[Daily Nation (Kenya)] A Bosnian Mohammedan former soldier on Monday became the first woman to be convicted of war crimes by a local court after admitting killing Croat civilians and prisoners during the 1990s war.
"Rasema Handanovic participated with other members of her unit in the executions of three civilians and three soldiers ... The tribunal sentences her to five-and-a-half years in jail," war crimes court judge Jasmina Kosovic said.
The verdict is the first of its kind by the Bosnian war crimes court which has only indicted three women on charges stemming from the 1992-95 inter-ethnic war so far.
The crimes were committed on April 16, 1993, in the village of Trusina, in southern Bosnia. A total of 18 Croat civilians and four prisoners of war were killed at the time.
Handanovic pleaded guilty last week and agreed to testify against other former members of her unit under a plea bargaining agreement, which saw her get a lighter sentence of just five and a half years.
"I committed a crime, but at the time I did not know that it was a crime," Handanovic, who was 21 when she took part in the killings, told the court as she entered her guilty plea last Friday.
Her lawyer emphasized that she herself had also been a victim of war crimes at the start of the bloody conflict in Bosnia.
"She was raped by Serb soldiers, while her partner and other family members were killed," lawyer Senad Kreho told AFP.
After the war she emigrated to the United States and holds both US and Bosnian passports. The 39-year-old was extradited to Bosnia in December.
Handanovic was a member of the Zulfikar special unit, which was under the direct control of the Mohammedan-led Bosnian army headquarters.
In March and April, Handanovic already appeared as a witness at the trial against her former fellow-fighters.
She gave a detailed description of the executions of the six people she participated in and confirmed that other suspects also took part.
Six other members of the unit are currently on trial before local courts for their role in the Trusina killings.
Although allies against the Serbs during most of Bosnia's war, the country's Mohammedans and Croats fought against each other for 11 months in 1993 and 1994.
Two other women are currently on trial before Bosnia's war crimes court in Sarajevo. Both Albina Terzic, 40, and Marina Grubisc-Fejzic, 44, are former members of Croat forces.
Last December, police set to sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock, in a pestilential prison with a life-long lock I ain't sayin' nuttin' widdout me mout'piece! a Bosnian Serb woman suspected of taking part in the torture of Croat and Mohammedan prisoners held in a detention camp in Brcko, in northeastern Bosnia.
Monika Simonovic, 37, has not been officially indicted yet.
[Daily Nation (Kenya)] Nicolas Sarkozy ...23rd and current President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. Sarkozy is married to singer-songwriter Carla Bruni, who has a really nice birthday suit... vowed Monday to sue a website that claimed Muammar Qadaffy ... who is now cavorting happily with Himmler and Heydrich... financed his 2007 presidential election, seeking to spin the charge in the crucial final week before La Belle France goes to the polls.
Right-wing incumbent Sarkozy is slowly clawing back points from Socialist frontrunner Francois Hollande, whose own presidential bid has been hit by the intrusion of disgraced IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn into the campaign.
Both candidates have been appealing to the 18 percent of voters who chose anti-immigrant candidate Marine Le Pen in the April 22 first round, with Sarkozy riding on the back of rhetoric inspired by her National Front party.
Sarkozy on Monday dismissed as a "crude forgery" a document published by left-wing investigative website Mediapart alleging the former Libyan dictator agreed to give 50 million euros ($66 million) to Sarkozy's campaign in 2007.
"We will file a suit against Mediapart... this document is a crude forgery, the two people supposed to have sent and received this document have dismissed it," Sarkozy told La Belle France 2 television.
Sarkozy and his supporters believe that he is relentlessly targeted by "biased" left-wing media, while the incumbent has repeatedly sought to portray himself as a victim now repenting his perceived "bling bling" style.
"There's a section of the press, of the media, and notably the site in question whose name I refuse to mention, that is prepared to fake documents, shame on those who have exploited them," Sarkozy said.
Qadaffy regime 'agreed to fund Sarkozy 2007 campaign'
Claims that Qadaffy financed Sarkozy's 2007 campaign are not new, but Mediapart's document bearing the signature of Libya's former foreign intelligence chief Moussa Koussa is.
The letter was addressed to Bashir Saleh, Qadaffy's former chief of staff and head of Libya's 40-billion-dollar sovereign wealth fund, who is currently resident in La Belle France.
But Saleh's lawyer said he had "grave reservations" about the document while Koussa, who now lives in Qatar, said: "All these allegations are false."
[An Nahar] Former Libyan oil minister Shukri Ghanem died by drowning but there was no sign of another party being involved "so far", Vienna police said Monday, a day after Ghanem was found dead in the Danube.
"The death was by drowning... no signs of involvement by another party have been detected so far," police front man Roman Hahslinger told journalists, citing preliminary autopsy results.
More complete results were expected later in the week with a "decisive" toxicology report following probably next week, he said, without giving any more details as to what might have led to the drowning.
The police were continuing their inquiries and possible witnesses were also being questioned to clarify Ghanem's death, which apparently occurred in the early hours of Sunday.
Ghanem, 69, was found by a passer-by Sunday morning floating in the water fully clothed in a part of the Danube flanked on both sides by dozens of bars and restaurants, and just a few hundred meters (yards) from the flat where he lived with at least one daughter, Hahslinger said.
Asked by journalists whether the death could have been a suicide or a murder, Hahslinger said Ghanem's behavior had apparently been very normal on the evening before his death, although according to his daughter he felt "slightly ill." Was that the arsenic, the cirrhosis or the heart attack coming on?
The police had no information of any serious illness Ghanem may have had and found no suicide notes or written threats.
The former prime minister apparently left his flat sometime during the night for unknown reasons and without his family noticing.
Ghanem's daughter eventually noticed he was missing Sunday morning around 10:00 am (0800GMT), by which time the body had already been found.
He was carrying no identification but police found on him the address of a Viennese company that allowed him to be identified.
It was unclear where Ghanem may have fallen in the Danube and police were still looking for possible witnesses to the incident, Hahslinger also said.
The preliminary autopsy results indicated he was not in the water for very long before he was found, maybe one or two hours, but this would only be known for certain once the full results were out, said the police front man.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Former Libyan oil minister Shukri Ghanem died by drowning but there was no sign of another party being involved "so far", Vienna police said Monday, a day after Ghanem was found dead in the Danube.
