Since Kosovo “independence” two years ago, I’ve been meaning to post the most damning parts of a good article that appeared shortly after in Der Spiegel magazine. Below is an excerpt, with emphasis added.

Confusion and Corruption in Kosovo by Walter Mayr (April 24, 2008)

Two months after Kosovo declared independence, thousands of foreign experts have descended on its capital to shape Europe’s youngest republic into a constitutional state — although its status is still disputed. Soon the EU will take over, and its team can expect a country ruled by corruption and organized crime.
….
Under UN Resolution 1244, adopted in 1999…makes no mention of Kosovo’s right to secede from Serbia.
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The UN has spent an estimated €33 billion ($53 billion) for its mission in Kosovo since 1999, when a NATO bombing campaign drove out former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic’s murderous [sic] troops. This corresponds to €1,750 ($2,800) per capita, annually — or 160 times the average yearly per capita aid for all developing countries combined.

Nevertheless, UNMIK isn’t wanted by everyone here. The streets to UNMIK headquarters in Pristina have been known to be blocked by protest banners reading: “No access. Criminal zone.” Stickers are affixed to some traffic lights in the city, displaying “No to EUMIK” when the lights are red and “Independence” when they turn green. At the Strip Depot café, a politician and philosopher called Shkelzen Maliqi, surrounded by disciples lounging on couches, jokes: “Kosovo is a bastard country. You fathered it, and now it’s your job to care for it.”

Officially, close to half of Kosovo’s residents live on less than €3 ($4.80) a day. Kosovo’s per capita gross national product is lower than that of North Korea or Papua New Guinea. It has one of the worst balances of trade worldwide and Europe’s highest fertility rate. Youth unemployment hovers at 75 percent.
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Kosovo analysts have one thing in common: They paint a picture of a clan-based society in which a handful of criminal leaders controls the population — and are tolerated by bureaucrats from Europe and the rest of the world, who have come here under the guise of enlightening the Kosovars.

The international community and its representatives in Kosovo bear a significant share of responsibility for the alarming proliferation of Mafia-like structures in Kosovo. As a result of their open support for leading political and criminal figures, they have harmed the credibility of international institutions in numerous ways. (From a study by the Institute for European Politics in Berlin, completed for the German military, the Bundeswehr, in 2007)

[Former] UN special envoy [Joachim] Rücker wants nothing to do with “leading political and criminal figures,” at least not as long as they’ve been convicted by a court of law. But not one of the former heroes of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerilla force — who liberated Kosovo in their battle with Serbian troops — has so far been sentenced. Now they control Kosovo’s politics and economy.

Ramush Haradinaj is a former KLA commander who later became prime minister of UN-administered Kosovo. His indictment in The Hague consisted of 37 charges, including murder, torture, rape and the expulsion of Serbs, Albanians and gypsies in the weeks following the end of the war in 1999. Carla Del Ponte, former chief prosecutor of the UN War Crimes Tribunal, called him a “gangster in uniform.” He returned to Kosovo this spring, after his acquittal on April 3.

Haradinaj received a hero’s welcome, complete with pistol shots and motorcades through a sea of Albanian flags. But there was also an announcement from UNMIK referring to reservations from The Hague: “The court was under the strong impression that witnesses in this trial did not feel safe.”

Steven Schook, Rücker’s American deputy at UNMIK’s fortress-like headquarters in Pristina, was already out of office by then…Schook’s contract was officially “not extended” after the UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) investigated his administration and looked into (unproven) reports that the American had revealed the whereabouts of a man who had testified against Haradinaj. The man was living under a UN witness protection program.

Even before that, though, Schook’s boss at UNMIK — Rücker — had given Haradinaj an exceptional private audience before his departure to a prison cell in The Hague. Rücker still insists this treatment was justified for a political alpha dog. “It’s a completely normal order of business for a former prime minister and party chairman to pay me a visit before embarking on a longer journey.”

As a result of his suspended sentence, Haradinaj’s “longer journey” ended up being shorter than expected. During the trial he was even permitted to run as a candidate in the elections for the Kosovar parliament — with UNMIK’s blessing. Because of Haradinaj’s background, this attracted attention far beyond the borders of his native region.

The family clan structure in the Decani region from which Haradinaj derives his power is involved in a wide range of criminal, political and military activities that greatly influence the security situation throughout Kosovo. The group consists of about 100 members, and deals in the drug and weapons smuggling business, as well as in the illegal trade in dutiable goods. (From a 2005 report by the Bundesnachrichtendienst, Germany’s foreign intelligence agency)

These charges weren’t brought up in The Hague. But now that Haradinaj, dressed in a suit and tie, has returned to the political arena, he can call for new elections and consider himself officially confirmed as the guiding figure of an independent Kosovo. The demand for politicians with an untarnished name has grown considerably. Yet according to a study completed last year, “mafia boss” is the most commonly cited dream profession among children in and around Pristina.

It is assumed that a corporate structure of organized crime and corruption is behind every political party in Kosovo. (The UN’s Directorate of Organized Crime) The UN special investigators for organized crime work in a dilapidated collection of trailers on the edge of Kosovo Field (Kosovo Polje), the historic site of the 1389 Battle of Kosovo between Serbs and the Ottoman Empire. Rain echoes on the corrugated metal roofs of the trailers while the officials inside drink thin coffee. Their weary faces reflect doubt in the purpose of their assignment.

“We are fighting with wooden swords against an extremely well-armed opponent,” says one of the investigators, who prefers to remain anonymous. “In 2005 and 2006, when the first locals were admitted into the Kosovo police, we suddenly found not a single gram of heroin. Our undercover investigators and informants disappeared. We know literally nothing since then.” [What was that — again– about Camp Bondsteel fearing infiltration from Serbs?]

According to law enforcement agencies, Kosovo is the most important interim destination for opiates and heroin coming from Afghanistan. It is believed that up to four or five tons of heroin are brought across Kosovo’s borders every month. The drug then reaches the EU countries through Albanian distribution rings. (Rastislav Báchora, Notes from Southeastern Europe, 2008)

The central Balkans’ drug smuggling route, under observation of police worldwide since 1999, runs through Kosovo. According to Europol, ethnic Albanian organized crime groups now control 80 percent of heroin smuggling in some northern European countries, and 40 percent in Western Europe. Officials at UNMIK in Pristina are familiar with the reports, as well as the warnings of a “further aggravation of the security situation” — now that the tiny republic’s independence facilitates access to government business for the ruling clans.
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[Ethem Ceku, CEO of the electricity monopoly and cousin of former Prime Minister Agim Ceku] and his lot, together with UNMIK leaders, form “a sort of Cosa Nostra for Kosovo,” says Avni Zogiani, who heads the anti-corruption NGO called ÇOHU! (”Wake Up!”), despite risks to life and limb. He has received threats because he prepares dossiers on the sins of members of parliament, and because he, to the dissatisfaction of Western ambassadors of democracy, utters sentences like: “So far, UNMIK has worked primarily with criminals and made deals with the devil, merely for the sake of stability in the country.”
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In early April, Zogiani’s organization filed a complaint with the special prosecutor in Pristina alleging favoritism within Kosovo’s privatization agency. The accused is 39-year-old Hashim Thaçi, who, as one of the KLA commanders in the guerilla war against the Serbian army, was known by his combat name, “Snake.” He is now Kosovo’s prime minister.

Will his past matter? German author Jürgen Roth cites a 2005 intelligence study (from the Bundesnachrichtendienst) which asserts that as far back as 1999, at the time of the Serb-Albanian peace negotiations, Thaçi controlled “a criminal network active throughout Kosovo.” According to the report, he is also suspected of having hired a “professional killer.”
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A multiethnic Kosovo does not exist, except in the written pronouncements of the international community. (From a study by the International Commission on the Balkans)
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Experts from the Institute for European Politics consider the dreams of a multiethnic Kosovo a “grotesque denial of reality in the international community,” triggered by a “politically mandated pressure to succeed.” It is not difficult to reconstruct the source of this pressure.

Washington’s influence has been decisive, from the NATO attack on Serbian targets in 1999 to its leadership role in the peace negotiations in Rambouillet, France, and the road map for Kosovo’s declaration of independence. “The Spaniards didn’t want a decision before March 2008, because of their upcoming elections, but the Americans wanted February,” says a UNMIK employee. “So February 17 it was.”
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The Americans have reaped the rewards of their commitment to Kosovo: the Camp Bondsteel military base, arms deliveries for the future Kosovo army and a loyal community of fans among the Albanian majority.

On the very date that, 10 years earlier, we waged war on their behalf, a news item was published about how nicely our Albanian clients are thriving wherever they are. This stirs such naches (Yiddish for familial pride):

London Mafia Controlled by Albanians with Bulgaria Ties
Posted March 24, 2009 by The Boss

The Albanian mafia that runs the largest criminal gangs in London has ties to the Bulgarian mafia, according to The London Daily News.

In a report Monday the London newspaper revealed that the Drenica group whose main profit is drugs, weapons, stolen automobiles, white slavery, cigarettes and alcohol has links with the Albanian, Macedonian, Bulgarian and Czech mafias.

In an under cover investigation into criminal gangs operating in north London Albanians who fought in the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) during the bloody Balkans conflict against Serbia, now have now established themselves as formidable figures in the London’s underworld.

One leading Albanian gangster who spoke to the London Daily News said: “We can use guns, we control the prostitutes in Soho and we are investing in London heavily. We fear no one and the law cannot do anything to stop us.”

STOP them? Who’s trying to stop them? Do like America does: If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!

The newspaper discovered that to have someone “taken out” according to the unwritten laws in London’s criminal underworld, the going rate is around GBP 5 000 with Albanian’s using either guns or knives to eliminate the target.

German company accused of drug smuggling in Afghanistan

Allegations date back to Kosovo war

Ecolog is employed by ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] to handle laundry services at various locations in Kabul as well as garbage disposal at the military airport and ISAF headquarters in the Afghan capital. The company had been in charge of fuel deliveries to NATO troops in the past.

According to NDR [North German Broadcasting], initial allegations against Ecolog and the Macedonian-Albanian family behind the company date back to the war in Kosovo. Then NATO-led KFOR troops had already suggested there may have been links between the Destani family and organized crime.

NDR quoted a current confidential KFOR report as saying that “the Destani family from Tetovo controls crime and smuggling activities at the Kosovar-Macedonian border.”

So it didn’t matter that NATO knew back in ‘99 what these people were. We took their side in the war and therefore continued to have all kinds of collaborative and working relationships with whatever it is that they are, compromising ourselves in the process. What was that again about Camp Bondsteel’s fear of Serbian infiltration?

And people are surprised that U.S. troops in Macedonia protect the KLA’s heroin factories from international investigation.

Meanwhile, isn’t there something ironic about an Albanian company cleaning up trash?

In December I blogged about the contaminated camps in Kosovo, to which the Roma population was displaced in 1999. I noted that the writer of the UK Sun piece about it used the passive tense, not assigning a culprit to the “ethnic cleansing” in June, 1999 that forced the Roma from their homes, for example, in Kosovska Mitrovica. So readers naturally would assume it was the Serbs who cleansed the Roma and are responsible for their current predicament. At the time, I merely stated — based on numerous sources I’ve accumulated over the years — that the Roma were cleansed by Albanians, but a mainstream foreign source just this month said it outright. A Feb. 16 item in B92 about the halting by the European Council Human Rights Commissioner of forcible Roma returns to Kosovo closed with the following paragraphs:

In a report published last summer, Human Rights Watch said that the Roma district in the northern city of Kosovska Mitrovica was attacked by ethnic Albanians in June 1999.

“By June 24, the district had been looted and burned to the ground, and its 8,000 inhabitants had fled. Many were resettled by the UN in camps in a heavily contaminated area located near a defunct lead mine. The move was originally intended to be temporary, yet about 670 Roma still live in camps near the site, with damaging consequences for their health,” said the report.

Note that June, 1999 was already after the Albanians won their war. So why did the gypsies, of all people, still need to be cleansed? What was the real goal of that war?

On Jan. 23rd an article written by Dan Diker, a senior foreign policy analyst at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, appeared in The Jerusalem Post. It was “based on the Jerusalem Viewpoints that was published at the Institute for Contemporary Affairs at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.” The piece was titled “Is Abbas Ignoring Israel and Eyeing Kosovo?” I wrote a letter to the editor at the Jerusalem Post, but probably too late, as it had been almost two weeks since the article ran. So here is what my letter said:

Dear Editor:

It’s a shame that in reaching for distinctions between the Israel and Kosovo cases Dan Diker writes that “there is no legal or historical comparison,” adding that a Palestinian unilateral declaration of independence would “violate internationally sanctioned agreements” between the two sides. As if UN Resolution 1244 reaffirming Serbian sovereignty over its Jerusalem (Kosovo) wasn’t violated by the Kosovo secession — a resolution that Kosovo-Albanians and their U.S. benefactors would dearly like everyone to forget indeed.

The example of Res. 1244 is in addition to the numerous 1998-99 internationally-mediated agreements that Serbia abided by while the Kosovo Liberation Army, now the “legitimate government” of Kosovo, reinforced its positions and proceeded with the violence, now with an upper hand gained by Serbian withdrawals.

Mr. Diker also writes that “mindful of Serbia’s indicted leaders Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic who had slaughtered thousands,” the Palestinians are delegitimizing Israel “as a lever to criminalize and isolate it in the international community.”

Precisely what the Bosnian-Muslims, Albanians, and Croatian Nazi-nostalgists successfully did to Serbia. Lamentably, Mr. Diker appears entirely credulous of the Muslim-originated Western narrative of Karadzic and Milosevic as butchers. In worrying about the petitions seeking the arrest of senior Israeli officials, Mr. Diker never stops to consider that perhaps Milosevic and Karadzic were similarly victims of propaganda that made its way directly from the Bosnian and Croatian Ministries of Information into our newspapers. Which allowed a replay in 1999 Kosovo, as the late Wall St. Journal reporter Daniel Pearl uncovered by the end of that year.

When it comes to the countless manufactured “Serbian crimes” — the reality behind which pales in comparison to the never-printed Albanian, Bosnian and Croatian crimes against Serbs — if Jews had maintained the healthy dose of skepticism they ask the world to maintain in hearing about the real and imagined “Israeli crimes against Palestinians,” Israel would not be in as dire a position as it finds itself today. A position from which otherwise vigilant people like Mr. Diker now have to work doubly hard to dig us out of.

Good relations between Serbia, US (Government of Serbia via Balkans.com Business News)

Belgrade, 18 Feb 2010 – Serbian Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic met today with US senators George Voinovich and Jeanne Shaheen and agreed with them that Serbia and the United States have developed good bilateral relations after US Vice President Joseph Biden’s successful visit to Serbia. […]

Actually, Serbia and the U.S. can’t have good relations until a high-level Serbian official declares that Joe Biden and his family all “should be placed into Nazi-style concentration camps.” Then, there can be good relations.

Since I’ve been keeping an informal log of evidence that Serbia remains open to friendship with the U.S. even as we keep kicking her, I’ll just link to a March 1999 NY Times piece titled “On Killing Serbs” by A.M. Rosenthal, where he wrote: “[I]f the air bombardment goes on, it will occur to [Americans] that down there on the ground getting killed are people called Serbs who never raised a finger against us, were once our allies and long to be allies again.”

Well, that never did occur to Americans, but the Serbs did — and all too much still do — long to be our allies.

Thanks to Misko for sending this. As we have seen before, Albanians know that it’s Albanians they have to fear. And yet, we’re coercing Serbs to live under Albanian rule.

MUP: Attack in south was terrorism
15 February 2010 | 09:20 -> 20:06 | Source: B92, Beta

BELGRADE, BUJANOVAC — A member of a multi-ethnic police unit in Bujanovac, southern Serbia, was seriously injured on Sunday in an explosion.

Reports said that his wife, and two young women who were passing by, sustained minor wounds in the incident. All four are ethnic Albanians.

The bomb was planted under a Serbian police (MUP) vehicle, while the officer was identified as Blerim Mustafa, 39.

Interior Minister Ivica Dačić confirmed the incident and said that Mustafa has a fractured leg and ribs, while his wife, and the passers-by, were not seriously hurt.

The car exploded several hundred meters away from the municipal building in this town, in an ethnic Albanian neighborhood. “There are indications that this was a terrorist attack,” said Dačić.

The reason for this, according to the minister, is because the victims were “not only MUP members but also regular citizens”.

Mustafa was transported to Belgrade for treatment today, where Emergency Center Director Vladimir Đukić said that his condition was serious, and that he had suffered injuries to both his legs, ribcage, and head.

Dačić was there as the officer was brought to Belgrade, and told reporters that MUP will do all they can to make sure that this terrorist act does not further jeopardize the political stability and the life of all communities that live in the southern area.

“I can assure you that we will not allow for the crossing over of some terrorist groups from the territory of the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija, and from parts of Macedonia, into southern Serbia, in order to engage in such acts of terrorism,” said the minister.

Dačić also revealed that the investigation of the scene so far showed that the explosives were not planted “professionally”, and that otherwise the blast could have killed the officer and all those close to the site.

Police Director Milorad Veljović was in Bujanovac today where he said that the attack, staged ahead of Statehood Day celebrations, was a terrorist message to the state, and that the state would “respond adequately”.
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Dačić said that the investigation would reveal the attackers’ motives, but that he believed it was organized by Albanians who were against the multi-ethnic police.

The Mustafa family was twice before the target of terrorist attacks: first in 2000, when Blerim’s uncle Cemal was killed, and then in 2005, when his brother Besnik was wounded.

The volatile southern region, known informally as the Preševo valley, is home to the largest ethnic Albanian community in Serbia outside of Kosovo.

After the 1999 war in the province, the conflict there escalated, but was resolved through international mediation in 2001.

More recently, a police car was blown up in front of the Bujanovac police station in the summer of 2008, while in Septamber 2009, police found a large cache of weapons buried in a fuel tank in the municipality of Končulj.

MUP’s elite Gendarmerie (Žandarmerija) force, which patrols the area, also came under attack last year, while another explosion in front of a residential building was recorded a short while later.

…when a much more questionable “genocide” that Bosnians supposedly witnessed/experienced/heard about seems to be causing Bosnians to engage in all kinds of mischief in their new countries. Here’s the latest would-be satire, if satire could be as over-the-top as this:

Attorney: Genocide haunts Bosnian mom who choked baby

By ROCCO LaDUCA
Observer-Dispatch
Posted Feb 11, 2010 @ 02:27 PM

UTICA — The Bosnian woman accused of trying to strangle her baby Christmas Eve in Utica may have experienced horrible atrocities during a wave of genocide committed against Muslims in Eastern Europe during the 1990s, her attorney said Thursday.

As a result, 33-year-old Saliha Mehmedovic might be too traumatized and mentally disturbed to ever truly explain why she choked her 2-½-month-old son Jasmin inside their Elizabeth Street home Dec. 24, Assistant Public Defender Patrick Marthage explained.

“There’s no clear reason, and she is truly a very tragic figure at this point,” Marthage said after Oneida County Court Judge Barry M. Donalty found Mehmedovic mentally incompetent to stand trial. Donalty ordered her to be held at a psychiatric facility up to a year for further treatment.

“The atrocities that human beings can inflict on each other just continue, and it’s so sad,” Marthage said. “But we’ll do everything we can do to try to help her and defend her to the best of our ability.”

Mehmedovic was arraigned on charges of attempted second-degree murder and two counts of second-degree assault. She will return to court to be prosecuted only if her condition improves, otherwise she will continue to be treated and evaluated by the state Office of Mental Hygiene in the years ahead.

Mehmedovic came to Syracuse in 2000 and later moved to Utica with her boyfriend, Mirsad Rekic, more than a year ago, Marthage said. Together they had a child, who suffered brain injury due to lack of oxygen allegedly at the hands of his mother.

When responding Utica police and firefighters asked Mehmedovic if she choked the baby until he turned blue that night, she reportedly answered “Yes.”

When Mehmedovic was later questioned by two psychiatrists after the incident, however, there appeared to be signs that Mehmedovic was haunted by something in her past while she lived in Eastern Europe, Marthage said.

After Bosnia declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1992, the Serbians in that region were incited by Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to terrorize the local Muslim population with mass shootings, concentration camps, and forced withdrawals from their villages.

As women and girls faced the terror of brutal rape, they had little choice but to flee the region as refugees. Many of those families relocated to the Utica area, where a Bosnian population has flourished in the years since.

“I think she was the victim of many atrocities in her native country,” Marthage said after the proceeding.

“She will not speak freely with the psychiatrists about what may have happened,” he added, “but she seemed to indicate there was something that occurred and she didn’t want to go into any detail.”

As Mehmedovic stood in court Thursday, the judge asked her several times whether she knew who Marthage was as he stood next to her. After staring at Marthage for several moments, the judge repeated the question as it was translated by Bosnian interpreter Sead Hadziabdic.

Mehmedovic finally said she recognized Marthage, and the judge then asked if she understood the proceedings against her. Mehmedovic mumbled something, and the interpreter chuckled.

“She said, ‘You’re the interpreter, you say whatever you want,’” Hadziabdic replied.

After the proceeding, Marthage said Mehmedovic’s mental illness, the language barrier and a lack of understanding probably have left her confused about what’s going on right now.

The case is being prosecuted by First Assistant District Attorney Dawn Catera Lupi.

It appears that in every Bosnian-involved criminal case, the first thing the attorney is instructed to do is bring up the war with its celebrated “genocide.” Like here, here, here and here.

First we had Bosnian Anes Subasic along with an Albanian being part of the North Carolina-based international terror plan, whose plotters were arrested last summer. And last month the Colorado-based 9/11-anniversary terror plot — disrupted in September — turned up two more suspects:

Two arrested over New York City ‘bomb plot’ BBC, Jan. 8

Two more men have been arrested in the US in connection with an alleged plot to bomb New York City last year.

The two - named as Adis Medunjanin and Zasrein Ahmedzay - were detained as part of an “ongoing investigation”, an FBI spokesman told reporters.

They are said to be associates of an Afghan-born Colorado man, Najibullah Zazi, who is accused of planning an attack on New York commuters.

Mr Zazi and two other men were charged in September. All deny the charges.
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Mr Medunjanin is described as a Bosnian immigrant and Mr Ahmedzay as a US citizen.

FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said they had been arrested after Mr Medunjanin was involved in a car accident. Federal agents picked him up after he was taken to hospital.

Mr Medunjanin’s lawyer said his client had done nothing wrong. The two men are due to appear in court in Brooklyn later on Friday.

The New York Times newspaper says they are suspected of travelling with Mr Zazi in 2008 to Pakistan, where prosecutors allege Mr Zazi received al-Qaeda training.

Both were questioned by investigators last year, the Associated Press news agency adds.

2 Qaeda-linked suspects arrested; one crashes car on Whitestone Expressway New York Post Jan. 8

Two men who traveled to Pakistan with Najibullah Zazi were arrested early Friday morning in New York.

“Early this morning Adis Medunjanin and Zarein Ahmedzay were arrested by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York as the result of an ongoing investigation,” FBI spokesman Rich Kolko said.

The full list of charges will be released later Friday but sources said one of the men was charged with non-terror-related holding charges and is awaiting terror-related charges.

The second man was charged with terror-related charges.

Zazi was arrested in September 2009 and accused of planning to carry out acts of terrorism against the United States under the direction of al Qaeda. The FBI said he had received instruction at an al Qaeda training camp in Pakistan.
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After feds took the suspect’s passport, the food-cart worker bolted and crashed his car on the Whitestone Expressway. Medunjanin is already on the no-fly list and has been watched by feds for months.

The investigators tailed him, but Medunjanin — a 25 year-old Bosnian immigrant who reportedly accompanied alleged terror bomb plotter Najibullah Zazi on a trip to Pakistan in 2008 — sped down the Whitestone Expressway.

Near 20th Avenue, Medunjanin rear-ended another car and tried to run away, but FBI agents tackled him, sources said.

The airport driver, Najibullah Zazi, previously pleaded not guilty to that charge. He is accused of getting al-Qaida training to build homemade bombs to attack New York City.

Two Men Arrested in Probe of New York Terror Plot (Update2) Bloomberg, Jan. 8

…The men were arrested in connection with Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan man who authorities said trained at an al-Qaeda terrorist camp. Zazi and two other men were arrested in September over an alleged plot to detonate a bomb in New York around the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
…
The two men came to attention of authorities in September during the investigation of Zazi, Margolin said. Zazi, a former Denver airport shuttle-van driver who had moved to Colorado from Queens, traveled back to New York in early September, prosecutors said.

Zazi’s actions suggested that “the defendant was intent on making a bomb and being in New York on 9/11 for purposes of perhaps using such item,” Denver Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Neff said at the time of his arrest.

Zazi and three unidentified associates purchased components for improvised explosive devices from July to September, the U.S. said in a conspiracy indictment unsealed Sept. 24. Investigators said they found an electronic scale that could be used to weigh chemicals and batteries that could be installed in a bomb when they searched a residence in Flushing, Queens, where Zazi stayed while in New York.

A search of a computer laptop in Zazi’s rental car turned up images of nine pages of bomb-making instructions. They included a recipe for an explosive used in the 2005 London train bombings and intended for use in the 2001 plot to blow up an airplane by “shoe bomber” Richard Reid, prosecutors said.

Officials also said Zazi was videotaped on store cameras buying products such as acetone and hydrogen peroxide that can be use to make a bomb.

Zazi has pleaded not guilty to the charges and is awaiting trial. He faces as long as life in prison if convicted.

“We Cannot be Bigger Serbs than the Serbs Themselves.”

6 February 2010 | 10:43 | Source: FoNet, Blic

Russian ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin said that Serbia must give up its fight for Kosovo if it wants to become a member of the NATO alliance.

He said that Russia would then have to question its stances towards Kosovo, adding that “We cannot be bigger Serbs than the Serbs themselves,” daily Blic writes.

“All NATO member-states have not recognized Kosovo. Those are Spain, Greece, Romania and Slovakia who have not. But according to international law, and the NATO statute, such a situation [not recognizing Kosovo] is an obstacle for Serbia joining the Alliance,” Rogozin said.

He said that the stance of most NATO member-states will not change, which means that the Alliance can accept Serbia as a member-state only with “new” borders — without Kosovo.

“Belgrade will have to officially recognize Priština’s sovereignty, which will also change the stances of Madrid and Moscow,” he said.
…
He reminded that NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that Serbia does not have to join NATO first if it wants to join the European Union.

Rogozin said that it is hard for him to understand how Belgrade can speak of NATO integration when there are still images in the capital of damage done by the 1999 NATO-led bombing.

“The problem of Kosovo is there as well, since most NATO member-states have recognized its independence, also, there is the demonization of the Serbian people, the flagrant anti-Serbian double-standards of the West towards participators in the wars of the former Yugoslavia…Has that been forgotten? Russia would not understand Serbia’s decision in favor of NATO considering everything I have mentioned,” Rogozin said.

In other words, this is about the dreaded sellout of the Serbs by the Serbs, and if that happens, nobody can help the Serbs.