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Last updated:
Dec.28.2003.
Language
options: bosnian
/ english
Background:
Nicholas (Nikola) Ribic (born 1974) -- charged as a terrorist, is sometimes described as a traitor, Canada’s version of John Walker Lindh.
Nicholas Ribich, a Canadian and former resident of Edmonton, Alberta, was arrested on February 20, 1999 in Mainz, Germany and then charged as part of the Bosnian-Serb army that captured United Nations peacekeepers and used them as human shields against NATO air strikes in 1995.
Ribich, of Serbian ancestry, left his home in Canada to travel to Bosnia-Herzogovina where he joined the Bosnian-Serb army at the height of the war.
Ribich was charged under a section of Canada’s Criminal Code on jurisdiction that had never been used before that allows Canada to claim jurisdiction over kidnapping and hostage-taking offences of or by a Canadian committed outside the country. This law was enacted specifically to deal with terrorists.
Nicholas Ribich's hostage was a fellow Canadian, Capt. Patrick Rechner, working in Bosnia as an unarmed
UN military observer. The May 1995 worldwide television and newspapers coverage showed the shocking photo of a distraught Capt. Rechner chained to a lightning rod at an ammunition bunker in the Bosnian
Serb city of Pale. Ribich was in the uniform of a Bosnian Serb soldier, wielding an AK47 rifle, in the company of other Serb soldiers. Held for 24 days, the photo of Capt. Rechner became a symbol of the United Nations incapacity to deal with Serb military aggression.
Ribich’s trial began in Ottawa, Ontario on October 8, 2002. An audio recording was entered into evidence that revealed Nicholas Ribich on the phone to UN headquarters in Sarajevo, warning that if any more bombs fell on Serb positions, the observers would be the first to die. In his testimony, Capt. Rechner stated that Nicholas Ribich was part of almost every crucial stage of his captivity, including making him a human shield by chaining him to the lightning rod.
The following article is from Canadian Press
published:
Oct.08.2002.
OTTAWA - A Canadian peacekeeper who was chained to a lightning rod as a hostage against NATO bombing in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995 testified Tuesday that a Canadian-born Serb - member of Bosnian Serb forces - took him captive.
Capt. Patrick Rechner, who was an unarmed United Nations observer when he was taken hostage on May 26, 1995, described how Nicholas
(Nikola) Ribic and several other Bosnian Serbs entered his office in Pale outside Sarajevo on that day.
"I'd met him before but this was the first time I saw him in a uniform and a helmet," Rechner said of Ribich, who was in the courtroom. "He told me in a stern voice to sit down."
Rechner, 39, looked similar to the televised images from 1995 that showed him chained as a human shield against NATO air strikes.
Ribich faces four terrorism related hostage-taking charges.
Ribich is accused of being part of the Bosnian Serb terrorist unit - White
Wolves - (chetniks) that abducted Rechner and a Czech peacekeeper after a NATO strike outside Sarajevo, then held them for 24 days as insurance against further bombing.
Rechner testified that Ribich and the others took them to a military compound several kilometers (miles) away from Pale, a Bosnian Serb stronghold.
Prosecutor Peter Lamont showed video clips of Rechner chained to the lightning rod next to what the captain described as a Bosnian-Serb bunker filled with mortar rounds.
Other UN observers were shown chained to bunker doors and lightning rods. Rechner said the tape was shot by one of his captors.
Lamont played an audio tape in which Rechner's voice could be heard over a crackling radio saying: "If the bombing starts again, I have been instructed to tell you that we will die for the sake of NATO. Over."
Rechner said he made the transmission on instructions from a Serb officer.
Nicholas Ribich, 28, was released on bail in 1999, when his father, Peter, posted a $150,000 bond and $50,000 cash.
He has been living with his father in Edmonton, where he was prohibited from holding a passport and leaving an area within 80 kilometers of the
city.
If convicted, Ribich could face a penalty of life imprisonment.
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