feel free to use any of the details on it.
Dear Sir:
So you think some of the photos are fakes. Could those be the RAPE photos that have been circulating on the web over the weekend?
Do a google search, you will find that alas those photos ARE VERY REAL, even if they are from the ahem, wrong war?
As a ten year veteran of the Red Cross (no, not the American Red Cross, before you assume), I have a knack for remembering things that most people forget. They usually imply violations of the laws of war. Now I will tell you where those rape photos were taken. They were taken in Bosnia and those men are Serbians raping Bosnian women. You may remember that in fact testimony to the effect of rape being used as a weapon has been introduced in testimony before the War Crimes Tribunal for former Yugoslavia. If you do not, I suggest then you read the following account, from the testimony.
Oh and even raising the possibility that the whole sordid affair may turn to be false ... smacks of bad journalism. I know some of you are desperate because our boys and girls are truly incapable of doing this. I have a news flash for you... ANY of us is capable of the worst horrors if the conditions are right. This is not limited to "the other."
http://www.iwpr.net/archive/tri/tri_142_2_eng.txt Jelisic Trial: A Woman's Account Of The Horrors At Camp Luka
Tribunal Update 142: Last Week in The Hague (September 6-12, 1999)
At the beginning of his trial, in November 1998, the trial chamber heard a
summary of the conclusions of two Dutch psychiatrists who examined Goran
Jelisic. (See Tribunal Update No. 104).
They concluded that Jelisic did not suffer from any mental illnesses, but that
he has pronounced "deep personality disorders, with anti-social and narcissistic
tendencies." Despite this, they found him fit to stand trial.
Last week the court heard how this psychological state manifested itself in May
1992 in Luka camp in Brcko. Jelisic, prosecution witnesses pointed out, saw and
presented himself as "a man with a mission". That mission, as he stressed in
front of his victims and witnesses, was to "cleanse the Muslims and to create a
clean territory for the Serbian people."
Those Muslims who "accidentally survived... could only be slaves." He also said,
that in the morning, before "his first coffee," he had to kill 20-30 Muslims."
He would present himself as the 'Serbian Adolf'' or 'Adolf No.2', and say that
his 'German model' was 'Adolf No. 1'."
There is no doubt that Jelisic was "fulfilling" his mission by killing Muslims
and Croats detained in the Luka camp in Brcko in May 1992. Jelisic himself
admitted before the judges, the 12 killings cited in the indictment, and has
admitted many more in interviews with the investigators.
Prosecutor Terree Bowers said at the beginning of the trial that the exact
number of his victims will probably never be known, "but if we are to believe
even a small percentage of the totals Jelisic himself claimed... then his
victims certainly number well over a hundred."
According to the prosecutor, just one killing committed with the intent to
participate in the eradication of one racial, ethnic and religious group is
sufficient to sustain a charge of genocide. Jelisic's statements confirm that he
killed with genocidal intent, it was argued, so the prosecutor has largely
focused on those statements in the course of the trial so far.
This intent was, the prosecutor claims, also confirmed by the lists for
liquidation of Muslims and Croats, as seen by witnesses on Jelisic's office
desk. These lists, according to the prosecutor, were given to Jelisic by the
chief of the then Crisis Committee in Brcko, with an order to kill "as many as
possible".
Five new witnesses - survivors of detention at the Luka camp - appeared before
the court last week. The testimony by a former nurse from Brcko, the protected
witness K, was most dramatic. While reconstructing the horrors that took place
in the camp, she introduced a new element: rapes.
Her suffering began the first day she was brought to the camp, May 3, 1992, when
she was raped by Ranko Cesic, Jelisic's co-accused in the 'Brcko indictment'.
The rapes were repeated on several occasions during her one-month long
detention. She was, however, never raped by Jelisic. He used to say, the witness
K claims, that "Muslim women were dirty" and that he "was exterminating the men
so they would not multiply any longer."
This is how K described Jelisic's behaviour: "He constantly ran around as if he
were mad, he shouted horribly, behaved as if the whole world was his... In order
to show us his power, he ordered that one detainee be brought and then he was
beaten in front of us (other detained nurses), and we had to look at the floor.
We were torn inside hearing the man plead and beg them to stop, but they beat
him all until he fell on the floor, and then Jelisic ordered that he be taken
out and finished off."
Jelisic's "reign of terror" lasted until May 19, 1992, when a new higher ranking
officer of the JNA arrived at the camp, whom the detainees, including the
witness K, told what was happening at the camp. This is how K then described
Jelisic's reaction: "He was beside himself with fury, he shouted, jumped over
the fence and stormed into our room asking for one minute to finish with us. He
was foaming and shouted at us that we were snakes and whores, while the guards
were trying to pull him away."
This statement fits with the argument of the prosecutor's opening statement that
Jelisic was "so effective and notorious during his genocidal spree, that even
the Bosnian Serb authorities had to rein him in".
On the first day Jelisic did not listen to the testimony of the witness K
because he remained in the Detention Unit owing to stomach problems. On the
second day, K insisted that the accused be brought to the courtroom, since she
"had waited for seven years to look him in the eyes".
Jelisic was brought, but K did not have an opportunity to look him in the eyes.
He heard the largest part of her trail without raising his eyes from the bench
in front of him.
During the cross-examination, defence counsel Michael Greaves confronted the
witness K with her earlier statement in which she described the accused as a man
with blonde hair and blue eyes. Since Jelisic has brown hair and brown eyes, and
noting that the witness was under shock and stress at the camp, Greaves began to
maintain that the witness had wrongly identified Jelisic as the man responsible.
Greaves insisted on this point, sometimes rather aggressively, to the point
where Judge Claude Jorda had to warn him several times. But witness K was
adamant that the man in the dock was the man responsible. "I am prepared to
guarantee with my own life that that is true," she said.
When Judge Jorda asked her at the end of her testimony whether she had anything
to add, K said that she could never have imagined that there are such people
like Goran Jelisic. But she said that she "does not condemn him, since he has
condemned himself by what he has done".
The trial of Goran Jelisic continues.
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