Judgement!: the hoax of the Bosnian Serb Run Death Camps

following text is from the Emperor’s New Clothes

In August 1992, millions of people were shocked to see photographs of a supposed Bosnian Serb death camps. The death camps were in fact refugee centers.

The photos were produced by ITN, the British TV news giant, from footage shot by an ITN film crew which spent a long day in Bosnia. The film was shot in a refugee center in the town of Trnopolje. (Pronounced Tern-op-ol-yay)

Most of the photographs featured a tall, emaciated man with a deformed chest, stripped to the waist, apparently imprisoned behind barbed wire. Do you remember those pictures?

They were a hoax.

To start with, the barbed wire was staged. As you will see, the ITN film crew went inside a storage area surrounded by a chicken wire and barbed wire fence. They filmed through the fence, thus creating the false impression that the people they were filming were fenced in.

That was only their first cute trick. Step by step, Judgment! shows how these phony pictures were created. Judgment! is so damning that ITN’s lawyers have threatened the Internet company that hosts the Emperor’s Clothes server with a law suit because we advertise the film on our website, www.tenc.net!

The fabricated photos were broadcast worldwide starting on August 6th, accompanied by captions and comments comparing Trnopolje to Nazi death camps.

Outraged Bush

On 6 August 1992, just 20 minutes after the pictures were released, George Bush, Sr. held a press conference at a Colorado Air Base:

Reports say that 20 minutes after the ITN footage was shown in the United States, President George Bush changed his hands-off policy and promised to ‘press hard for quick passage’ of a UN Security Council resolution authorising the use of force in the Balkans.” “Holocaust images of Bosnia prison camps make the West sit up,” The Straits Times, by Lee Siew Hua, August 16, 1992, Pg. 4, 907 words.

President Bush, Sr. demanded that the Serbs – the Bosnian Serbs and the Republic of Serbia as well – be harshly punished, including:

tighten[ing] economic sanctions on Serbia so that all understand that there is a real price to be paid for the Serbian government’s continued aggression.”“Statement by President Bush, Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado,” Federal News Service, August 6, 1992)

Bush, Sr. also announced that now the U.S. would recognize Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia as independent from Yugoslavia. Thus he used the phony death camp photos to endorse the break-up of Yugoslavia. By recognizing the Bosnian government, run by the Islamic fundamentalist, Alijah Izetbegovic, he guaranteed that the Bosnian war would continue.

Superbush

Consider the speed with which President Bush moved Aug. 6, 1992.

• START!
• ITN’s phony death camp photos are shown on TV.
• Bush sees the pictures. He contacts his cabinet members. Amazingly, they have all seen the photos. They confer. In seconds they decide that the pictures are genuine and that Action Is Needed. (2.5 minutes)
• Fast Dial! They call leaders in Germany, England and possibly other countries. (1.5 minutes)
• Quick Talk! They plan draconian measures including economic sanctions that will cut off Serbia from the world, depriving industry and ordinary people of necessities such as medicine. (1.5 minutes)
• Roll call! They contact congressional leaders, who agree that Bush should recognize the secessionist Republics of Croatia, Bosnia and Slovenia as independent states, thus approving the destruction of the internationally recognized State of Yugoslavia. (1.5 minutes)

Seven minutes down, 13 minutes to go.

Next, Bush and company:

• Discuss options and decide to call a press conference at a Colorado Air Base. (Time spent 1.5 minutes)
• Write a press release. (Time spent: 1.5 minutes)
• Compose Bush’s speech. (Time spent: 2 minutes)
• Bush learns the speech. (Time spent: 1.5 minutes)
• The White House sends the release to newspapers, wire services and TV stations (2 minutes).
• Film crews fly to the Air base (3.5 minutes) and set up their equipment (10 seconds).
• FINISH!

Nineteen minutes 10 seconds – on time with 50 seconds to spare.

Bush and co. have planned and organized the decimation of the Serbian people in less time than it takes to cook spaghetti with marinara sauce.

Reality Check

Since what is described above could not have happened, what did happen?

One thing is definite: Mr. Bush’s press conference was planned in advance to follow soon after the TV broadcast of the phony death camp pictures. The idea was to give ordinary people the idea that Bush had reacted *as they would react* to images of great suffering – by demanding action.

But what about the ITN film crew? Did they really go to Bosnia, as the Straits Times stated, in order to “investigate claims that concentration camps had been set up”?

There are two obvious possibilities.

One possibility is that the trip was planned with the black ops people at CIA and/or M16, the British equivalent. That is, ITN went to Bosnia looking for film footage that could be doctored to be used as ammunition in the media war against the Serbs.

Or perhaps no intelligence agency was involved in planning the visit by this leading British news station to the hottest trouble spot in the world. Even so, it must be true that after the ITN people left Bosnia, ITN worked with US and or British intelligence officers. How else could they time the release of the pictures to coincide with Mr. Bush’s press conference?

Mistake

ITN had a prior history of aggressively anti-Serbian coverage of the break-up of Yugoslavia. So one might ask, why did the Bosnian Serb leadership give ITN access to Trnopolje and also to the detention center at Omarska? Especially since the Western media was already spreading lies about these places? (For example, see Newsday, 21 July 1992.)

Perhaps they hoped that if the ITN reporters could see for themselves, they would be fair. Apparently the Serbs did not yet understand that the attacks on them were not a mistake. They were the target of an organized campaign of demonization.

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