Month: August 2023

The United States on Monday imposed sanctions against four top Bosnian Serb officials, including the Serb member of the country’s presidency, for undermining a U.S.-sponsored peace deal that ended the Balkan country’s war in the 1990s.

Bosnia’s presidency member Zeljka Cvijanovic, along with the prime minister, justice minister and parliament speaker of the Serb Republic, facilitated the passage of a law that undermines the Bosnian constitution, U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.

The constitution is part of the Dayton peace accords that ended the 1992-1995 Bosnian war in which 100,000 were killed, dividing the country into two autonomous regions, the Serb Republic and the Bosniak-Croat Federation, linked via a weak central government.

Late in June, lawmakers in the Serb Republic voted to suspend rulings by Bosnia’s constitutional court, a vote initiated by the region’s separatist pro-Russian President Milorad Dodik, who is already under U.S. and U.K. sanctions.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury designated Cvijanovic, Prime Minister Radovan Viskovic, Justice Minister Milos Bukejlovic and parliament speaker Nenad Stevandic for obstructing and threatening the implementation of the Dayton accords by providing the passage of the law.

“This action threatens the stability, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the hard-won peace underpinned by the Dayton Peace Agreement,” said Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian E. Nelson.

“This behavior further threatens the country’s future trajectory and successful integration into Euro-Atlantic institutions,” Nelson added.

Cvijanovic was put under U.K. sanctions last year along with Dodik for what were described as attempts to undermine the legitimacy and functionality of the Bosnian state.

In reaction to the sanctions, Stevandic said that he saw them as a “decoration for consistency, steadfastness and non-indulgence in the face of blackmail and threats from those considered powerful.”

A spokesman for Dodik’s ruling SNSD party said the U.S. decision was “shameless and hypocritical.” “No sanctions will prevent us from doing our job,” Radovan Kovacevic said.

The designations build on prior U.S. sanctions and visa restrictions designed to promote accountability of persons who undermine democratic processes or institutions, the U.S. Department of the Treasury said.

Dodik and his allies have long promoted the secession of the region from Bosnia and its unification with neighboring Serbia. They stepped up activities undermining state institutions in recent months, including suspension of decisions by an international peace envoy.
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Frustration as other foreign nationals were set free. Occasional phone calls, months apart. And the constant fear that the executioner’s noose could be tightened any day.

The family of Jamshid Sharmahd have endured three years of torment as each day they await a breakthrough, while always fearing the worst, for the German citizen sentenced to death in Iran.

Sharmahd was abducted three years ago in late July 2020 by the Iranian authorities and sentenced earlier this year to be hanged for “corruption on Earth.” Iran’s Supreme Court in April confirmed the death penalty.

Activists regard him as one of more than a dozen foreign passport holders held by Iran as hostages in a bid to extract concessions from the West.

His family says that Tehran-born Sharmahd, 68, a software developer who immigrated to Germany in the 1980s but then moved to live in the United States, was kidnapped by Iranian security services in the United Arab Emirates in July 2020, spirited over the border into Oman and then taken to Iran for trial.

Iran has never confirmed how Sharmahd was detained, saying only he was seized in a “complex operation.”

Amnesty International has said he was subjected to “enforced disappearance” followed by a “sham trial” and torture in detention. The U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has classified his detention as arbitrary and confirmed the family’s details on his abduction.

His family, who say he holds only a German passport, are urging stronger action from Germany and other Western governments to earn his release.

Berlin expelled two Iranian diplomats in response to the death sentence, which it called “unacceptable.”

Around 20 people gathered outside the foreign ministry in Berlin on Monday to mark three years since Iran announced Sharmahd’s capture, an AFP correspondent said. 

The demonstrators were holding signs saying “Free Jamshid” and “Stop executions.”

‘Was this goodbye?’

“There is no pressure. A German citizen was kidnapped and nothing happened,” his daughter Gazelle Sharmahd, who lives in the United States, told AFP.

“It’s a game – they push and you push. The push for them is to hang my dad,” she said.

Earlier in July, Sharmahd was allowed to call his wife, also based in the U.S., for the first time in five months. He was also permitted to speak to Gazelle Sharmahd, the first time she had spoken to her father in two years.

But Gazelle Sharmahd said the one-hour conversation, in which he sounded tired, raised more questions than answers.

“Phone calls are great but also a reason for concern,” she said. “They always have a purpose. It could be either a window of opportunity to save his life or a goodbye call.

“Was this to make us shut up before they execute him? Was this a goodbye?”

The Mizan Online news agency of Iran’s judiciary reported in February that a Tehran court sentenced Sharmahd “on the charge of corruption on Earth through planning and directing terrorist acts,” including a 2008 bombing in Shiraz that killed 14 people.

His family ridicule these accusations, saying a “long series of baseless charges” were laid against him in addition to the mosque bombing.

In Berlin, a German foreign ministry spokesman told AFP that the government was using “all channels” to ensure Sharmahd was not executed, while acknowledging his family was “going through something unimaginable and unbearable.”

‘How inhuman’

Concern about the risk to Sharmahd’s life has intensified since May, when Iran executed the Iranian-Swedish dissident Habib Chaab.

Chaab was also convicted of “corruption on Earth.” Mizan said Chaab led the “Harakat al-Nidal terrorist group,” which Iran blames for attacks in Khuzestan province.

According to Amnesty, Chaab was abducted in Turkey in October 2020 to face trial in Iran.

Another Iranian Swedish citizen, the academic Ahmadreza Djalali, is also at risk of being hanged after a conviction for “corruption on Earth.” He was sentenced to death in 2017 based on accusations of spying for Israel that his relatives have vehemently rejected.

Gazelle Sharmahd said she was thrilled for the family of Belgian aid worker Olivier Vandecasteele, who was freed by Iran in a deal that saw the release of Asadollah Assadi, an Iranian diplomat convicted on terrorism charges in a plot to bomb an opposition meeting outside Paris.

Two Austrians and a Dane were freed days later by Iran in a related move under a deal Oman helped broker.

But Gazelle Sharmahd said the release of the four men in apparent exchange for Assadi had also left a bitter taste.

“It should have been everybody,” she said, denouncing a lack of Europe-wide coordination.

“How inhuman is it to leave people behind who have a death sentence? Belgium played the biggest card that Europe had,” she said.
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They rode into a kill zone. The timing was off. Many men were lost. In the end, they recaptured the ruined village of Staromaiorske, claiming Ukraine’s biggest advance for weeks. 

Troops at the spearhead of Ukraine’s counteroffensive say a battle last week along the front in the southeast proved to be tougher and bloodier than expected, with plans going awry and an enemy that was well-prepared. 

“The Russians were waiting for us,” said a 29-year-old soldier using the call-sign Bulat, from a unit sent into battle in armored vehicles during last week’s assault. 

“They fired anti-tank weapons and grenade launchers at us. My vehicle drove over an anti-tank mine, but everything was OK, the vehicle took the hit, and everyone was alive. We dismounted and ran towards the cover. Because the most important [thing] is to find cover and then move on.” 

Tales of the battle of Staromaiorske, recounted to Reuters near the front line in southeastern Ukraine, give an indication of why Kyiv’s boldest counteroffensive of the war, soon entering its third month, has proven a slower and bloodier slog than anticipated. 

“Our mission was planned to take two days. But we couldn’t drive in during the darkness at the right time, for a few reasons. So, we drove in later and lost the right moment,” said Bulat. 

Kyiv, which has received billions of dollars’ worth of equipment and training from Western countries to mount its counteroffensive to recapture occupied territory this summer, has acknowledged that its campaign is unfolding more slowly than expected. Commanders say the deliberate pace is needed to avoid high casualties. 

The Russians have had months to prepare their fortifications and sow minefields. The Ukrainian attackers lack the air superiority that their NATO allies normally expect in their training drills. 

The Russian defenders had set up “pre-sighted zones” in anticipation of the attack, said a 24-year-old Ukrainian marine with the call-sign “Dub.” 

“They methodically destroyed the roads. They made pits that prevented driving in and out of the village, even in dry weather. Even walking was quite hard. You can’t use flashlights at night, but you still have to advance.” 

Another soldier, using the call-sign Pikachu, said men in his unit “tried our best. We made it.” 

“The dismount was not great,” the soldier acknowledged. “We advanced slowly but surely. They were shooting, everything was flying. It was scary, but we moved on. Nobody fell back. Everyone did a great job. 

“Many of us who went will never return home.”  
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