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This week's newsletter is written by our reporter Jon Manel, who's spent the last few weeks reporting in Serbia and Bosnia and on the London bombs. He's included some pictures from his travels in the Balkans.
My train from Leeds has been delayed for almost an hour. We won't be getting into London until half midnight. I'm exhausted. Yet, somehow, I'm really quite relieved. At last something has returned to normal. Thank goodness for good old traditional late British trains. GNER - you've given me something trivial to worry about again.
Over the last few weeks there have been too many serious reasons to be concerned. Last night, I watched a couple of men arguing about why three people they had known had blown themselves up in London. Some newsagents in Leeds seem to have turned into libraries, with newspapers being pored over as people of all backgrounds try to work out how on earth their city could have been caught up in all of this. A fortnight or so before, I was sitting in a stranger's front room watching a man's tears falling. The day before that, I'd stood around, feeling rather embarrassed, as three women broke down and cried. And I'd looked at men and women piecing together peoples' bones, not knowing which bit belonged to which body. After travelling from Serbia to Bosnia and then from London to Leeds, this has been a time when the normal shield reporters put up between themselves and their work has become rather too fragile.
Srebrenica is a name that everybody should know all about. It should be on that same grim list that rolls off your tongue of all the other places around the world where genocidal massacres have been carried out. For some reason - perhaps because many in this country find the Balkan wars so confusing - that doesn't seem to be the case. It doesn't help that we don鈥檛 know exactly how many people were killed. The 91热爆 has been saying "around 8000". Experts in Bosnia believe the figure could be even higher than 8000. The truth is we'll probably never know. It appears that an unknown number of victims were thrown into the river. Thousands of others were dug up from mass graves and then buried again. Their bodies were broken up and crushed in the process.
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The women I watched crying had lost their husbands and/or sons. The man who cried had miraculously survived the killings. He told me he was lined up to be shot but they missed. He says he woke up to see a field full of bodies. Ten years is a long time by any measure but not, it would appear, when it comes to grief and bitterness on both sides in Srebrenica.
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LOOK AT THE PICTURES FROM SREBRENICA
Some of what happened a decade ago in Bosnia understandably angered and continues to anger Muslims around the world. Just like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and now what has happened in Iraq, such events can be used by some manipulative individuals to help persuade others to follow extreme paths. It's certainly thought that videos and accounts of atrocities against Muslims have been used as recruiting tools by militants. In May of this year, the most senior anti-terrorism judge in France told me he blamed the Iraq war for radicalising and recruiting individuals to groups linked to Al Qaeda in Europe. He said there were new unknown elements being recruited, sometimes very quickly. And he gave the impression the authorities didn't know who they all were.
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The authorities in the UK certainly didn't seem to know anywhere near enough about three certain Muslim men from Leeds - not until they became the London bombers. Now we are all left wondering why they did what they did? Who persuaded them that this was the right path? How many others are there - just like them - who are living seemingly ordinary lives? Considering their families are unlikely to know, the chances of the police or security services knowing enough about them, until it's too late, will be slim.
One woman in Leeds, who vaguely knew one of the bomb suspects, told me she couldn't work out how a man who had become so religious could have carried out such an attack. For her, what they did was contrary to everything their religion stands for. The phrase "city in shock" is an easy headline, but it's certainly seems to be true - especially in the neighbourhoods where these men lived.
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My train has just pulled into King's Cross. The temporary memorial - with all the flowers - to those killed by the four bombers is just outside. I spent a short time there before going up to Leeds. The grief and pain their families are going through must be unimaginable. Now I want to get back to my flat - I'll admit I'm looking forward to it. Spending time at home with my wife seems rather important at the moment.
Jon
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