Albanian Agim Ceku Kosovo

http://www.uruknet.de:80/?s1=1&p=55486&s2=27

Paramilitary Thug With Long History With Top U.S. Democrats Arrested for 'War Crimes'
Jeremy Scahill



June 25, 2009

Agim Ceku commanded "ethnic cleansing" operations in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, then headed an organization labeled "terrorist" by a senior US official. But top Dems made him their man in Kosovo.

By Jeremy Scahill

UPDATE: After international intervention, Ceku was reportedly ordered released on Thursday.


A US-trained paramilitary figure from the Balkans with a lengthy history with leading Clinton-era Democrats, including some now in the Obama administration, has been arrested in Europe on an Interpol warrant for war crimes. Agim Ceku, an Albanian from Kosovo, is a former Croatian Army General who was trained by the private US security firm Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI) during the Clinton Administration. Ceku, backed by the US, would go on to become the "prime minister" of Kosovo despite the fact that he was responsible for some of the worst acts of "ethnic cleansing" in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s and was the leader of a paramilitary organization with drug trade ties, which Clinton’s top envoy to Kosovo called a "terrorist" organization.

Ceku was detained in Bulgaria on the basis of an Interpol warrant issued by Serbia as he crossed the border from Macedonia on Tuesday. Serbia demanded his extradition on war crimes charges stemming from his role as the military commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in 1999.....

.....Ceku Used US Training for 'Ethnic Cleansing’ Campaign

Ten years ago, as Ceku—backed by the US— rose to power in Kosovo, I investigated Ceku’s "brutal past:"

A past the US knows well because it was influential in making Ceku one of the top "ethnic cleansers" in the Balkans, alongside Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. Ceku refined his brutality as a general in the US-backed Croatian Army during the Balkan war and was trained by Military Professional Resources Inc., a private paramilitary firm founded in 1987 and based in Alexandria, Virginia with former high-ranking US generals and NATO officials on its board. These officers include the former Commanders in Chief of the US Army in Europe and US Central Command, the Supreme Allied Commander-Atlantic and the former US Representative to the NATO Military Committee. In 1994, armed with a contract authorized by the Clinton Administration, MPRI officially began to train Croatian forces......