By: Julia Gorin
Republican Riot

While the United States and Germany are browbeating Serbia into the last leg of surrendering Kosovo to the narco-terrorist mafia demanding it, the latter are beating up female missionaries.

It happened this past November, and for almost two weeks was kept quiet and out of the news. And it happened in the very capital of our Kosovo “success,” Pristina. The Albanian perpetrators attacked Americans, their stubbornly eternal benefactors at Christian-Orthodox expense. (And of course at the expense of local Roma, Turk, Bosniak, Ashkali and Gorani Muslims who were just fine with rule from Belgrade.) When the news did finally get out, via an AP report, it was carried only locally and in Utah:

2 LDS sister missionaries attacked in Kosovo (Fox 13 Now, Nov. 13, 2013)

SALT LAKE CITY — Two American missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were attacked in Kosovo; it happened in the city of Pristina ten days ago, but news reports of the beating just surfaced late Wednesday afternoon.

The incident is being tied to terrorism and the suspects responsible have been arrested.

[An actual arrest is unusual for Kosovo; then again, the victims weren’t among Kosovo’s ethnic minorities, so they count for something.]

Fox 13 News has learned two sister missionaries were beaten by Albanians, who are also tied to plotting a terrorist attack. The LDS Church said the two young women are out of harm’s way and doing OK.

[Also unusual: This local Fox affiliate actually identified the perpetrators directly as Albanians.]

Kosovo is tucked away in the Eastern block of Europe; the country is no stranger to political strife. Video from 2004 shows the break-away Balkan territory suffering from bombings, protests and riots. Civil unrest was not uncommon during that time, and today there are growing concerns about the rise of Islamic extremism in the country.

[Now there’s a nice, neutral way of putting it. Why provide readers/viewers context for what just happened to their fellow Mormons, such as being specific about who was rioting and hurling those Molotov cocktails in 2004? Specifically, Albanians continuing their ethnic and religious purification process while sending a message to the internationals to hurry up with the hand-over of the cleansed Serbian territory.]

Six Albanians suspected of plotting a terrorist attack were arrested ten days ago, and authorities believe two of them beat two sister missionaries in the capital city of Pristina on Nov. 3.

The LDS Church released a statement saying, “We can confirm two sister missionaries were beaten in Kosovo and have been moved out of the area. Gratefully they are making a full recovery.” […]

The video at the link below also uses that oh-so-controversial identifier “…attacked by a group of Albanians.” (As opposed to terms preferred by polite society, like “former Yugoslavs”; “Kosovars”; or “in Serbia.”) The accompanying report mentions that two of the total six arrested reputedly fought alongside Syrian rebels:

2 LDS Sister Missionaries Attacked in Kosovo

SALT LAKE CITY — Two suspected terrorists are being held in Kosovo after a Nov. 3 attack on two American women serving as missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

A total of six men were arrested Nov. 5 in connection with an alleged terrorist plot “inspired by extreme Islamist ideology.” Two of the six are suspects in the investigation of the attack on the LDS missionaries, a senior police official involved with the investigation told the Associated Press.

After being treated in Pristina, the two women left Kosovo to return to the mission home in Tirana, Albania, about a three-hour drive. The women are part of the Adriatic South Mission, which includes Kosovo, Albania and Macedonia. [What a lucky assignment for two women!]

Six ethnic Albanians suspected of plotting a terrorist attack inspired by extreme Islamist ideology, including two believed to have fought alongside Syrian rebels, have been arrested in Kosovo, officials said Tuesday.

A seventh suspect remains at large.

One last report had the detail of a flashlight being used to hit the women in the head:

Two LDS Sister Missionaries Recover after Attack in Kosovo (KUTV, Nov. 13)

…On November 5th, the beating suspects and four others, all ethnic Albanians, were arrested for allegedly planning a terrorist attack. Police said they found a sniper rifle, handguns and explosive materials at the suspects’ houses.

An elder serving in the same mission, posted on his blog that the American embassy in Kosovo reported that the attackers were part of a larger group that has unfriendly feelings toward the LDS church. That missionary also said the sister missionaries were beaten with flashlights and that since the attack, missionaries in that area travel in packs of four.

The mother of one of the victims told us over the phone the two young women are recovering and made the decision to continue serving, although in a different mission area.

Really? Not in safe and stable, multi-ethnic-democracy Kosovo? ( “[Biden] stressed the United States’ continuing, irreversible support for Kosovo’s independence, territorial integrity, and sovereignty as a multi-ethnic democracy.” That’s Vice President Biden, who former Defense Secretary Robert Gates this month confirmed “has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” Meanwhile, what else in the political world is emphatically described as “irreversible,” with use of terms like “eternal,” a hint that Kosovo and the U.S. are condemned to each other, inextricably linked to guard each others’ secrets and crimes like a pair of Clintons.)

It was only thanks to reader J. Brock, a non-Serb outraged over “what the U.S. and other governments are doing to Serbs,” and his puzzlement that most everyone is fooled, that I even learned of this incident. He himself came upon it through some twitter post with a link to an angry ex-Mormon’s blog raging over the incident. So, it was only local Utah news and Mormons or ex-Mormons on forums or blogs, who wrote or knew of it. Some unreported details came from that ex-Mormon blogger — Utahnite — who claims that local media only covered it after community forums such as his shamed them into it:

It was 2 sister missionaries, who were beaten severely with a sharp [or blunt] object to the head & shoved down a flight of stairs…They had to have their heads shaved & stitched up & they’re now recovering in the church mission home & YES, OF COURSE, brainwashed as they are..PLAN TO FINISH THEIR MISSIONS! If their parents had ANY SENSE..they’d demand they come home, NOW!

Utahnite also wondered what Mormon missionaries were doing in Kosovo to begin with. According to an August 2012 article, the LDS Church established itself in Pristina in mid 2011, and Adriatic South Mission president Andrew Ford “says the country is ‘just another place, and we’re used to all sorts of places’ …There are plans to…introduce women (or ’sister missionaries’) into the country next year.”

That doesn’t seem to be going so well.

Kosovo’s being tough for Christian missionaries is a theme that’s come up before. A 2010 article in Cornerstone University’s The Herald (which has since been removed, and the young missionary couple — an American and her converted Albanian husband — asked that their names not be mentioned), read in part:

Kosovo is a Muslim country…religion is not just a faith for them — it is a culture… “When a person converts to Christianity in Kosovo it seems like you are betraying heritage, family, culture,” [____] said. Because of this, [her husband] could not openly tell others that he is a Christian. He needed to wait until the right time and build the right relationships. [His] faith is still a secret to some of his friends and family…

Another Christian group had the misfortune of operating in Kosovo in time for the 2004 riots. If one follows the World English Institute’s “Kosova” chronicle (Prizren, Kosova Church of Christ; the church in Kosova is under persecution) one will notice these excerpts:

The church grew in number and in spirit for a period. In April 04, the people of Prizren raided the school stealing property.

The church has changed significantly recently. Jim is back in Scotland. Several moved to Prishtina for university studies. The Muslim community has become violent, and the assembly is now in the home of Ismajl…”

April 2004
Comments: The church in Prizren is in a city subject to conflicts between the resident Muslims and a few Serbs. The Serbs, confined to their homes for the most part, recently have seen their church buildings burned. NATO failed to halt this conflict. WEI’s school and the church in Prizren suffered loss of some items in their building and are now meeting in homes, appropriately.

Note: August 04
It has been reported that shots were fired over the house where the church meets. This is the home of Ismajl who not only hosts the assemblies, but he regularly teaches students using WEI’s lessons.”

Dear Dick,

Thanks for your words of encouragement.

There were two days of “demonstrations” in Kosova on the 18th and 19th of March. About 30 people were killed around the country, including several UN workers. I arrived the following week, and by then all was calm….all of the windows had been broken out of the WEI office and church meeting place. However, they had regrouped, as it were, and were meeting in one of the members home…In Christ and for His sake,
Doug

One is reminded to be dismayed that the flood of Christian groups into post-war Kosovo has focused on Albanians more than on helping their Orthodox brethren, who needed food, clothes, medicine, housing and support. And of course this one uses the majority-Muslim usurper’s pronunciation and spelling of the Christian-Serb province.

Between the LDS news and this weekend’s shooting at Columbia Mall in Maryland, it’s become relevant to bring up a certain other mall shooting. This past October NY Post carried a noteworthy item by Paul Sperry, which deigned to bring up the 2007 Valentine’s massacre at Trolley Square in Salt Lake City. The Post article also dared to utter the Bosnian-Muslim name and origin of the perpetrator, Sulejman Talovic, and to be emphatic via photos and a TV news clip. (Do check out the last sentence of that two-minute report.) “Dared,” because the Bosnian Muslims are our other protegees at Orthodox-Serb expense. Significantly, Trolley Square was the first deadly mall shooting in America. Links and bold emphasis added:

Could the Kenya attack happen here? It did (NY Post, Oct. 12, 2013)

After Islamic gunmen attacked the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, the collective reaction from the US media was to speculate whether such terror could happen here, as if a jihadist assault on a mall inside America had never before been tried.

CNN was typical: “Can it happen here? Yes, say security experts, but it hasn’t.”

News flash: it did.

On the evening of Feb. 12, 2007, a young Muslim man walked into the Trolley Square mall in Salt Lake City with a pistol-grip, 12-gauge shotgun and a 38-caliber revolver and opened fire on shoppers, killing five and wounding four others, including a pregnant woman.

Police say he “sought to kill as many people as possible.” He had a backpack full of ammunition, enough firepower to massacre dozens of innocent people. But fortunately, an off-duty cop returned fire and eventually, with the help of other police, put an end to the terrorist’s life and grand plans.

Twice as many people were killed at the Utah mall than the Boston Marathon. Yet the attack garnered few national headlines.

Local media wrote it off as the act of a madman, parroting the quick conclusion of law enforcement.

Officially, the FBI declared the mass shooting was not an act of terrorism.

“We were unable to pin down any particular motive,” said Tim Fuhrman, then-special agent in charge of the bureau’s field office in Salt Lake City. “Unfortunately, his motivations went to the grave with him.”

Sulejman Talovic
Photo: AP

But the FBI ignored much of the shooter’s background.

A Salt Lake City police officer inside the Trolley Square Mall Feb., 12, 2007, the night of the shooting
Photo: AP

The shooter was Sulejmen Talovic, an 18-year-old Bosnian immigrant named after Suleiman the Magnificent, the 16th-century jihadist-turned-sultan.

As early as 2004, police were called to Talovic’s school after it was discovered that he was looking at Tek-9 semiautomatic firearms on the Internet and boasting that his “grandfather was in the jihad.”

It was a reference to the 1990s holy war between Bosnian Muslims and Christian Serbs in which his grandfather was reportedly killed.

And yet, even with this boastful admission, our news media and so-called law enforcement insisted that the boy probably became demented by the fighting that resulted from that jihad rather than by a family history of violence in the jihad itself. (Again, check out the last sentence of that news clip.)

Apparently, Talovic had prepared for his own martyrdom. He told a friend before the attack that “tomorrow is going to be the happiest day of my life, but it will happen only once.”

“One interpretation of this statement is that Talovic was happy that he was going to be a shahid — that he would be committing jihad and go to paradise,” according to a July 2, 2007, electronic communication from the Salt Lake City field office to the counterterrorism division of the FBI.

Before leaving for the mall, which was located just a few minutes from the mosque he attended, he showered and put on a necklace featuring a miniature Koran, a gift from his father [also a jihad veteran].

Prior to his death, some witnesses overheard Talovic shouting “Allahu Akbar!” — or “Allah is greatest!” — a ritual cry of suicide terrorists.

Talovic was “described as religious,” according to the FBI communiqué, marked “Secret.” “He had attend[ed] the mosque regularly for Friday prayers.”

That mosque was the Al-Noor Mosque, led by a Somali national. Some investigators suspect Talovic was radicalized there.

These details are buried in the more than 745 pages of investigative reports generated in the case by the FBI, the same agency that officially claims it found no evidence Talovic’s religion was a factor.

“Clearly, he had some religious beliefs,” Fuhrman said, “but just because someone has religious beliefs doesn’t mean anything is a terrorist act.”

No, but it strains credulity that Talovic wasn’t animated by his faith. There was an abundance of clues he was motivated at least in part by jihadist impulses. […]

According to a Utah-local report on Feb. 21, 2007 (link no longer available), Talovic’s initial target may have been an LDS church:

“Was Talovic Spotted at LDS Church?”

A security worker for the LDS church reveals to ABC 4 News, security guards watching over the crowds at Music and the Spoken Word the Sunday before the Trolley Square shootings were trailing a man he believes was Sulejmen Talovic… “There was a suspicious man with an overcoat and a back pack…[He] appeared to be carrying something inside the coat that he kept adjusting.”

The security worker says the young man resembled Talovic and in the week following the Trolley Square killings, many of his peers in LDS security agree Talovic was amidst the crowd at the conference center just one day before the shootings. “If we wouldn’t have been on our toes something could have happened. We highly believe it was him.”

ABC 4 News spoke with LDS church spokesperson Scott Trotter, who confirmed video tape was rolled on the suspicious person, and that the person had a similarity to Talovic…The security worker tells ABC 4 News he believes the man left after seeing that security procedures dictate purse and back pack searches before entrance to the conference center is permitted. […]

But the dossier on Bosnia and Kosovo be damned: Always in step with U.S. policy on the Balkans and Eastern Orthodoxy, “Hollywood has resolutely kept its eye on the real threat. Serbian terrorism,” Daniel Greenfield wrote last Friday. “The United States has remained unscathed by Serbian terrorism, though…this weekend, ‘Ride Along’…once again takes on the terrible threat of: Serbian terrorism. When the Serbs aren’t available, the Russians have to step in…When ‘Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit’ featured a terrorist cell in Dearborn, even though Muslims dominate the area, the villains were shown operating out of a Russian Orthodox church and getting their cues from a priest reading the bible while the terrorists cried out, ‘Slava Bogu’ or ‘Praise God.’”

In closing, one must linger on a sentence contained in the NY Post item above: “[T]he Islamic element was so efficiently scrubbed from the Trolley Square terrorist attack that Salt Lake charities and local Mormons helped raise funds for Talovic’s family to prepare and ship their son’s bullet-ridden body to Bosnia for an Islamic burial.”

The United Suckers of America have similarly stepped up for Kosovo, in one case donating and transporting a fire truck (link no longer available):

“2012 – Mason helps Kosovo, Dart grows and Dansville gets tech” (Lansing Journal, Dec 31, 2012)

INGHAM COUNTY — An international act of charity and growth for a company that has its international headquarters in Mason were top stories for southern Ingham County in 2012.

The Leslie School District opened a 100-acre nature center and Dansville Public Schools gave every student an iPad this year as well.

An unfortunate setback for a plan for Mason to donate a fire truck from Mason to Kosovo turned into [an] example of vigorous community support.

After two years of red tape, inspections and planning, the 1984 decommissioned fire truck donation from the Mason Fire Department was on its way to Selfridge Airforce Base when on Aug. 6 when it broke down near Brighton.

Mason Mayor Leon Clark was driving the truck in what he thought was its final ride in America before taking a 5,000-mile trip by cargo plane to Germany, than to the town of Vitina in Kosovo.

But instead it had to miss its flight because of a costly blown head gasket.

Undeterred, the community stepped up again to not only help get the truck repaired but raise funds to send people along with it.

An all-day fund-raiser on Sept. 10 at the Mason A & W raised $1,700 towards the cost of sending people, along with a $1,000 donation from the Ingham County Mounted Division and $1,000 private donation from a member of the Mason Rotary Club.

“If you add in the over $2,000 worth of repairs donated by Mark Hildebrandt at Done Right Auto and RV, you can see that this has truly become a community wide project, that everyone is proud of,” he said.

The truck and four Mason officials eventually made it to Kosovo along with extra equipment in November.

Fire truck that was headed for Kosovo. Poor fire truck.

From another report:

…The city seems to have a fondness for Kosovo: shortly after its civil war, eight refugee families moved to Mason. Jakup Jahiri, a Kosovo native, came to the city two years ago to visit his son and was amazed at the amount of firefighting equipment Mason had when his own city had so little.

“[Jahiri] said, ‘You must sleep very peacefully at night to have this amount of trucks and equipment for the size of town that you have,’” said Mason Fire Chief Kerry Minshall. “That led to the discussion about what they do and don’t have over there and we decided to see what we could do to get this donated to them.”

This time around, Clark, along with three other Mason firefighters, are accompanying the truck across the Atlantic. But the donations don’t stop there — they are also donating lightly used supplies, including coats, pants, boots, gloves, helmets, hoses, exhaust fans and a set of jaws of life. Clark and his team are going to spend some time in Vitina after the delivery showing the local firefighters how to use some of the equipment and making sure everything gets delivered intact — and with no breakdowns.

A reference point on Vitina, among countless others: Kosovo: Serb house destroyed in fire (B92, Oct. 1, 2007)

KOSOVSKA VITINA, Oct 1 (Tanjug) – A local Serb’s house burned in a fire that broke out late Sunday in the village of Klokot, near Kosovska Vitina. The house belonged to Milan Nedeljkovic, who escaped unharmed. Locals suspect that the incident was the work of arsonists…[T]he Nedeljkovic family moved to their old house because it is located in “a better protected part of the village.”

A week ago, in the same village, unidentified gunmen opened fire on a store owned by local Serb Bora Spasic. Although a dozen people were inside the store at the time of the attack, no one was injured.

So, who’s sleeping less “peacefully at night”? Kosovo’s Albanians, because there aren’t enough fire trucks? Or Kosovo’s non-Albanians, because the Albanians habitually set their houses, schools, and churches on fire? Knowing, of course, that there aren’t enough fire trucks.

I leave you with a Vitina news item that opened 2013, with its festivities for Kosovo’s five-year independence anniversary:

KPS suspend members over WW2 memorial incident (Beta, Jan. 22, 2013)

PRIŠTINA — The Kosovo police, KPS, have announced that five of their members were suspended over an incident that occurred on Monday in the town of Vitina. They include the police station and operations chief, according to a statement.

According to a Beta report, it was said that “despite announcements” from the directorate in Priština, they did not undertake the measures to prevent the tearing down of a monument.

The memorial was dedicated to the fighters of the WW2 anti-fascist Partisan troops (NOV).

According to the news agency, “a group of about 100 citizens led by the president of the organization of veterans of the former KLA” yesterday attacked and brought down the memorial.

The incident – filmed and posted on YouTube – was one in a series in Kosovo on Sunday and Monday, when ethnic Albanians targeted Serb cemeteries and memorial sites.

Vitina