Friday 25 January 2008

Someone got their facts wrong!

UPDATE: 3rd February

Recently, I wrote about how George Clooney and Sharon Stone were going to organise a protest against Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence. Well, it turns out that it's not true.

This comes from George Clooney - Clooney Studio:

January 22 2008

George Clooney Kosovo independence rumours: FALSE (see Jan. 20 news) George Clooney's publicist, Stan Rosenfield, today confirmed to ClooneyStudio.com that George "neither made those statements nor did he authorize anyone to make it on his behalf."

And this is the news dated January 20 2008 again from George Clooney's site:

George Clooney Kosovo independence protest reports There are internet reports claiming George Clooney issued a statement to Frankfurt Daily News saying that, together with Sharon Stone, he'll organise a protest against attempts to grant independence to Kosovo. A Serbian TV news clip* being the source. ClooneyStudio.com contacted publicist Stan Rosenfield, who replied "I do not believe it is accurate but haven't spoken with George in last couple of days."

* That is the same news clip from RTS I linked to in my own blog post dealing with this alleged future protest.

I thought that it might be true. But then again, I was suspicious as to why famous people like George Clooney would want to protest against Kosovo's independence on behalf of Serbia. Considering which, if you look at the title of my post "Clooney & Hollywood for Kosovo in Serbia?", you will notice that I deliberately added a question mark at the end! ;-)

3 comments:

acadia said...

Alan, I am glad you posted this article. Serbian propaganda is continuing offensive with lies and deceit. However, I am proud of Serbs like you who oppose genocide denial.

Daniel
Srebrenica Genocide Blog Editor

Richard (nickname) said...

DARKO TRIFUNOVIC - self-proclaimed "terrorism expert", identity thief, and discredited Srebrenica genocide denier

By: Dr. Richard Johnstone

On March 12 2002, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bosnia & Herzegovina (comprised of Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats) fired Darko Trifunovic from B&H diplomatic services due to his involvement in document forgery.

Only after expulsion from the diplomatic service of Bosnia & Herzegovina, Darko Trifunovic became self proclaimed "expert on terrorism" writing mostly against Bosnia and Herzegovina and labeling anybody who criticized him as "Al Qaeda terrorist."

As an experienced document forgerer and identity thief, he offered his services to defense teams of various indicted Serb war criminals at the International Criminal Tribunal (ICTY). In 2001, he stated for B92 he even had evidence that indicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic (who on numerous occasions threatened the total destruction of Bosniak Muslim population of Bosnia-Herzegovina) obeyed Geneva Convention. It would not be surprising to learn that Darko Trifunovic forged and submitted those kinds of documents for defense teams of many indicted Serb war criminals.

Here is an archived press release from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, quote:

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina adopted the decision on suspension of Darko Trifunović, who has worked at the MFA BiH since 2 April 2001, performing diplomatic function - the First Secretary at BiH Mission to UN. In accordance with the rules of service, Trifunović will be deprived from BiH diplomatic passport and he will be unable to obtain a travel document for his return to BiH, since it is about the man who falsified BiH citizenship.

Following the conclusion of BiH Council of Ministers to review citizenship of all employees in state service bodies, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of BiH asked from the Ministry of Civil Affairs and Communications of BiH to review the way in which Trifunović gained BiH citizenship in 1996.

By the review, it was established that Trifunović cancelled his registration on 27 March 1996 from the register of residence in Belgrade, where he was born, and on the same date he registered in Brčko. According to the fictive residence, he obtained ID card of BiH on the same date.

Since the procedure of the issuance of ID card was illegal, Police Service in Brčko District cancelled residence and BiH ID card, Decision dated 25 February 2002.

On the basis of these facts, Ministry of Civil Affairs and Communications of BiH, in accordance with legal procedure deprived Trifunović from BiH citizenship. Results of several months' investigation as well as documentation that prove the conclusions will be submitted to the competent prosecutor's office that will adopt decision on possible criminal charge and judicial prosecution against Darko Trifunović.

After a multi-ethnic and multi-religious group of Muslim, Christian and Jewish journalists from Bosnjaci.net Magazine criticized Darko Trifunovic for Srebrenica Genocide denial, he sent them threatening messages and labeled them as terrorists. For Srebrenica genocide victims, he stated: "I wish Mladic killed them all." Soon after, Bosnjaci.net was brought down due to hack attack (known as Denial of Service attack) from sympathizers of Darko Trifunovic's extremist ideology. Darko Trifunovic blamed Muslim, Christian and Jewish reporters for fabricating E-mail against him, however, as influential Srebrenica Genocide Blog reported, quote:

Contrary to Darko Trifunovic's claims published at "Serbian Unity Congress" website in which he alleges that information against him was "fabricated," the fact of the matter is that he was the author of an E-mail in which he stated: "I wish Mladic killed them all." We got in touch with contributing authors Haris Djapic and Alan Jusufovic and asked them to provide "Full Header" copy of Darko Trifunovic's E-mail. Then we compared IP# of that E-mail with IP# of several other E-mails in which Darko Trifunovic threatened to the New York based magazine. The IP# was the same. Due to confidentiality reasons, we will not release IP#; however, we have forwarded this information to Bosnjaci.net and requested inclusion of this information into FBI investigation of recent threatening E-mails coming from Darko Trifunovic (his E-mail is publicly listed at the Serbian Unity Congress web site).

The public should exercise caution in dealing with Darko Trifunovic, his extremist supporters and his published writings. Darko Trifunovic has been discredited by respected journalistic agencies in the past. According to the "Freedom of Speech in South East Europe: Media Independence and Self-Regulation" (ISBN 978-954-9396-05-8) published by the South East European Network for Professionalization of Media, quote:

An exemplary manipulation article can also be found on p. 2 on March 9 entitled ‘Abuse of religion and faith’ by D. Majstorovic. It reports that Darko Trifunovic, portrayed as “leading Serb expert for international terrorism” from the Belgrade Security Faculty, in one of his recent “lectures beforemembers of the US Congress” stated that radical Islamists from all over the world, who have been assigned in all almost all European states upon order of the terrorist network Al Q’Aida, abuse religious facilities and use them for spreading their fundamentalist-like ideas. Reportedly, Trifunovic also “warned that Kosovo and Metohija and BiH are unfortunately brimming with persons likeTalovic (Sulejman, 19-year old from BiH who killed 5 people at Salt Lake City recently) and Bektasevic (Mirsad, sentenced to 20 years prison term for planning terrorist attacks in BiH), mostly thanks to people from the top authority, who at some point inthe past brought the most brutal terrorists of the present timeto these regions. Hereby he refers to “Haris Silajdzic”, aprominent Bosniak politician.

Although attributed to an “expert” thus fulfilling the formal requirements of the Press Code, these absolutely wild speculations presented as “serious” information are an insult to logic first, Bosniaks second. (Sulejman Talovic was Bosnian American, but his crime was much the same as earlier Columbine crimes, or a subsequent massacre by a Korean American – work of teen angst. Confounding him, a wannabe terrorist Bektasevic, and bringing them in context with a legaland legitimate political representative is a sign of uttermalevolence and lack of elementary ethics).

Thank You!

Richard Johnstone

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