "yet another example that the United States leads the way for the creation of a predominantly Muslim country in the very heart of Europe."

In the region, the ICJ verdict will encourage two distinct but interconnected trends: greater-Albanian aspirations against Macedonia, Montenegro, Greece, and rump-Serbia (Preševo), and pan-Islamic agitation for the completion of the Green Corridor - an Islamic belt anchored in Asia Minor and extending north-westward across the Balkans into the heart of Central Europe.

Beyond the Balkans, it will breed instability in each and every potential or actual separatist hotspot, from Galilee to Kashmir, from the Caucasus to Sinkiang....

But, but, but, I thought that in Kosovo they were all moderate Muslims who loved America! I read all about it in Commentary! "Kosovo: Judges Say No to U.S. Request for Extradition of Terrorism Suspect," from AP, July 17 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Three European judges serving in Kosovo turned down a United States request to extradite a Kosovo Albanian man wanted on terrorism charges, the European Union mission said Friday. The man, Bajram Asllani, 29, was arrested on June 17 after federal prosecutors in North Carolina accused him of providing material support to terrorism suspects and conspiring to kill and hurt people abroad. The mission said that there were no accords between the United States and Kosovo governing extradition of Kosovo's citizens, and that the United States request did not adequately demonstrate well-grounded suspicions that Mr. Asllani had committed the crimes for which he was charged.

But "he has to report to police twice a week." What could possibly go wrong? An update on this story. "Kosovo terror suspect wanted in U.S. released," by Fatos Bytyci for Reuters, June 18 (thanks to Sr. Soph):

A European Union judge in Kosovo has released from detention a Kosovo Albanian man wanted on U.S. terrorism charges but he must report to police twice a week, an EU mission spokeswoman said on Friday.

Bajram Asllani, 29, was arrested on Thursday by Kosovo and EU police after U.S. prosecutors in North Carolina accused him of providing material support to terrorism suspects and conspiring to kill and hurt people abroad.

"He has to report to police twice a week," Kristiina Herodes, a spokeswoman from the EU police and justice mission (EULEX) said. "The prosecutor will have a close look at the written decision by the judge and then will decide to appeal against the decision or not."

Two years after declaring independence, Kosovo's fragile peace is still maintained by some 10,000 NATO troops and 2,000 police, judges and prosecutors from the EU.

Despite the decision from the EU judge, Herodes said that now it is up to the Kosovo government whether Asllani will be extradited to the United States or not.

Asllani was accused of soliciting money from a group of men in North Carolina who were arrested last year for an alleged plot to attack a U.S. Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, according to U.S. prosecutors.

The seven men arrested in North Carolina were also charged with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and for conspiracy to murder, kidnap, maim and injure people overseas, including in Kosovo, Jordan and the Gaza Strip.

"I personally have asked to be extradited to the United States because I am not afraid of U.S. justice, I believe in justice because I am innocent," Asllani told local media in his town in Mitrovica after he was released.

He said that Americans are good people and he has nothing against them....

Actions speak louder than words.

The unnamed "Kosovo Albanian male" probably had a role in this North Carolina jihad plot, which is known to have included Kosovar Albanian Muslims -- which must come as a shock to the dhimmis, the willfully ignorant, the useful idiots and the collaborators at places like Commentary and elsewhere, who have staked so much on the false assumption that Albanian Muslims in Kosovo are all moderate, peace-loving supporters of the United States.

"Kosovo terror suspect arrested on U.S. warrant," from RFE/RL, June 17 (thanks to George):

PRIŠTINA -- The European Union mission in Kosovo says anti-terrorist police have arrested a terror suspect wanted for extradition to the United States.

The EULEX mission said in a statement today that a Kosovo Albanian male was detained in the Kosovska Mitrovica region....

The statement said the suspect, who was not identified, is charged by U.S. authorities with having supported a planned terrorist attack in North Carolina.

In "Ground Zero Mosque: Americans Get a Taste of Serbdom" at Republican Riot, June 13, Julia Gorin exposes some chickens that are coming home to roost in Kosovo, and that may soon be laying eggs at Ground Zero:

Last week I blogged about the radical Islam that, thanks to our interventions in the Balkans, has entrenched itself in Kosovo and is now proceeding according to plan. That is, targeting not the Christians whom we helped them target originally, but the ultimately intended victims: the area’s non-radicalized Muslims. I also mentioned the connection of this trend to the participation of Albanians on the Gaza Flotilla.

The very day that I posted these items, there was a new blog acknowledging the same problem — from none other than the Weekly Standard’s Stephen “Suleyman Ahmad al-Kosovi” Schwartz. Schwartz spent the 1990s making radicalization of the Balkans inevitable by shilling for the “national” interests of the nominal Muslims there — who surely would be immune to the radicals we were infesting the region with!

An excerpt:

From Kosovo to Gaza

BY Stephen Schwartz, June 9, 2010

Kosovo media have reported that an Islamist ideologue from that country, Fuad Ramiqi, was among the participants in the ill-fated attempt to break Israel's naval blockade at Gaza. Ramiqi was joined by three Albanian Muslims from Macedonia — Sami Emini, Jasmin Rexhepi, and Sead Asipi.

Fuad Ramiqi is the representative in Kosovo of the European Muslim Network, a fundamentalist organization…Ramiqi, a soldier in the Yugoslav army who joined the Bosnian army during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, runs his own Brotherhood franchise, the Muslim Forum of Kosovo (MFK), created in 2006.…

Late in May, local police rounded up five Wahhabis…in the environs of the Kosovo city of Prizren. The Islamist suspects included three Bosnian Muslims…and two Kosovars…According to a Bosnian Islamist web report, the police action was officially described as a response to an assault by the five Wahhabis on a Kosovo government employee who distributed the Bible to his neighbors during his off hours…Wahhabi attacks on individuals, including another Christian, have made headlines across Kosovo throughout the past two years.

Confrontations between Wahhabi intruders and local Muslims have been visible in all the Western Balkan countries, including Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Albania. The presence of three Macedonian Albanians at the scene of the Gaza bloodshed is unsurprising to observers of Islam in the Balkans, since Macedonian Muslims have succumbed almost totally to the influence of Arab money. The pattern of unwanted radical immigration into the Balkans continues. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty last month reported…that Wahhabis have disrupted Islamic religious life in the resort town of Ulcinj, on the Montenegrin coast near the northern border of Albania…Leaders of the official and moderate Islamic religious community in the town complained to local media as well as RFE/RL that Wahhabis had threatened and physically attacked local imams, and invaded administrative meetings…

Mustafa Canka, a Muslim journalist from Ulcinj, blamed Islamic officials for “institutional weakness, idleness and neglect, based on personal interests and selfishness.” He described the local Muslims as afflicted by “disorientation, inadequate response to contemporary problems, and ignorance.”…He said the radicals now have many supporters, but that their influence will not endure. He repeated his criticism of local Muslim religious functionaries, who he said were trained in the local form of Islam and did not recognize the danger when they “opened the door wide” to radical newcomers. […]

In response to this Jewish Muslim and patron saint of Balkans Islam, Jim Jatras questioned why radical Islam only becomes a problem when the local Muslims start suffering from it — but not while we’re helping to put the local non-Muslims under the rule of the Muslims? Indeed, what we were doing to Balkans Christians while furthering the Muslim causes in the region was never of any concern to the shameless al-Kosovi Schwartz.

Jatras added:

What’s amazing is that he can peddle this swill to dumb-ass Americanos who will read it, nod their heads about all this worrying “Islamism” (imported, mind you) without ever asking:

1. How come nobody worries about importing “Islamism”…among non-Muslims — just Muslims?

2. Might this be less of a problem if the West (mainly the US) had not placed Muslims in political power in Bosnia and Kosovo, at the expense of their Christian neighbors?

3. [Weren’t] people like Mr Schwartz, now gravely warning of the “Islamist” danger, enthusiastic advocates of Item 2, above?

Even more richly, in a Tuesday debate about the Ground Zero mosque on “Russia Today,” Stephen Schwartz was listed as a moderate Muslim who has publicly voiced his opposition to the mosque. Opponents of the Ground Zero mosque view it as a sort of flag marking an area of conquest.

Ah. So as usual, it’s good for the Serbs but not good for Americans.

Because if the subject is monuments to conquest — and on sacred ground — please consider the countless statues, monuments and street names dotting the landscape of the conquered Serbian holy land of Kosovo — tributes to the killers of Serb civilians and Albanian “collaborators” who merely sold groceries to Serbs or were married to them. These fallen KLA “heroes” and fathers of a Muslim Albanian Kosovo are memorialized everywhere, along with international politicians who helped make it happen (streets are named after Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Bob Dole, Eliot Engel, Wesley Clark, George W. Bush, Madeleine Albright, Tony Blair, and ex-ambassador/CIA operative William Walker). [...]

If the Ground Zero mosque goes ahead, Americans will get the slightest sense of what it feels like to be a Serb living on Serbian land, occupied by one’s tormentors. Some might call it poetic justice. I call it the logical conclusion of Western policies in the Balkans, where the demise of the Free World was sealed by our own hand. What we did to Balkans Christianity when we joined the jihad against it on five fronts was the beginning of the end for all of us.

Indeed. Read it all.

More members of the Tiny Minority of Extremists in moderate, tolerant, pro-American Kosovo?

Of course, their presence in the Balkans is commonly written off as the product of Wahhabi influence. And while Saudi money has been instrumental in exporting jihad ideology and funding the activity that results, this explanation is all too often also used to avoid acknowledging anything inherent in Islamic texts and traditions outside of Wahhabism that could motivate jihadist terrorism.

As for the use of charities, they are often a handy subterfuge for Western consumption due to the fact that in the Western tradition, charities are, by nature, non-combatant. This is not the case in the Islamic tradition; the lack of a distinction stems from Qur'an 9:60, which includes provisions for those who are "in the cause of Allah" (fi sabil Allah).

And it's not just cheeky infidels pulling that connection out of a hat. It can be seen worldwide in the frequent convergence of jihadist activity and "social services" by groups including Hamas, Hizballah, Jamaat ud-Dawa, and now this group, as well.

"Kosovo: Police arrest five radical Islamists," from AdnKronos International, May 22:

Pristina, 22 May (AKI) - Kosovo police have arrested five members of the fundamentalist Wahabi Islamic movement who are suspected of "criminal activities, "police spokesman Hazir Berisa said on Saturday. He did not specify if those arrested were suspected of recruiting terrorists or plotting attacks.

Berisa said the five suspects were associated with a humanitarian organisation called Iskrenost (Sincerity).

Nice.

The arrests took place late on Friday in the southwest city of Prizren in an operation in which 120 police officers were deployed. Berisa said police confiscated a large quantity of weapons during the operation, including automatic rifles, pistols, ammunition and uniforms.

The Wahabi movement originated in Saudi Arabia in the 17th century. Wahabi ideology preaches a 'pure' form of Islam. It was brought to the Balkans by Arab 'mujahadeen' fighters who fought on the side of local Muslims during Bosnia's 1992-1995 war.

Many former 'mujahadeen' remained in the region after the war indoctrinating local youths and even operating terrorist training camps, according to foreign intelligence sources.

Tensions between Wahabis and mainstream Muslims have been simmering in the Balkans for some years as the Wahabi ideology preaches religious intolerance towards other religious groups, including moderate Muslims.

Wahabis have sought to gain influence in Bosnia-Heregovina and also in Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo.

Since the Bosnian war, radical Islamists have often operated under the guise of humanitarian organisations from Islamic countries and several such charities have been banned in Bosnia.

Don't they know that all Muslims in Kosovo are moderate, peace-loving pro-American Religion of Peacers? And that only greasy Islamophobes think otherwise? Perhaps these brothers are Islamophobic Muslims...

Julia Gorin has a translation of a Swedish article on this: "Sweden: Suspects in Vilks attack are two brothers," from Republican Riot, May 19:

The 21 and 19 year old arrested on for the attempted arson attack against Lars Vilks house are brothers, reports Sydsvenskan. The 21 year old man was arrested in his mother's apartment in Landskrona. He was arrested early Saturday morning - suspected for attempted arson....

The 21 year old moved from Kosovo to Sweden with his family in the early 1990s. He's a religious Muslim and regularly visits the mosque. But his sister says she has difficulty accepting that her brother is now a suspect in the attack against Lars Vilks.

"He's extremely kind. Certainly he's religious, but that doesn't mean that he would do such a thing," she says....

Of course not!

Fascinating information from "Al Qaeda in the Balkans: Who in the Balkans wants to destroy America?," by Miroljub Jevtic, Ph.D. in Serbiana, with thanks to Fraser:

The news that a group of mujahadeens headed for Osama bin Laden's jihad were captured on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan would be nothing new, had the Pakistani authorities not announced that one of them was an Albanian citizen. Clearly, Clinton's cooperation with Balkan Islamists in the 1990s is only now turning like a boomerang against the US.

While the official affront is that Bosnian Muslims and Albanians are American allies in the war on terror, the US forces are tied up in Bosnia monitoring and chasing the jihadists who have made Bosnia and Albanian inhabited areas in the Balkans their domicile. Overtly then, Balkan Muslims are supporting the West, while covertly they may seek destruction of it.

The American strategists believed that by caving into territorial demands Balkan Muslims are making, the newly established Islamic entities will, because of the American influence and endorsement of it, be a model to the Islamic world, showing the right political path. The Christians of Bosnia, for example, are increasingly being centralized under Islamic authority; Christian Croats are spliced within Muslim federation and dominated by them while the Serbian entity is under tremendous political pressure and may disappear. Meanwhile, Bosnian Muslims want to offer Muslim Turks a dual citizenship because they consider these centuries old occupiers of Bosnia their liberators.

In Macedonia, likewise, the real masters of the situation are the Muslims Albanians who have placed the Christian Slavs there into virtual political ghettos.

Instead of showing themselves content with this, Balkan Muslims are not only setting out towards Islamizing their territories, but also towards actions aimed at America's destruction.

Tradition has it that the most extreme Islamists among Slavic Muslims in the Balkans are from the Raska district, i.e. from Tutin, Novi Pazar and Rozaj so one is to expect extremist Imams to come from this region. Yet, the Islamic extremism and open attacks on the US that is spreading among the Balkan Muslims is preached by an Imam, who is not a native of Novi Pazar, nor of Sarajevo, but is an ethnic Albanian from village of Orahovac in Kosovo. This Imam, Bugari, is a hodja of the White mosque in Vratnik, known as the most Muslim part of Sarajevo.

Ironically, the fiercest fighter of jihad has not turned up from the middle of Bosnia with its numerous Islamic top ranking religious schools, but from Albanian dominated Kosovo, busy teaching the Bosnians in the midst of Sarajevo what real Islam is.

Says Bugari: "The speech of the sword is more sincere than that of the letter. Its blade lies between seriousness and jest. The whiteness of the sword, not the blackness of the letters, for its back knows no rust of doubt'.

Continues he: "The status of Muslims cannot be improved by papers. This doesn't work. It is well known what can improve the status of Muslims worldwide. How was it improved at first? By taking Islam to all places. By convincing people that only God Allah exists."

Bugari concludes with a call to violence: "By purifying the heart of all idols, and then, if necessary, by the jihad. And jihad was necessary and will be necessary! Don't think that we can survive in any other way, except by these three things: faith, economics and responding to Allah when the time for jihad comes".

"[T]aking Islam to all places", including the US is the obligation of every Muslim, preaches Bugari.

This Albanian Muslim Imam is also an avid anti-Semite. Says Bugari: "Americans rule the world, and so do the Jews. With the Americans' help, they have again outsmarted the entire world, especially the economy. We consume American-Jewish products every day. We drink their 'Coca-Cola' and their 'Pepsi', we use their banks, buy their weapons, their 'Nikes' and various other products. Imagine how many 'cokes' a billion and a half Muslims drink every day. According to some data, 700 million 'Coca-Colas' every day, and you know well that 10 percent of every 'Coca-Cola' goes to Israel".

The Jew-hating Albanian Burguri attributes Islamic inability to legitimize their land conquests in the Balkans on the damnation Allah bestowed on Balkan Muslims because they relied on Americans. "We have indeed asked them for help during the war, and we have started to improve." says Burguri. "The Serbs are running away as they can, and we say: Come, Americans, and lend us a hand. This is why Allah is now punishing us."

Finally Burguri sides with Al-Qaeda by accusing America for holding 6 Algerian Bosnians in Guantanamo. "Now they will come and chase the Algerian group to Cuba, then they will chase Imad El-Mis'ri, then they will chase Fiusanin .."

Among those who were placed under surveillance by the authorities and
arrested in Bosnia because of their make-believe humanitarian work that was a cover-up for the terrorist logistic base, an ethnic Albanian was again identified. His name is Durguti. Once more we have someone coming from the town of Orahovac in Kosovo, where Bugari is also from. This may suggest that Orahovac Albanians in Kosovo may be the leading cadre of terrorist recruits, European by race, recruited by al-Qaeda in order to be trained and easily blend in the western societies to conduct terrorist killings....

Read it all.

The Serbian Orthodox Church is attempting to strike back against the dhimmi governments that abetted the jihad in Kosovo. From the BBC, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

The Serbian Orthodox Church has filed a lawsuit against the UK, France, Germany and Italy for allegedly failing to protect its churches in Kosovo.

Bishop Artemije of Raska and Prizren, who lodged the complaint, told Serbian media that the four nations had allowed ethnic Albanians to ransack churches.

The state-run Politika paper quotes him saying dozens of Orthodox churches and religious monuments had been destroyed.

Nato-led troops took control of mainly-Muslim Kosovo in June 1999.

The international community forced Serb troops and authorities out of the province amid escalating violence against separatist ethnic Albanian rebels.

Mob attacks

Clashes have continued between the majority Albanian population and the Serb minority since the Nato-led troops moved into Kosovo.

An outbreak of violence in March, in which Serb-owned homes and churches were attacked, left 19 people dead.

Bishop Artemije said the UK, France, Italy and Germany had failed to protect the Orthodox Church's property, followers and institutions.

Monasteries, medieval icons and frescos are among the religious sites to have been destroyed, he said, with 80 churches burned since 1999.