BANJA LUKA - The Bosnian-Serb Defense Ministry said yesterday that fugitive Bosnian-Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic did not benefit from the protection of the Bosnian-Serb army. Karadzic and his former army commander Ratko Mladic, both wanted by the Hague-based tribunal for war crimes and genocide committed in the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia, “are not under protection nor jurisdiction of the army of Republika Srpska (RS, the Bosnian-Serb entity),” said spokesman Branko Trkulja. “We neither have contacts nor knowledge” concerning the whereabouts of Karadzic and Mladic, Trkulja added. (AFP)

STRASBOURG - Europe’s top human rights watchdog urged Turkey yesterday to respect a ruling of its human right’s court and immediately release four Kurdish former lawmakers whose rights were violated under European law. In a statement, the Council of Europe’s executive council said member state Turkey had to “abide by the judgments by the court... without delay.” It chided Turkey for not living up to its commitments by keeping Leyla Zana, Selim Sadak, Hatip Dicle and Orhan Dogan in prison and refusing to award them financial compensation. (AP)

Turkey’s Parliament will refuse entry to visitors wearing Islamic-style clothes that are seen as a symbolic challenge to the country’s secular regime, a parliament committee said yesterday. Security guards at the Parliament “should not admit visitors whose clothing does not conform to the principles and aims of the secular and democratic Turkish republic,” a memorandum from the Parliament’s administrative and security committee warned. The move followed reports in the local media that women wearing the Islamic-style chador were seen visiting pro-Islamic lawmakers in Parliament. (AP)

The mummified head of a Turkish soldier kept as a macabre souvenir by an Australian World War I fighter has been given to a Turkish veterans’ group, an official said yesterday. The head, which is still covered with skin and has some teeth and whiskers, has bullet holes above the left eye and in the back of the skull. It had been kept in a velvet-lined pine box at the home of an Australian who fought on Turkey’s Gallipoli Peninsula during WWI, said Ramazan Altintas, the president of Victoria State’s Returned Services League Turkish sub-branch. Altintas said the man’s grandson recently discovered the skull at his late grandfather’s house and handed it to police, who gave it to the Turkish veteran’s group Wednesday. (AP)