Talk:Milan Lukić
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This article seems to contain incorrect information, perhaps stemming from the inclusion of Lukic in the Wikipedia Category of "People convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia". Lukic has been charged by the ICTY with approximately 150 murders. He was co-charged with Mitar Vasiljevic and his brother Sredoje Lukic. However only Mitar Vasiljevic has been tried and found guilty. The others were on the run at the time Vasiljevic was brought to court. Milan Lukic was arrested in Argentina in 2005 and his trial opened in the Hague in early 2006.
Lukic's indictment charges him with approximately 150 deaths. I'm sure no judgment at the ICTY website will refer to Lukic being responsible for thousands of deaths since no judgment has been reached on the charges against Lukic yet. What the judgment in the Vasiljevic case may say - and I haven't read it - is that the "Milan Lukic group" were responsible for thousands of deaths. This needs to be checked.--Opbeith 00:54, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
The above is a comment in the interests of accuracy. I have no desire whatsoever to minimise the extent of the crimes for which Lukic is believed to be responsible. --Opbeith 08:50, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
Proposed changes:
I've already made some additions and some relatively small changes. However I'd like to do a rather more substanial revision of the article, as below. I'll wait for one week to see if there are any objections and if not, I'll revise the article on 20 January.
Milan Lukić (Born 1967, in Rujiste, Bosnia-Herzegovina) is a former soldier in the Serb army in Bosnia who has been indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague on charges concerning the perpetration of war crimes against Bosnian Muslim civilians in Visegrad during the Bosnian war.
In the spring of 1992 Milan Lukić formed a group of paramilitaries which worked with local police and military units to impose a reign of terror on the local Muslim population. Between May 1992 and October 1994 the group is alleged to have committed a multitude of crimes in the Visegrad municipality including murder, torture, assault, looting and the destruction of property. The ICTY charges relate specifically to the deaths of approximately 150 men, women and children but it is claimed that Milan Lukić and his paramilitary group may have killed thousands of civilians.
In 1998 Milan Lukić was indicted by The Hague for "extermination of a significant number of Bosnian Muslim civilians, including women, children and the elderly", along with his cousin Sredoje and Mitar Vasijevic. The Bosnian Serb and Serbian authorities took no action to hand Lukić over. He was seen around Visegrad and Serbia, where he owned an apartment in Belgrade. He was repeatedly charged with racketeering and other organised crime and arrested three times in Serbia but each time he was released.
In April 2004 a report by Institute for War and Peace Reporting and Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (IWPR/BIRN) published an account, based on Bosnian Serb intelligence sources and confirmed by Bosnian state intelligence, linking Lukić to the fugitive Radovan Karadzic, allegedly as part of a drug-smuggling ring connected to Karadzic's business network the profits from which funded the elusive "Preventiva" network which protects Karadzic and provided cover for Lukić. Lukić was also protected by his cousin and patron, Sretan Lukić , deputy interior minister of the Serbian state, in charge of the Serbian police.
In early 2003 Lukić and the Preventiva quarrelled, leaving Lukić at risk on Bosnian Serb soil while Sretan Lukić was indicted by ICTY, removed from office in Serbia and deported to The Hague. In September 2003 Lukić was sentenced in absentia by a Serbian court to 20 years in jail for the execution of 16 Muslims taken from a bus on the Bosnian-Serbian border in 1993.
By April 2004, Lukic had vanished. He sent an email from a server in Brazil, denying that he was a traitor to Karadzic and pledging that "Mladic has always been and will remain the true hero and idol, and Karadzic the leader of my people".
He was discovered in Argentina in 2005 and returned to The Hague. He is currently (January 2007) awaiting trial. His case may be referred to the Bosnian courts. His co-indictee Mitar Vasiljevic has been convicted and sentenced for his part in crimes allegedly committed in association with Lukić. - Much of the above sourced from the Vulliamy and Jelacic Guardian article http://www.guardian.co.uk/yugo/article/0,2763,1546626,00.html
Among the crimes that he is alleged to have committed are:
- here I'd also add references to the Vilina Vlas rape hotel atrocities and the Strpci train kidnappings and murders, as described by Amnesty International at http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGEUR700092002?open&of=ENG-YUG
--Opbeith 12:31, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
I rally don't oppose anything. --HanzoHattori 21:02, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Designation - of Muslim ethnicity / Bosnian Muslim / Bosniak
I know the question of how Bosniaks should be referred to is a sensitive one. But when a particular term is used in an authoritative source - such as the identity used in the census or the designation used in ICTY judgments - then my view is that it's better not to make ad-hoc changes. At the very least it makes for difficulties in cross-referencing. However where the reference is a general one and not linked to a source, then, in the absence of a very good reason, the term Bosniak should be used. --Opbeith 09:25, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
Having written that, I'm aware that it doesn't resolve the issue. Historically (and by that I mean up until the end of the Bosnian war) the community is often referred to as "Muslim", including by members of the community. Given that this was the "national status" description I'm not sure how the issue coulod be dealt with adequately without problems. --Opbeith 09:49, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
