Rahim Ademi
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Rahim Ademi (born January 30, 1954) is Croatian Army general of Kosovo-Albanian origin.
Born and raised in the village of Karač, Vučitrn municipality of Kosovo, Rahim Ademi finished the Yugoslav military academy in Belgrade in 1976 and was assigned to a station in Rogoznica near Šibenik in Croatia, where he got married and had two children.
In 1986, the Military Court in Sarajevo convicted him of counterrevolutionary acts and Albanian irredentism, but after serving a year and a half in jail, the Supreme Military Court agreed with his appeal and acquitted him. He would spend the next years serving as an officer in Sinj until 1990 when the war in Croatia was starting and he deserted from the Yugoslav People's Army in order to help create Croatian army formations in that part of the country.
He officially joined the Ministry of the Interior in 1990 and later became part of the Croatian Army forces. In 1993 he was assigned to the post of the subcommander of the Gospić military district, but was relieved of duty later in the year, after the infamous Medak pocket operation.
Ademi later served as a subcommander of the Split military district and was promoted to brigadier general for his achievements in Operation Storm in 1995. He remained there until 1999 when he was reassigned to the post of the Assistant Chief Inspector of the Armed Forces in Zagreb.
In 2001 the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia finally indicted Ademi for crimes against humanity (ethnic cleansing) committed against the Krajina Serbs in the aforementioned Medak pocket operation. He was in the custody of the Court but was later allowed to prepare his defence free.
Ademi claims that the Croatian government, under pressure from the international community, relieved him of duty in Gospić in 1993 in order to make him a scapegoat, rather than implicating actual commanding officers Janko Bobetko, Mirko Norac and Mladen Markač.
He also claims that the Tribunal prosecution wanted him for questioning as far back as 1998 but that the government never allowed him to answer their questions. He is convinced that he is being sacrificed because of his Albanian descent.
External links
- ICTY Indictment (http://www.un.org/icty/indictment/english/ade-ii010608e.htm)