Today, this Thursday December 25, 2008, H.E. Mr. Miraš Radović, Montenegrin Minister of Justice, announced that Montenegro has decided to admit its responsibility in several forced repatriation cases of Bosnian Muslim refugees during the 1992-1995 Bosnian Civil War, by mandating the country’s Supreme State Attorney to formally conclude agreements for financial reparations with the surviving repatriates and the families of deceased victims. This decision follows five meetings between officials from the Ministry of Justice and victims’ representatives that took place from December 9 to 23, 2008, and during which parties discussed the terms of the court settlements.

Today’s announcement originally refers to an alleged number of 83 Bosnian citizens [1] who had obtained the refugee status in Montenegro after fleeing the civil war in their native country, unlawfully arrested in Podgorica, Herceg-Novi, Bar and Ulcinj from May 15 to June 6, 1992 and subsequently handed over to Bosnian Serb forces. Some of them were killed on the territory of Montenegro by Republika Srpska (RS) Special Police forces brigade, but most of the arrested persons were transferred to RS and later genocided in detention camps, notably the sadly notorious Foča concentration camp. Since then, 202 persons — including surviving repatriates and their families, as well as families of deceased victims — filed material and non-material compensation suits against Montenegro concerning 44 forced repatriation cases, of whom only nine victims survived the horrors of camps by being exchanged as hostages.

Minister Radović indicated in his statement to the press that, for 42 cases out of 44, the total compensation would amount €4.13 million — €30,000 for each child of deceased victims, €25,000 for parents and spouses, and €10,000 for brothers and sisters, adding that for the nine survivors, reparations will range from €10,000 to €170,000, depending upon the time that they had been kept in Serbian detention camps. According to Minister Radović, agreements “have the power of a legally binding and executable verdict,” i.e. no further court processes concerning these 42 cases will be undertaken. For one case, the State Attorney failed to approve a court settlement, and for the other one, victim’s family decided to continue the court proceedings.

More information:
 Prelević Law Firm :: Deportation of Bosnian Muslim refugees in 1992.

During all the 1990’s, from France, His Royal Highness the Crown Prince of Montenegro, Nicolas Petrovitch Njegosh, has always defended and promoted the humanitarian principles of tolerance, friendship and humanity, being a hard opponent to Milošević’s regime. He notably played an active role in the information of the French and European publics about the dangerousness of the ultra-nationalist Serb regime, through dozen of press articles and participations to (international) conferences. Hereinafter are listed some of the articles referenced on our website, the Crown Prince published in the 1990’s:
 “Let us stop the massacre in Yugoslavia” (in French).
 “Appeal to the Montenegrin people” (in French).
 “Milošević is creating a situation of war in Montenegro” (in French).
 “Must France Entrer in War in Bosnia...” (in French).
 Final declaration of the Conference of the Independent Intellectuals for Peace in ex-Yugoslavia (in French).
 “The 1991’s appeal of Prince Nicolas Petrovic Njegos”.
In 1992, Prince Nicolas Petrovitch Njegosh was one of the founder of the French association “Izbor” to defend victims of ethnic cleansing in ex-Yugoslavia. In 1999, he was one of the signatories of the manifesto to make Year-2000 the year of the creation of the International Criminal Tribunal (ICT).

This part of the article, added on December 27, is unanimously signed by all the members of the Montenegrin Chapter of The Njegoskij Fund’s College.

In a strange parallel with this major symbolic gesture to get over the ideology that pulled the country into the war — when Montenegro’s Public Prosecutor is still to decide whether to file charges against nine former Montenegrin officials of the Ministry of Interior suspected of involvement in 79 cases of 1992 repatriations — the President of Montenegro himself, H.E. Mr. Filip Vujanović, recently received in private audience Mr. John Kennedy, presently Fund Advisor in the Bahamas-registered company Boka Fund Ltd. [2], but best known in the early 1990’s to have been the zealous “spokesperson” in London, UK [3] of Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect Radovan Karadžić, advancing him publicly at least twice on UK-based television ITN, being a signatory of a letter from Karadžić to the British Parliament, writing to the German Bundestag for the Bosnian Serb leader, making numerous statements and actively lobbying for ultra-nationalist Serb interests in London political circles [4], in association with Ian Greer Associates (IAG) from early 1992 [5].

As earlier as spring 1991, Mr. Kennedy was already a guest of honour at a SPS tribunal, visiting frequently Slobodan Milošević, Blagoje Adžić, Borislav Jović, Karadžić and others until 1993 when British lobbyists broke off contacts with him when sanctions were imposed to Milošević’s regime and the Serb cause became unpopular [6]. In the meantime, on July 15, 1992, Mr. Kennedy held at the British House of Commons a press conference where Karadžić and him presented together a dossier entitled “Concentration Camps In The New Europe, 1992”, on the existence of concentration camps for Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina [7], precisely at the same time when started in Eastern Bosnia the systematic ethnic cleansing campaign against non-Serb civilian population, mostly Bosnian Muslims and Catholics.
Even after Serbian atrocities in Bosnia be publicly revealed by medias worldwide in the mid-1992 [8], Mr. Kennedy continued to lobby for ultra-nationalist Serb interests, notably by arranging in 1993 a 3-day trip for British MPs David Clark and John Reid to the Richemond Hotel in Geneva, Switzerland, to meet Radovan Karadžić; a trip for which both Ministers were retrospectively censured in 1997 for having failed to declare it, admitting “they were mistaken”, thinking “United Nations paid for the hotel” [9].

President Vujanović rolled the red carpet to Karadžić’s former “spokesperson” in London on November 6 last as part of a €20,000 total donation Mr. Kennedy manages to benefit Hospital “Danilo I” Cetinje, with the Abruzzo Regional Committee of the Italian Red Cross (IRC) and benefactors from New York, USA, close to circles of the Savoy Italian Royal Family.
Involved with Simon Piggott, Alan Cole, Stephen G. Dickson and others in real estate business in Montenegro, on October 20, 2006, the Governmental Tender Commission in charge of the privatisation process of Jadran A.D. abruptly rejected the offer of offshore Consortium Boka Fund formed by Mr. Kennedy, while it was the best bidder.