'Rambo' charged for Croatia bombs

[Croatia123]

An ex-army officer, who was declared unfit for trial at a U.N. war crimes tribunal, has been charged in his native Serbia in connection with the 1991 shelling of the ancient port city of Dubrovnik.
Capt. Vladimir Kovacevic, nicknamed Rambo, is accused of indiscriminately shelling Dubrovnik in 1991.

Capt. Vladimir Kovacevic, nicknamed Rambo, and units under his command indiscriminately shelled the walled city, killing at least two civilians and wounding three, and destroying six sites from the UNESCO heritage list, Serbia's war crimes prosecutor said.

The shelling took place during the 1991 Serb-Croat war that followed the breakup of the former Yugoslav federation. The Serb-led Yugoslav army troops attacked Dubrovnik during the war, destroying cultural and historic buildings in the Adriatic city.

Kovacevic was initially indicted in 2001 by the U.N. court in The Hague, Netherlands, along with the commander of the Dubrovnik operations, Gen. Pavle Strugar, and navy Adm. Miodrag Jokic. Strugar was sentenced to eight years, and Jokic to seven.

But Kovacevic's case was transferred to the Serbian war crimes prosecutor in May, after the court in The Hague found that Kovacevic was mentally unfit to stand trial. Kovacevic was also released to Serbia for treatment.

The Serbian prosecutor said Kovacevic was being treated at the Belgrade military hospital and that experts would assess his capacity to attend trial. It was not immediately clear when proceedings against Kovacevic could start.

[Mary]

The Indie Memphis Film Festival may be devoted to "the Soul of Southern Film," but that mission doesn't exclude other types of programming.

Last year, Indie Memphis hosted a screening of the 1925 silent classic "The Phantom of the Opera," with live musical accompaniment by the renowned Alloy Orchestra.

This year, Croatian prostitutes, Chinese pop singers and egg-tossing Indonesian brats are part of the lineup.

For 2007, Indie Memphis has reserved one of its three screens at Malco's Studio on the Square for the Global Lens series of foreign-language films.

The festival, which began Friday, continues through Thursday with a roster of more than 130 films. Organizers said they expect about 5,000 people to attend.

The Global Lens series is a program of the Global Film Initiative, a five-year-old nonprofit organization based in San Francisco dedicated to introducing U.S. audiences to films from around the world that might not otherwise receive distribution in America.

Each year, the organization -- assisted by an advisory board of international filmmakers -- selects several movies for its Global Lens series, which is primarily booked by museums and film festivals. This year's advisory board includes Spain's Pedro Almodovar, Hong Kong's Christopher Doyle, Hungary's Bela Tarr, India's Mira Nair and Denmark's Lars von Trier, among others.

Films in the Global Lens lineup include:

Directed by Rindu Kami Padamu, Indonesia's "Of Love and Eggs" may be the most charming film in this year's festival. Set among the crowded market stalls and warren-like alleyways of a poor Islamic Jakarta neighborhood (where the buildings "are made of plywood, not cement") this episodic movie has something of the appeal of a vintage "Little Rascals" episode as naughty children and loving-but-sometimes-exasperated adults battle over eggs, prayer rugs and the proper way to draw a mosque. Americans who equate Islam with terrorism may be surprised at the loving congregation presented in this entertaining story of faith.

With its cool jazz-noir theme music and expressionistic black-and-white photography (which often provides a bird's-eye -- which is to say, God's-eye -- view of the action), Croatia's "A Wonderful Night in Split," may be the most stylish film in the series. Written and directed by Arsen Anton Ostojic, the film applies a chronologically fragmented "Pulp Fiction"-style approach to its interconnected New Year's Eve tales of drug runners, junkies, young lovers and American sailors in Split, a city of Medieval architecture and cosmopolitan problems.

Also from Croatia, director Dalibor Malanic's "Fine Dead Girls" takes place almost entirely within a Zagreb apartment building that suggests modern Croatia itself: an antic place where true love and happiness are threatened by prejudice, lust, jealousy, insanity and plain old nosiness. Olga Pakalovic stars as a beautiful lesbian newcomer whose presence sparks the building's latest crisis.

In Li Yu's "Dam Street," a girl in a riverside town in 1983 China is kicked out of high school for "moral decadence by engaging in illicit sexual relations resulting in pregnancy." (Her sins are broadcast over the school's public address system.) Ten years after giving her baby away, the girl is a singer of pop songs and Sichuan opera in a low-rent theater, and a young boy has a crush on her. "Dam Street" is as melodramatic in content as the heroine's pop songs, but it seems utterly authentic, thanks to atmospheric location photography and convincing performances.

The timeliest film in the series may be the Iraqi Kurdistan production "Kilometre Zero," set during the 1980s at the height of Saddam Hussein's extermination campaign against the Kurds. The subject is grim, but writer-director Hiner Saleem's film is a "Catch-22"-like satire that borrows from Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying," as a hapless Kurdish conscript in the Iraqi Army is assigned to deliver a corpse to a grieving family, accompanied only by a Kurd-hating Arab driver. Asks one border guard: "Why do you Kurds refuse to become civilized? Why not become real Iraqis?" At the end of the film, the hero and his wife greet the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq with joy -- a perspective not often seen in movies. Perhaps the old Kurdish saying quoted by the hero isn't set in stone, after all: "Our past is sad, our present is tragic; luckily, we have no future."

Also in the series: "Another Man's Garden," from Mozambique; "Enough!" from Algeria; "On Each Side," from Argentina; "The Sacred Family," from Chile; and a program of seven "Global Shorts."

[Mary]

In an interview with István Tanács, Hungarian economist Péter Balázs answers the question of what chances the West Balkan states have of becoming EU members as follows: "Each individual member must meet the membership criteria, but Serbia could make a great leap forward if it constructed a joint programme for the West Balkans. Serbia is quite low down on the list for membership talks: first come Croatia, Turkey and Macedonia. ... It's as if Serbia had gone to the wrong checkout; the queue it's in isn't moving because of Turkey. The only way to get ahead of other candidates would be a spectacular joint West Balkan initiative led by Serbia and including Slovenia and Croatia."

[Mary]

A powerful parliamentary deputy and six other people went on trial in Croatia over the killing of Serb civilians during Croatia's 1991-95 war of independence.

Branimir Glavas, who limped into the Zagreb county court with the help of a cane, is the first senior state official to be charged with such offences, in an indication of the country's growing resolve to confront its recent past.

Croatia has already convicted several soldiers and an army general for war crimes against Serbs, but the efficiency of its judiciary and its ability to conduct war crimes trials remain under close scrutiny of the European Union, which Zagreb hopes to join in the next few years.

A county court in Osijek, a city in eastern Croatia where Glavas commanded defence forces in the war, indicted him in March for allegedly giving orders to members of a unit under his command to abduct, torture and murder Serbs in late 1991.

The prisoners were taken to the banks of the Drava river, with their mouths sealed with gaffer tape, shot and dumped into the water, the indictment said.

Glavas was also investigated in the capital Zagreb for a separate atrocity against Serb civilians, also committed in Osijek in the early 1990s. Both investigations were then united in a single indictment.

Glavas, who denies any wrongdoing, staged a 40-day hunger strike to protest against his detention last year and was freed in December after his health seriously worsened.

Dressed in a dark suit and appearing calm, he pleaded not guilty to his indictment. If convicted, he could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.

Glavas was among the founders of the ruling conservative HDZ party but was expelled last year after clashing with Prime Minister Ivo Sanader over Sanader's pro-European policies.

His new party rules the fertile Slavonia region in the east. He has denounced his trial as a political ploy and Sanader's attempt to take revenge.

Croatia is negotiating EU membership and is also set to become a NATO member in 2009. Handling of local war crimes is seen as an important test in its drive to join both blocs.

Croatia fought an independence war from 1991 to 1995 against the Yugoslav army and rebel Serbs backed by Belgrade. During the period of nationalist rule in the 1990s, most crimes against Serbs were tacitly condoned and rarely investigated.

[Mary]

Zagreb_ Croatia’s Prime Minister, Ivo Sanader, has said his country will not use its newly-acquired membership of the UN Security Council to deal with bilateral issues, such as its dispute with Slovenia over territorial waters.

Speaking at a news conference on Wednesday, Sanader described Croatia’s election to the Security Council as a “great achievement”.

He was reacting to Monday’s decision at the UN to accept Croatia as one of the 10 non-permanent members of the UN’s “cabinet”.

“We were the object of international policy and the object of the Security Council’s work”, Sanader said with reference to UN resolutions relating to his country during its war of independence from Yugoslavia and the subsequent conflict with separatist Serbs from 1991-95, “and now Croatia is becoming a country which will be deciding about important issues of the world’s future.”

While stressing that Zagreb would not use its position on the Security Council to pursue its unresolved dispute with Slovenia about their rival territorial claims in the Adriatic, Sanader said that it would actively seek to find a way to ensure that the remaining war crimes fugitives from the Croatian and Bosnian wars of the 1990s would not escape justice when, under its current mandate, the UN's war crimes Tribunal completes its trials - other than appeal cases - next year.

“Croatia will insist on finding some new model to make sure that (Radovan) Karadzic, (Ratko) Mladic and (Goran) Hadzic are brought to justice”.

The Croatian Prime Minister said his country’s main goal on the Security Council would almost certainly be to help political stability in south-eastern Europe, in particular in Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina, where new agreements need to be concluded..

[Mary]

England defender Rio Ferdinand has picked up a yellow card during the Euro 2008 qualifier defeat against Russia and will miss the all-important game against Croatia at home next month.

Manchester United’s Ferdinand was on the edge as he had a card against his name coming into today’s crucial game in Moscow, where he was booked after 57 minutes.

And with the Three Lions also conceding their advantage by going down 2-1, they are left with their backs against the wall hoping that Israel will get a result against Russians, and then get a result themselves against Group E leaders Croatia in their final qualifier at Wembley in November.

Steve McClaren’s side squandered a 1-0 half time lead to lose to Guus Hiddink’s side. Red Devils ace Wayne Rooney had given England a 29th-minute lead with a superb goal in the Luzhniki Stadium.

However, the 21-year-old striker was harshly ruled to have fouled Konstantin Zyrianov in the box on 69 minutes. Substitute Roman Pavlyuchenko found the target from the resultant penalty-kick. Four minutes later, Pavlyuchenko scored the winner.