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Karadzic’s Military Documents Turned Over to War Crimes Court

By VOA News
28 July 2008

Radovan Karadzic in the Bosnian town of Banja Luka (May, 1994 file photo)

Serbia’s interior minister says officials found copies of Bosnian Serb government documents in the Belgrade apartment where former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic lived prior to his arrest last week.

Ivica Dacic said the documents included materials on Bosnian Serb military staff meetings during the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s. He said officials turned the materials over to Serbia’s war crimes court.

Meanwhile, court officials say the court has not yet received Karadzic’s appeal against a judicial order authorizing his extradition to the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

Karadzic’s lawyer, Svetozar Vujacic says he mailed out the appeal documents shortly before post offices closed Friday. The lawyer confirmed that he does not want the extradition to take place before a planned rally of Karadzic supporters Tuesday.

Prior to his arrest, Karadzic had lived openly, practicing alternative medicine under the name Dragan Dabic.

Officials say they tracked him down by following people thought to be helping him avoid capture.

The Hague tribunal has charged Karadzic with genocide and crimes against humanity for his efforts to ethnically-cleanse Bosnia of Muslims and Croats during the Balkan conflict of the 1990s.

With the Karadzic arrest, the Balkan war crimes tribunal’s top fugitive targets now are former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic, and ex-Croatian Serb leader Goran Hadzic. Former Bosnian Serb police commander Stojan Zupljanin was arrested last month in Serbia.

Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and Reuters.

Oldman confirms Dark Knight game, G4 pulls video

[Update: Now with video (thanks, VVP)! Watch Gary Oldman spill the beans after the break. And hey, G4 – you guys totally got that story fair and square, so why pull the video?]

Far be it from us to tell Electronic Arts how to run its business, but one would think that announcing a long-since-leaked game based on a hugely anticipated movie which just so happened to premier the very same week of the industry’s largest press event would be – what we in the video game blogging business call – “a no-brainer.” But, then again, we’re not Electronic Arts so, despite being first rumored and then leaked by IGN over a year ago, Pandemic’s totally secret adaptation of The Dark Knight did not make its debut during the serendipitous collision of E3 and Batman-mania last week.

As if EA’s counter-intuitive marketing plan wasn’t funny enough, an interview on G4 with Commissioner Gordon himself, Gary Oldman, revealed – surprise! – that a game was indeed in development. Oldman stopped short of naming developer Pandemic or EA, but we all know the score; in response, G4 had the video removed from YouTube as well as their own site. Our favorite part from the interview teaser reel? When Oldman says, “It’s hard to make a movie like this under the radar.” You know what, we were just thinking the same thing about games …

Source: Christopher Grant; Joystiq.com

The value of space-based intelligence

By Frank Gardner
Security correspondent, BBC News

The commander of US Strategic Command, Gen Kevin Chilton, has said that US space-based intelligence is playing an “invaluable” part in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The three-star general said satellite data is allowing coalition commanders on the ground to counter Taleban infiltration with the help of unmanned aerial drones.

But in a rare interview, he told the BBC his staff is having to cope with foreign “intrusions” into sensitive computer data - in other words, cyber warfare.

Gen Chilton said US forces have come to rely very heavily on space-based global positioning systems (GPS), precision navigation and communication, including the ability to communicate over the horizon in a country like Afghanistan without an established communications network in place.

He said it was invaluable to US and Nato operations to be able to control drones remotely, and to gather and disseminate the information collected to other locations for analysis so that the information can be put to use on the ground.

New vulnerabilities

The technology, said the general, was making a dramatic difference.

We can’t imagine not having our computers operating… in our societies today
Gen Kevin Chilton
Commander, US Strategic Command

In Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan in 2001, he said, the US was able to use GPS-guided munitions to enable the Northern Alliance to break out of a position they had been bottled up in for years and advance on horseback before using precision weapons to defeat the Taleban.

He said those same types of technologies applied today in trying to counter Taleban infiltration back into Afghanistan.

I put it to him though, that this heavy reliance on technology surely made US forces vulnerable to both malfunction and interception.

He conceded this was a danger which his staff were alert to.

“We can’t imagine not having our computers operating whether it be in a military operation or a commercial operation in our societies today,” he said.

“So those dependencies make you look for vulnerabilities because you can anticipate that an adversary will look for vulnerabilities in potential conflict in future.

“That’s one of our charters for Strategic Command, is to try to identify those vulnerabilities and work to mitigate them.”

Iran concerns

During the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Saddam Hussein’s forces had tried to jam US GPS signals, Gen Chilton said.

Now, in 2008, operators under his command had seen “intrusions” into Pentagon computer systems which varied from nuisance - possibly caused by a bored 15-year-old - to something more sophisticated, such as espionage by a foreign country.

“This is troubling,” he said.

“It is not unexpected but this is something that we’re just now beginning to realise, this vulnerability, and take appropriate actions against it.”

Gen Chilton said he was very concerned about two things in Iran - its long-range missile programme its nuclear programme.

He drew a parallel with North Korea’s activities in both these areas.

He said there was now a need to bring the US defence system “well in advance of what looks like advancing missile technology and nuclear research for weapons in Iran”.

Iran denies that it has any ambitions to develop nuclear weapons, saying its nuclear programme is for power generation only.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/7386786.stm