Burial of 610 identified Bosniaks in 2005
Burial of 465 identified Bosniaks in 2007
Burial of 775 identified victims in 2010
The Srebrenica massacre, also known as the Srebrenica genocide,[10][11][12][13][14][15] refers to the July 1995 killing, during the Bosnian War, of more than 8,000[1] Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), mainly men and boys, in and around the town of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina, by units of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) under the command of General Ratko Mladić. The mass murder was described by the Secretary-General of the United Nations as the worst crime on European soil since the Second World War.[2][3] A paramilitary unit from Serbia known as the Scorpions, officially part of the Serbian Interior Ministry until 1991,[16] participated in the massacre[17][6] and it is alleged that foreign volunteers including the Greek Volunteer Guard also participated.[7][8][9]
In April 1993, the United Nations declared the besieged enclave of Srebrenica in the Drina Valley of north-eastern Bosnia a "safe area" under UN protection. However, in July 1995, the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR), represented on the ground by a 400-strong contingent of Dutch peacekeepers, Dutchbat, did not prevent the town's capture by the VRS and the subsequent massacre.[18][19][20][21]
In 2004, in a unanimous ruling on the case of Prosecutor v. Krstić, the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), located in the Hague, ruled that the massacre of the enclave's male inhabitants constituted genocide, a crime under international law.[22] The forcible transfer of between 25,000 to 30,000 Bosniak women, children and elderly which accompanied the massacre was found to be confirming evidence of the genocidal intent of members of the VRS Main Staff who orchestrated the massacre.[23]
Theodor Meron, the presiding judge of the Appeals Chamber, stated:
By seeking to eliminate a part of the Bosnian Muslims, the Bosnian Serb forces committed genocide. They targeted for extinction the 40,000 Bosnian Muslims living in Srebrenica, a group which was emblematic of the Bosnian Muslims in general. They stripped all the male Muslim prisoners, military and civilian, elderly and young, of their personal belongings and identification, and deliberately and methodically killed them solely on the basis of their identity.
[24]
In February 2007 the International Court of Justice (ICJ) concurred with the ICTY judgement, stating:
The Court concludes that the acts committed at Srebrenica falling within Article II
(a) and
(b) of the Convention were committed with the specific intent to destroy in part the group of the Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina as such; and accordingly that these were acts of genocide, committed by members of the VRS in and around Srebrenica from about 13 July 1995.
[25]
The vast majority of those killed were adult men and teenage boys but the victims included boys aged under 15, men over the age of 65, women and reportedly even several babies.[26][27] The Preliminary List of People Missing or Killed in Srebrenica compiled by the Bosnian Federal Commission of Missing Persons contains 8,373 names,[1] some 500 of them under 18,[28] and includes several dozen women and girls.[27][29] As of June 2011, 6594 genocide victims have been identified through DNA analysis of body parts recovered from mass graves[30] and 5,138 victims have been buried at the Memorial Centre of Potočari.[31][32]
In 2005, in a message to the tenth anniversary commemoration of the genocide, the Secretary-General of the United Nations noted that, while blame lay first and foremost with those who planned and carried out the massacre and those who assisted and harboured them, great nations had failed to respond adequately, the UN itself had made serious errors of judgement and the tragedy of Srebrenica would haunt the UN's history forever.[2]
Serbia became the first state to be found in breach of the Genocide Convention. In the Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro case the International Court of Justice presented its judgment on 26 February 2007. It cleared Serbia of direct involvement in genocide,[33] but ruled that Belgrade did breach international law by failing to prevent the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, and for failing to try or transfer the persons accused of genocide to the ICTY, in order to comply with its obligations under Articles I and VI of the Genocide Convention, in particular in respect of General Ratko Mladić.[34][35][36] Mladić had been accused by the ICTY and was suspected of hiding in Serbia until his arrest there on 25 May 2011.[37]
The multiethnic Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was inhabited by mainly Muslim Bosniaks (44 percent), Orthodox Serbs (31 percent) and Catholic Croats (17 percent). Following a declaration of national sovereignty on 15 October 1991 as the former Yugoslavia began to disintegrate, a referendum for independence was held on 29 February 1992. The result, in favour of independence, was rejected by the political representatives of the Bosnian Serbs who had boycotted the referendum. The Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was formally recognised by the European Community on 6 April 1992, and by the United States the following day. Following the declaration of independence, Bosnian Serb forces, supported by the Serbian government of Slobodan Milošević and the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), attacked the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to unify and secure Serb territory. A fierce struggle for territorial control ensued, accompanied by the ethnic cleansing of the non-Serb population from areas under Serb control; in particular, the Bosniak population of Eastern Bosnia, near the border with Serbia.[38]
The predominantly Bosniak area of Central Podrinje (the region around Srebrenica) had a primary strategic importance to Serbs, as without it there would be no territorial integrity within their new political entity of Republika Srpska.[39] They thus proceeded with the ethnic cleansing of Bosniaks from Bosniak ethnic territories in Eastern Bosnia and Central Podrinje. In the words of the ICTY judgement:
Once towns and villages were securely in their hands, the Serb forces – the military, the police, the paramilitaries and, sometimes, even Serb villagers – applied the same pattern: Muslim houses and apartments were systematically ransacked or burnt down, Muslim villagers were rounded up or captured and, in the process, sometimes beaten or killed. Men and women were separated, with many of the men detained in the former KP Dom prison.
[38]
In neighbouring Bratunac, Bosniaks were either killed or forced to flee to Srebrenica, resulting in 1,156 deaths, according to Bosnian government data.[40] Thousands of Bosniaks were also killed in Foča, Zvornik, Cerska and Snagovo.[41]
In 1992, Bosniak villages around Srebrenica were under constant attack by Serb forces. The Bosnian Institute in the UK has published a list of 296 villages destroyed by Serb forces around Srebrenica three years before the genocide and in the first three months of war (April – June 1992):[42]
More than three years before the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, Bosnian Serb nationalists – with the logistical, moral and financial support of Serbia and the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) – destroyed 296 predominantly Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) villages in the region around Srebrenica, forcibly uprooting some 70,000 Bosniaks from their homes and systematically massacring at least 3,166 Bosniaks (documented deaths) including many women, children and elderly.
According to the Naser Oric trial judgement:[43]
Between April 1992 and March 1993, the town of Srebrenica and the villages in the area held by Bosnian Muslims were constantly subjected to Serb military assaults, including artillery attacks, sniper fire, as well as occasional bombing from aircraft. Each onslaught followed a similar pattern. Serb soldiers and paramilitaries surrounded a Bosnian Muslim village or hamlet, called upon the population to surrender their weapons, and then began with indiscriminate shelling and shooting. In most cases, they then entered the village or hamlet, expelled or killed the population, who offered no significant resistance, and destroyed their homes. During this period, Srebrenica was subjected to indiscriminate shelling from all directions on a daily basis. Potočari in particular was a daily target for Serb artillery and infantry because it was a sensitive point in the defence line around Srebrenica. Other Bosnian Muslim settlements were routinely attacked as well. All this resulted in a great number of refugees and casualties.
Serb military and paramilitary forces from the area and neighbouring parts of eastern Bosnia and Serbia gained control of Srebrenica for several weeks in early 1992, killing and expelling Bosniak civilians. In May 1992, Bosnian government forces under the leadership of Naser Orić recaptured the town.
Over the remainder of 1992, offensives by Bosnian government forces from Srebrenica increased the area under their control, and by January 1993 they had linked with Bosniak-held Žepa to the south and Cerska to the west. At this time, the Srebrenica enclave had reached its peak size of 900square kilometres (350 sq miles), although it was never linked to the main area of Bosnian-government controlled land in the west and remained, in the words of the ICTY, "a vulnerable island amid Serb-controlled territory".[44]
Over the next few months, the Serb military captured the villages of Konjević Polje and Cerska, severing the link between Srebrenica and Žepa and reducing the size of the Srebrenica enclave to 150 square kilometres. Bosniak residents of the outlying areas converged on the town of Srebrenica and its population swelled to between 50,000 and 60,000 people.
General Philippe Morillon of France, Commander of the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR), visited Srebrenica in March 1993. By then, the town was overcrowded and siege conditions prevailed. There was almost no running water as the advancing Serb forces had destroyed the town’s water supplies; people relied on makeshift generators for electricity. Food, medicine and other essentials were extremely scarce. Before leaving, General Morillon told the panicked residents of Srebrenica at a public gathering that the town was under the protection of the UN and that he would never abandon them.
Between March and April 1993 several thousand Bosniaks were evacuated from Srebrenica under the auspices of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The evacuations were opposed by the Bosnian government in Sarajevo as contributing to the ethnic cleansing of predominantly Bosniak territory.
The Serb authorities remained intent on capturing the enclave. On 13 April 1993, the Serbs told the UNHCR representatives that they would attack the town within two days unless the Bosniaks surrendered and agreed to be evacuated.[45] The Bosniaks refused to surrender.
Areas of control in Bosnia and Herzegovina in September 1994; Eastern Bosnian enclaves near the Serbian border
On 16 April 1993, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 819, which demanded that: "all parties and others concerned treat Srebrenica and its surroundings as a safe area which should be free from any armed attack or any other hostile act".[46] On 18 April 1993, the first group of UNPROFOR troops arrived in Srebrenica. On 8 May 1993 agreement was reached of demilitarization of Srebrenica. According to UN reports "General [Sefer] Halilovic and General [Ratko] Mladic agreed on measures covering the whole of the Srebrenica enclave and the adjacent enclave of Zepa. Under the terms of the new agreement, Bosniak forces within the enclave would hand over their weapons, ammunition and mines to UNPROFOR, after which Serbs' "heavy weapons and units that constituted a menace to the demilitarized zones which will have been established in Zepa and Srebrenica will be withdrawn." Unlike the earlier agreement, the agreement of 8 May stated specifically that Srebrenica was to be considered a "demilitarized zone," as referred to in article 60 of the Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I)."
Between 1,000 and 2,000 soldiers from three of the Serb Army's Drina Corps Brigades were deployed around the enclave, equipped with tanks, armoured vehicles, artillery and mortars. The 28th Mountain Division of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) remaining in the enclave was neither well organised nor equipped: a firm command structure and communications system was lacking and some soldiers carried old hunting rifles or no weapons at all. Few had proper uniforms.
From the outset, both parties to the conflict violated the “safe area” agreement. Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Karremans (the Dutchbat Commander) testified to the ICTY that his personnel were prevented from returning to the enclave by Serb forces and that equipment and ammunition were also prevented from getting in.[47] Bosniaks in Srebrenica complained of attacks by Serb soldiers, while to the Serbs it appeared that Bosnian government forces in Srebrenica were using the “safe area” as a convenient base from which to launch counter-offensives against the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) and that UNPROFOR was failing to take any action to prevent it.[47] General Sefer Halilović admitted that ARBiH helicopters had flown in violation of the no-fly zone and that he had personally dispatched eight helicopters with ammunition for the 28th Division.
A Security Council mission led by Diego Arria arrived in Srebrenica on 25 April 1993 and, in their subsequent report to the U.N., condemned the Serbs for perpetrating "a slow-motion process of genocide."[48] The mission then stated that "Serb forces must withdraw to points from which they cannot attack, harass or terrorise the town. UNPROFOR should be in a position to determine the related parameters. The mission believes, as does UNPROFOR, that the actual 4.5 km by 0.5 km decided as a safe area should be greatly expanded." Specific instructions from United Nations Headquarters in New York stated that UNPROFOR should not be too zealous in searching for Bosniak weapons and, later, that the Serbs should withdraw their heavy weapons before the Bosniaks gave up their weapons. The Serbs never did withdraw their heavy weapons.[48]
By early 1995, fewer and fewer supply convoys were making it through to the enclave. The already meager resources of the civilian population dwindled further and even the UN forces started running dangerously low on food, medicine, ammunition and fuel, eventually being forced to start patrolling the enclave on foot. Dutchbat soldiers who went out of the area on leave were not allowed to return[49] and their number dropped from 600 to 400 men. In March and April, the Dutch soldiers noticed a build-up of Serb forces near two of the observation posts, "OP Romeo" and "OP Quebec".
In March 1995, Radovan Karadžić, President of the Republika Srpska (RS), in spite of pressure from the international community to end the war and ongoing efforts to negotiate a peace agreement, issued a directive to the VRS concerning the long-term strategy of the VRS forces in the enclave. The directive, known as “Directive 7”, specified that the VRS was to:
Complete the physical separation of Srebrenica from Žepa as soon as possible, preventing even communication between individuals in the two enclaves. By planned and well-thought out combat operations, create an unbearable situation of total insecurity with no hope of further survival or life for the inhabitants of Srebrenica.
[50]
By mid 1995, the humanitarian situation of the Bosniak civilians and military personnel in the enclave was catastrophic. In May, following orders, Naser Orić and his staff left the enclave by helicopter to Tuzla, leaving ranking officers in command of the 28th Division. In late June and early July, the 28th Division issued a series of reports including urgent pleas for the humanitarian corridor to the enclave to be reopened. When this failed, Bosniak civilians began dying from starvation. On Friday, 7 July the mayor of Srebrenica reported 8 residents had died of starvation.[51]
On 4 June 1995, the French commander of the UN forces in former Yugoslavia, general Bernard Janvier, secretly met Ratko Mladic to obtain the release of hostages, many of whom were French. Mladic demanded of Janvier that there would be no more air strikes.
The Serb offensive on Srebrenica began in earnest on 6 July 1995. In the following days, the five UNPROFOR observation posts, in the southern part of the enclave, fell one by one in the face of the Serb forces advance. Some of the Dutch soldiers retreated into the enclave after their posts were attacked, but the crews of the other observation posts surrendered into Serb custody. Simultaneously, the defending Bosnian forces came under heavy fire and were pushed back towards the town. Once the southern perimeter began to collapse, about 4,000 Bosniak residents, who had been living in a Swedish housing complex for refugees nearby, fled north into Srebrenica town. Dutch soldiers reported that the advancing Serbs were "cleansing" the houses in the southern part of the enclave.[52]
On 8 July, a Dutch YPR-765 armoured vehicle took fire from the Serbs and withdrew. A group of Bosniaks demanded that the armoured vehicle stay to defend them. As the armoured vehicle continued to withdraw, a Bosniak man threw a hand grenade on the vehicle, killing soldier Raviv van Renssen.[54]
Late on 9 July 1995, emboldened by early successes and little resistance from largely demilitarised Bosniaks, as well as the absence of any significant reaction from the international community, President Karadžić issued a new order authorising the VRS Drina Corps to capture the town of Srebrenica.[55]
On the morning of 10 July 1995, the situation in Srebrenica was tense. Residents crowded the streets. The Dutch UNPROFOR troops fired warning shots over the attacking Serbs’ heads and their mortars fired flares but they never fired directly on any Serb units. Lieutenant-Colonel Karremans sent many urgent requests for NATO air support to defend the town, but no assistance was forthcoming until around 2:30 pm on 11 July 1995, when 2 Dutch F-16's guided by British SAS bombed VRS tanks advancing towards the town. NATO planes also attempted to bomb VRS artillery positions overlooking the town, but had to abort the operation due to poor visibility. NATO plans to continue the air strikes were abandoned following the Serb Army's threats to kill Dutch troops and the French hostages (pilots in the custody of the VRS), as well as shell the UN Potočari compound on the outside of the town, and surrounding areas where 20,000 to 30,000 civilians had fled.[55]
Late in the afternoon of 11 July General Mladić, accompanied by General Živanović (then Commander of the Drina Corps), General Krstić (then Deputy Commander and Chief of Staff of the Drina Corps) and other Serb Army officers, took a triumphant walk through the empty streets of Srebrenica town. The moment was captured on film by Serbian journalist Zoran Petrović.[55]
The Dutch soldiers operating under the auspices of the UN have been criticised for their part in failing to protect the Bosniak refugees in the "safe area". Lieutenant-Colonel Thom Karremans was filmed drinking a toast with genocide suspect and Serb general Ratko Mladić during the bungled negotiations on the fate of the civilian population grouped in Potočari.[56]
The two highest ranking Serb politicians from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Radovan Karadžić and Momčilo Krajišnik, were warned by military commander General Mladić (also indicted on genocide charges) that their plans could not be realised without committing genocide. Mladić said:
People are not little stones, or keys in someone's pocket, that can be moved from one place to another just like that.... Therefore, we cannot precisely arrange for only Serbs to stay in one part of the country while removing others painlessly. I do not know how Mr. Krajišnik and Mr. Karadžić will explain that to the world. That is genocide.
[57]
Compound of the former Dutch battalion ("
Dutchbat") headquarters near
Srebrenica/
Potočari in Bosnia and Herzegovina on abandoned industrial premises
By the evening of 11 July 1995, approximately 20,000 to 25,000 Bosniak refugees from Srebrenica were gathered in Potočari, seeking protection within the UN compound there. Several thousand had pressed inside the compound itself, while the rest were spread throughout the neighbouring factories and fields. Though the vast majority were women, children, elderly or disabled, 63 witnesses estimated that there were at least 300 men inside the perimeter of the UN compound and between 600 and 900 men in the crowd outside.[47] The Dutch claimed their base was full.
Conditions in Potočari were deplorable. There was very little food or water available and the July heat was stifling. One of the Dutchbat officers described the scene as follows:
They were panicked, they were scared, and they were pressing each other against the soldiers, my soldiers, the UN soldiers that tried to calm them. People that fell were trampled on. It was a chaotic situation.
[47]
The United Nations Security Council, in Resolution 1004, expressed concern at the humanitarian situation in Potočari, which also condemned the offensive by Bosnian Serb forces and demanded immediate withdrawal.
On 12 July 1995, as the day wore on, the refugees in the compound could see VRS soldiers setting houses and haystacks on fire. Throughout the afternoon, Serb soldiers mingled in the crowd and summary executions of men occurred.[47] In the late morning of 12 July 1995 a witness saw a pile of 20 to 30 bodies heaped up behind the Transport Building in Potočari, alongside a tractor-like machine. Another testified that he saw a soldier slay a child with a knife in the middle of a crowd of expellees. He also said that he saw Serb soldiers execute more than a hundred Bosnian Muslim men in the area behind the Zinc Factory and then load their bodies onto a truck, although the number and nature of the murders stand in contrast to other evidence on the Trial Record which indicates that the killings in Potočari were sporadic in nature. Soldiers were picking people out of the crowd and taking them away. A witness recounted how three brothers – one merely a child and the others in their teens – were taken out in the night. When the boys’ mother went looking for them, she found them with their throats slit.[47][55]
That night, a Dutchbat medical orderly witnessed two Serb soldiers raping a young woman.[58]
One survivor described the murder of a baby and the rape of women occurring in the close vicinity of Dutch U.N. peacekeepers who did nothing to prevent it. According to the survivor, a Serb told a mother to make her child stop crying, and when it continued to cry he took it and slit its throat, after which he laughed.[59] Stories about rapes and killings spread through the crowd and the terror in the camp escalated.[47] Several individuals were so terrified that they committed suicide by hanging themselves.[55]
One of the survivors, Zarfa Turkovic,[60] described the horrors of rapes as follows: "Two [Serb soldiers] took her legs and raised them up in the air, while the third began raping her. Four of them were taking turns on her. People were silent, no one moved. She was screaming and yelling and begging them to stop. They put a rag into her mouth and then we just heard silent sobs...."[61]
From the morning of 12 July, Serb forces began gathering men and boys from the refugee population in Potočari and holding them in separate locations, and as the refugees began boarding the buses headed north towards Bosniak-held territory, Serb soldiers separated out men of military age who were trying to clamber aboard. Occasionally, younger and older men were stopped as well (some as young as 14 or 15).[62][63][64] These men were taken to a building in Potočari referred to as the “White House”. As early as the evening of 12 July 1995, Major Franken of the Dutchbat heard that no men were arriving with the women and children at their destination in Kladanj.[47]
On 13 July 1995, Dutchbat troops witnessed definite signs that the Serb soldiers were murdering some of the Bosniak men who had been separated. For example, Corporal Vaasen saw two soldiers take a man behind the "White House", heard a shot and saw the two soldiers reappear alone. Another Dutchbat officer saw Serb soldiers murder an unarmed man with a single gunshot to the head and heard gunshots 20–40 times an hour throughout the afternoon. When the Dutchbat soldiers told Colonel Joseph Kingori, a United Nations Military Observer (UNMO) in the Srebrenica area, that men were being taken behind the "White House" and not coming back, Colonel Kingori went to investigate. He heard gunshots as he approached, but was stopped by Serb soldiers before he could find out what was going on.[47]
Some of the executions were carried out at night under arc lights, and industrial bulldozers then pushed the bodies into mass graves.[65] According to evidence collected from Bosniaks by French policeman Jean-René Ruez, some were buried alive; he also heard testimony describing Serb forces killing and torturing refugees at will, streets littered with corpses, people committing suicide to avoid having their noses, lips and ears chopped off, and adults being forced to watch the soldiers kill their children.[65]
Many women and girls suffered rape and sexual abuse and other forms of torture. According to the testimony of Zumra Šehomerovic:
The Serbs began at a certain point to take girls and young women out of the group of refugees. They were raped. The rapes often took place under the eyes of others and sometimes even under the eyes of the children of the mother. A Dutch soldier stood by and he simply looked around with a
walkman on his head. He did not react at all to what was happening. It did not happen just before my eyes, for I saw that personally, but also before the eyes of us all. The Dutch soldiers walked around everywhere. It is impossible that they did not see it.
There was a woman with a small baby a few months old. A Chetnik told the mother that the child must stop crying. When the child did not stop crying, he snatched the child away and cut its throat. Then he laughed. There was a Dutch soldier there who was watching. He did not react at all.
I saw yet more frightful things. For example, there was a girl, she must have been about nine years old. At a certain moment some Chetniks recommended to her brother that he rape the girl. He did not do it and I also think that he could not have done it for he was still just a child. Then they murdered that young boy. I have personally seen all that. I really want to emphasize that all this happened in the immediate vicinity of the
base. In the same way I also saw other people who were murdered. Some of them had their throats cut. Others were
beheaded.’
[66]
Testimony of Ramiza Gurdić:
"I saw how a young boy of about ten was killed by Serbs in Dutch uniform. This happened in front of my own eyes. The mother sat on the ground and her young son sat beside her. The young boy was placed on his mother’s lap. The young boy was killed. His head was cut off. The body remained on the lap of the mother. The Serbian soldier placed the head of the young boy on his knife and showed it to everyone.... I saw how a pregnant woman was slaughtered. There were Serbs who stabbed her in the stomach, cut her open and took two small children out of her stomach and then beat them to death on the ground. I saw this with my own eyes."
[67]
Testimony of Kada Hotić:
"There was a young woman with a baby on the way to the bus. The baby cried and a Serbian soldier told her that she had to make sure that the baby was quiet. Then the soldier took the child from the mother and cut its throat. I do not know whether Dutchbat soldiers saw that.... There was a sort of fence on the left-hand side of the road to Potocari. I heard then a young woman screaming very close by (4 or 5 meters away). I then heard another woman beg: “Leave her, she is only nine years old.” The screaming suddenly stopped. I was so in shock that I could scarcely move... The rumour later quickly circulated that a nine year old girl had been raped.’"
[68]
That night, a Dutch Bat medical orderly came across two Serb soldiers raping a young woman:
"[W]e saw two Serb soldiers, one of them was standing guard and the other one was lying on the girl, with his pants off. And we saw a girl lying on the ground, on some kind of mattress. There was blood on the mattress, even she was covered with blood. She had bruises on her legs. There was even blood coming down her legs. She was in total shock. She went totally crazy.”
Bosnian Muslim refugees nearby could see the rape, but could do nothing about it because of Serb soldiers standing nearby. Other people heard women screaming, or saw women being dragged away. Several individuals were so terrified that they committed suicide by hanging themselves. Throughout the night and early the next morning, stories about the rapes and killings spread through the crowd and the terror in the camp escalated.
Screams, gunshots and other frightening noises were audible throughout the night and no one could sleep. Soldiers were picking people out of the crowd and taking them away: some returned; others did not. Witness T recounted how three brothers – one merely a child and the others in their teens – were taken out in the night. When the boys’ mother went looking for them, she found them with their throats slit.
[69]
As a result of exhaustive UN negotiations with Serb troops, around 25,000 Srebrenica women were forcibly transferred to the Government-controlled territory.
Some buses apparently never reached safety. According to a witness account given by Kadir Habibović, who hid himself on one of the first buses from the base in Potočari to Kladanj, he saw at least one vehicle full of Bosniak women being driven away from Bosnian government-held territory.[70]
On the evening of 11 July 1995, word spread through the Bosniak community that able-bodied men should take to the woods, form a column together with members of the ARBiH's 28th Division and attempt a breakthrough towards Bosnian government-held territory in the north.[71] The men believed they stood a better chance of surviving by trying to escape than if they let themselves fall into Serb hands.[72]
Map of military operations during the Srebrenica massacre. Green arrow marks route of the Bosnian column
Around 10 pm on 11 July the Division command, together with the municipal authorities, took the decision, on their own initiative, to form a column and leave the safe area in an attempt to reach government-controlled territory around Tuzla.[73]
The journey to Tuzla – a distance of 55 kilometres – entailed crossing extremely hilly terrain in the height of the summer heat. Most individuals started out with enough rations for only two days; by the third day, people were beginning to eat leaves and slugs.[74] Dehydration made finding drinking water a major problem, along with lack of sleep and physical exhaustion – many were exhausted before setting out. There was little cohesion or sense of common purpose in the column.[75]
Along the way, the column was shelled and ambushed. In severe mental distress, some of the refugees committed suicide. Others were induced to surrender. Survivors claimed they were attacked with a chemical agent that caused hallucinations, disorientation and strange behaviour.[76][77][78][79] Infiltrators in civilian clothing confused, attacked and killed refugees, including the wounded.[80][81] Many of those taken prisoner were killed on the spot.[82] Others were collected together before being taken to remote locations for mass execution.
The attacks on the column broke it up into smaller segments. Only about one third of the men succeeded in crossing the asphalt road between Konjević Polje and Nova Kasaba. It was this group that eventually crossed Bosnian Serb lines to reach Bosnian government territory on and after 16 July. The vast majority of the victims of the massacre were members of the column who failed to complete the perilous journey.
A second, smaller group of refugees (estimated at between 700 and 800) attempted to escape into Serbia via Mount Kvarac via Bratunac, or across the River Drina and via Bajina Bašta. It is not known how many were intercepted, arrested and killed on the way. A third group headed for Žepa, possibly having first tried to reach Tuzla. The estimates of the numbers involved vary widely, from 300 to around 850. In addition, small pockets of resistance apparently remained behind and engaged Serb forces.
Almost all the 28th Division, 5500 to 6000 soldiers, not all armed, gathered in the village of Susnjari, in the hills north of the town of Srebrenica, along with about 7,000 civilians. They included a very small number of women, not more than ten.[83] Others assembled in the nearby village of Jaglici.[84]
At around midnight on 11 July 1995, the column started moving along the axis between Konjević Polje and Bratunac. The main column was preceded by a reconnaissance party of four scouts, approximately five kilometres ahead.[citation needed] Members of the column walked one behind the other, following the paper trail laid down by a de-mining unit.[85]
The column was led by a group of 50–100 of the best soldiers from each brigade, carrying the best available equipment. Elements of the 284th Brigade were followed by the 280th Brigade, with them the Chief of Staff Ramiz Becirovic. Civilians accompanied by other soldiers followed and at the back was the independent battalion which was part of the 28th Division.[73] The elite of the enclave, including the mother and sister of Naser Orić[citation needed], accompanied the best troops at the front of the column.[85] Others in the column included the political leaders of the enclave, medical staff of the local hospital and the families of prominent persons in Srebrenica. A small number of women, children and elderly travelled with the column in the woods.[71][86] Each brigade was responsible for a group of refugees and many civilians joined the military units spontaneously as the journey got underway[citation needed].
The column was between 12 and 15 kilometres long, about two and a half hours separating head from tail.[73]
The breakout from the enclave and the attempt to reach Tuzla came as a surprise to the VRS and caused considerable confusion, as the VRS had expected the men to go to Potočari. Serb general Milan Gvero in a briefing referred to members of the column as "hardened and violent criminals who will stop at nothing to prevent being taken prisoner and to enable their escape into Bosnian territory.".[87] The Drina Corps and the various brigades were ordered by the VRS Main Staff to assign all available manpower to the task of finding any Muslim groups observed, preventing them from crossing into Muslim territory, taking them prisoner and holding them in buildings that could be secured by small forces.[88]
During the night, poor visibility, fear of mines and panic induced by artillery fire split the column in two.[89]
On the afternoon of 12 July, the front section emerged from the woods and crossed the asphalt road from Konjevic Polje and Nova Kasaba. Around 18.00 hours, the RS Army located the main part of the column still in the hilly area around Kamenica (outside the village of Pobudje). Around 20.00 hours this part of the column, led by the municipal authorities and the wounded, started descending Kamenica Hill(44°19′53″N 18°14′5″E / 44.33139°N 18.23472°E / 44.33139; 18.23472 (Karmenica)) towards the road. After a few dozen men had crossed, soldiers of the RS Army arrived from the direction of Kravica in trucks and armored vehicles including a white vehicle with UNPROFOR symbols, calling out for Bosniaks over the loudspeaker to surrender.[89]
It was around this time that yellow smoke was observed, followed by observations of strange behaviour, including suicides, hallucinations and members of the column attacking one another.[76] Numerous survivors interviewed by Human Rights Watch claimed they were attacked with a chemical agent that caused hallucinations and disorientation.[77][78] (Gen. Zdravko Tolimir was an advocate of the use of chemical weapons against the ArBiH.[79][90])
Heavy shooting and shelling began, which continued into the night. The armed members of the column returned fire and all scattered. Survivors describe a group of at least 1000 engaged at close range by small arms. Hundreds appear to have been killed as they fled the open area and some were said to have killed themselves to escape capture.
RS Army and Ministry of Interior persuaded members of the column to surrender by promising them protection and safe transportation towards Tuzla under UNPROFOR and Red Cross supervision. Appropriated UN and Red Cross equipment was used to deceive the refugees into believing the promises. Surrendering prisoners' personal belongings were confiscated and some were executed on the spot.[89]
The rear of the column lost contact with the front and panic broke out. Many people remained in the Kamenica Hill area for a number of days, unable to move on with the escape route blocked by Serb forces. Thousands of Bosniaks surrendered or were captured. Some prisoners were ordered to summon friends and family members from the woods. There were reports of Serb forces using megaphones to call on the marchers to surrender, telling them that they would be exchanged for Serb soldiers held captive by Bosniak forces. It was at Kamenica that VRS personnel in civilian dress were reported to have infiltrated the column.
Men from the rear of the column who survived this ordeal described it as a manhunt.[71]
Exhumations in Srebrenica, 1996
Close to Sandići, on the main road from Bratunac to Konjević Polje, one witness describes the Serbs forcing a Bosniak man to call other Bosniaks down from the mountains. Some 200 to 300 men, including the witness' brother, followed his instructions and descended to meet the VRS, presumably expecting some exchange of prisoners would take place. The witness hid behind a tree to see what would happen next. He watched as the men were lined up in seven ranks, each some forty metres in length, with their hands behind their heads; they were then mowed down by machine gun fire.[citation needed].[91]
The VRS also sent one of the civilians who wished to surrender back towards the column: one of his eyes had been gouged out, his ears had been cut off and a cross carved into his forehead.[92]
A small number of women, children and elderly people who had been part of the column were allowed to join the buses evacuating the women and children out of Potočari. Among them was Alma Delimustafić, a woman soldier of the 28th Brigade; at this time, Delimustafić was in civilian clothes and was released.[93]
The central section of the column managed to escape the shooting and reached Kamenica at about 11.00 hours and waited there for the wounded. Captain Ejub Golić and the Independent Battalion turned back towards Hajdučko Groblje to help the casualties. A number of survivors from the rear, who managed to escape crossed the asphalt roads to the north or the west of the area, had joined those in the central section of the column. The front third of the column, which had already left Kamenica Hill by the time the ambush occurred, headed for Mount Udrc (44°16′59″N 19°3′6″E / 44.28306°N 19.05167°E / 44.28306; 19.05167 (Mount Udrc)); crossing the main asphalt road, they then forded the river Jadar. They reached the base of the mountain early on the morning of Thursday, 13 July and regrouped. At first, it was decided to send 300 ARBiH soldiers back in an attempt to break through the blockades. When reports came in that the central section of the column had nevertheless succeeded in crossing the road at Konjević Polje, this plan was abandoned. Approximately 1,000 additional men managed to reach Udrc that night.[94]
From Udrc the marchers moved toward the River Drinjaka and on to Mount Velja Glava, continuing through the night. Finding a Serb presence at Mount Velja Glava, where they arrived on Friday, 14 July the column was forced to skirt the mountain and wait on its slopes before it was able to move on toward Liplje and Marcici. Arriving at Marcici in the evening of 14 July the marchers were again ambushed near Snagovo by Serb forces equipped with anti-aircraft guns, artillery, and tanks.[95]
According to Lieutenant Džemail Bećirović, the column managed to break through the ambush and, in so doing, captured a VRS officer, Major Zoran Janković—providing the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina with a significant bargaining counter. This prompted an attempt at negotiating a cessation in the fighting, but negotiations with local Serb forces failed.[96] Nevertheless, the act of repulsing the ambush had a positive effect on morale of the marchers, who also captured an amount of weapons and supplies.[citation needed]
The evening of 15 July saw the first radio contact between the 2nd Corps and the 28th Division, established using a walkie-talkie captured from the VRS. After initial distrust on the part of the 28th Division, the brothers Šabić were able to identify each other as they stood on either side of the VRS lines. Early in the morning, the column crossed the asphalt road linking Zvornik with Caparde and headed in the direction of Planinci, leaving a unit of some 100 to 200 armed marchers behind to wait for stragglers.[citation needed]
The column reached Krizevici later that day, and remained there while an attempt was made to negotiate with local Serb forces for safe passage through the Serb lines into Bosnian government controlled territory. The members of the column were advised to stay where they were, and to allow the Serb forces time to arrange for safe passage. It soon became apparent, though, that the small Serb force deployed in the area was only trying to gain time to organise a further attack on the marchers. In the area of Marcici-Crni the RS armed forces deployed 500 soldiers and policemen in order to stop the split part of column (about 2,500 people), which was moving from Glodi towards Marcici.[citation needed]
At this point, the column’s leaders decided to form several small groups of between 100 and 200 persons and send these to reconnoiter the way ahead. Early in the afternoon, the 2nd Corps and the 28th Division of the ARBiH met each other in the village of Potocani. The presidium of Srebrenica were the first to reach Bosnian terrain.[citation needed]
The hillside at Baljkovica (44°27′N 18°58′E / 44.45°N 18.967°E / 44.45; 18.967 (Baljkovica)) formed the last VRS line separating the column from Bosnian-held territory. The VRS cordon actually consisted of two lines, the first of which presented a front on the Tuzla side against the 2nd Corps and the other a front against the approaching 28th Division.[citation needed]
On the evening of 15 July a heavy hailstorm caused the Serb forces to take cover. The column’s advance group took advantage of this to attack the Serb rear lines at Baljkovica. During the fighting, the main body of what remained of the column began to move from Krizevici. It reached the area of fighting at about 3 am on Sunday, 16 July.[citation needed]
At approximately 05.00 hours on 16 July, the 2nd Corps made its first attempt to break through the VRS cordon from the Bosnian side. The objective was to force a breakthrough close to the hamlets of Parlog and Resnik. They were joined by Naser Orić and a number of his men.[citation needed]
Around 8 am on the morning of 16 July parts of the 28th Division, with the 2nd Corps of the RBiH Army from Tuzla providing artillery support, attacked and breached RS Army lines. There was fierce fighting across the general area of Baljkovica.[97]
Captured heavy arms including two Praga self-propelled anti-aircraft guns were fired at the Serb front line and the column finally succeeded in breaking through to Bosnian government controlled territory and linking up with BiH units at between 1 pm and 2 pm on 16 July.[citation needed]
Following radio negotiations between the 2nd Corps and the Zvornik Brigade, the Zvornik Brigade Command, which had lost three lines of trenches, agreed to open a corridor to allow “evacuation" of the column in return for the release of captured policemen and soldiers. The Baljkovica corridor was open from 14.00 to 17.00 hours.[98]
After the corridor was closed between 17.00 and 18.00 hours the Zvornik Brigade Command reported that around 5000 civilians, with probably “a certain number of soldiers" with them had been let through, but "all those who passed were unarmed”.[99]
Damaged building in Srebrenica after the war
Only a few journalists witnessed the arrival of the column in Bosnian-held territory, most attention was focused on the reception of the women and children at the airbase in Tuzla (44°27′31″N 18°43′31″E / 44.45861°N 18.72528°E / 44.45861; 18.72528 (Tuzla)). The few press and television reports described the arrival of 'an army of ghosts': men clad in rags, totally exhausted and emaciated by hunger. Some had no more than underwear, some were walking on bleeding feet wrapped in rags or plastic, and some were being carried on makeshift stretchers.[74] There were men walking hand in hand with children; many were still visibly frightened. Some were delirious and hallucinating as a result of the immense stress they had endured. One soldier had begun firing on men in his own unit as they arrived in Baljkovica and was killed to prevent further bloodshed; the medical station set up by the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Međeđa handed out large quantities of tranquillisers.[citation needed]
The survivors felt bitterness towards the UN because it had not been able to protect the "Safe Area." Bitterness and resentment was also directed towards the 2nd Corps of the ARBiH and there were a number of incidents. In one, a member of the 28th Division opened fire at the Corps Commander, Sead Delić, who had resisted all calls from his officers for a military push to link up with fleeing soldiers and civilians; a military police bodyguard was killed, while another returned fire and killed the sniper. Tensions were so great that 2nd Corps staff officers removed their insignia in order to avoid recognition. According to the Deputy Corps Commander, the division had "turned against the 2nd Corps." This lack of confidence in the 2nd Corps was nothing new, however, as the 28th Division had felt abandoned already in Srebrenica.[citation needed]
By 4 August or thereabouts, the ArBiH determined that 3,175 members of the 28th Division had managed to get through to Tuzla. 2628 members of the Division, soldiers and officers, were considered certain to have been killed. The approximate number of individual members of the column killed was estimated at between 8300 and 9722.[100]
Once the corridor had closed Serb forces recommenced hunting down parts of the column still in areas under their control. Around 2,000 refugees were reported to be hiding in the woods in the area of Pobudje.[99]
On 17 July 1995, “searching the terrain”, the RS Army captured a number of Bosniaks. Four children aged between 8 and 14 captured by the Bratunac Brigade were taken to the military barracks in Bratunac.[99][101] When one of them described seeing a large number of ARBiH soldiers committing suicide and shooting at each other[citation needed], Brigade Commander Blagojević suggested that the Drina Corps' press unit should record this testimony on video.[101] The fate of the boys remains uncertain.
On 18 July, after a soldier was killed “trying to capture some persons during the search operation”, the Zvornik Brigade Command issued an order to execute prisoners in its zone of responsibility in order to avoid any risks associated with their capture. The order was presumed to have remained effective until it was countermanded on 21 July.[99]
Although Serb forces had long been blamed for the massacre, it was not until June 2004—following the Srebrenica commission's preliminary report—that Serb officials acknowledged that their security forces planned and carried out the mass killing. A Serb commission's final report on the 1995 Srebrenica massacre acknowledged that the mass murder of the men and boys was planned. The commission found that more than 7,800 were killed after it compiled thirty-four lists of victims.
A concerted effort was made to capture all Bosniak men of military age. In fact, those captured included many boys well below that age and elderly men several years above that age that remained in the enclave following the take-over of Srebrenica. These men and boys were targeted regardless of whether they chose to flee to Potočari or to join the Bosnian Muslim column. The operation to capture and detain the Bosnian Muslim men was well organised and comprehensive. The buses which transported the women and children were systematically searched for men.[55]
The question of why the executions took place at all is not easy to answer. During Radislav Krstić's trial before the ICTY, the prosecution's military advisor, Richard Butler, pointed out in taking this course of action, the Serb Army deprived themselves of an extremely valuable bargaining counter. Butler suggested that they would have had far more to gain had they taken the men in Potočari as prisoners of war, under the supervision of the International Red Cross (ICRC) and the UN troops still in the area. It might then have been possible to enter into some sort of exchange deal or they might have been able to force political concessions. Based on this reasoning, the ensuing mass murder defied military explanation.[55]
The vast amount of planning and high-level coordination invested in killing thousands of men in a few days is apparent from the scale and the methodical nature in which the executions were carried out. A concerted effort was made to capture all Bosniak men of military age. In fact, those captured included many boys well below that age and elderly men above it.[102]
The Army of Republika Srpska took the largest number of prisoners on 13 July, along the Bratunac-Konjević Polje road. It remains impossible to cite a precise figure, but witness statements describe the assembly points such as the field at Sandići, the agricultural warehouses in Kravica, the school in Konjević Polje, the football field in Nova Kasaba, the village of Lolići and the village school of Luke. Several thousands of people were herded together in the field near Sandići and on the Nova Kasaba football pitch, where they were searched and put into smaller groups. In a video tape made by journalist Zoran Petrović, a Serb soldier states that at least 3,000 to 4,000 men had given themselves up on the road. By the late afternoon of 13 July, the total had risen to some 6,000 according to the intercepted radio communication; the following day, Major Franken of Dutchbat was given the same figure by Colonel Radislav Janković of the Serb army. Many of the prisoners had been seen in the locations described by passing convoys taking the women and children to Kladanj by bus, while various aerial photographs have since provided evidence to confirm this version of events.[86][102]
One hour after the evacuation of the females from Potočari was completed, the Drina Corps staff diverted the buses to the areas in which the men were being held. Colonel Krsmanović, who on 12 July had arranged the buses for the evacuation, ordered the 700 men in Sandići to be collected, and the soldiers guarding them made them throw their possessions on a large heap and hand over anything of value. During the afternoon, the group in Sandići was visited by Mladić who told them that they would come to no harm, that they would be treated as prisoners of war, that they would be exchanged for other prisoners and that their families had been escorted to Tuzla in safety. Some of these men were placed on the transport to Bratunac and other locations, while some were marched on foot to the warehouses in Kravica. The men gathered on the soccer ground at Nova Kasaba were forced to hand over their personal belongings. They too received a personal visit from Mladić during the afternoon of 13 July; on this occasion, he announced that the Bosnian authorities in Tuzla did not want the men and that they were therefore to be taken to other locations. The men in Nova Kasaba were loaded onto buses and trucks and were taken to Bratunac or the other locations.[102]
The Bosnian men who had been separated from the women, children and elderly in Potočari numbering approximately 1,000 were transported to Bratunac and subsequently joined by Bosnian men captured from the column.[103] Almost to a man, the thousands of Bosnian prisoners captured, following the take-over of Srebrenica, were executed. Some were killed individually or in small groups by the soldiers who captured them and some were killed in the places where they were temporarily detained. Most, however, were killed in carefully orchestrated mass executions, commencing on 13 July 1995 in the region just north of Srebrenica.
The mass executions followed a well-established pattern. The men were first taken to empty schools or warehouses. After being detained there for some hours, they were loaded onto buses or trucks and taken to another site for execution. Usually, the execution fields were in isolated locations. The prisoners were unarmed and in many cases, steps had been taken to minimise resistance, such as blindfolding them, binding their wrists behind their backs with ligatures or removing their shoes. Once at the killing fields, the men were taken off the trucks in small groups, lined up and shot. Those who survived the initial round of shooting were individually shot with an extra round, though sometimes only after they had been left to suffer for a time.[102]
The process of finding victim bodies in the Srebrenica region, often in mass graves, exhuming them and finally identifying them was relatively slow.
A small-scale execution took place prior to midday at the Jadar River on 13 July. Seventeen men were transported by bus a short distance to a spot on the banks of the Jadar River. The men were then lined up and shot. One man, after being hit in the hip by a bullet, jumped into the river and managed to escape.[104]
Skull of a victim of the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre. Exhumed mass grave outside the village of
Potocari, Bosnia and Herzegovina. July 2007.
The first large-scale mass executions began on the afternoon of 13 July 1995 in the valley of the River Cerska, to the west of Konjevic Polje. One witness, hidden among trees, saw two or three trucks, followed by an armored vehicle and an earthmoving machine proceeding towards Cerska. After that, he heard gunshots for half an hour and then saw the armoured vehicle going in the opposite direction, but not the earthmoving machine. Other witnesses report seeing a pool of blood alongside the road to Cerska that day. Muhamed Durakovic, a UN translator, probably passed this execution site later that day. He reports seeing bodies tossed into a ditch alongside the road, with some men still alive.[55][105]
Aerial photos and excavations later confirmed the presence of a mass grave near this location. Ammunition cartridges found at the scene reveal that the victims were lined up on one side of the road, whereupon their executioners shot from the other. The bodies—150 in number—were covered with earth where they lay. It could later be established that they had been killed by guns. All were men, between the ages of 14 and 50. All but three of the 150 were wearing civilian clothes. Many had their hands tied behind their backs. Nine could later be identified and were indeed on the list of missing persons from Srebrenica.[55]
Later that same afternoon, 13 July 1995 executions were also conducted in the largest of four warehouses (farm sheds) owned by the Agricultural Cooperative in Kravica. Between 1,000 and 1,500 men had been captured in fields near Sandići and detained in Sandići Meadow. They were brought to Kravica, either by bus or on foot, the distance being approximately one kilometer. A witness recalls seeing around 200 men, stripped to the waist and with their hands in the air, being forced to run in the direction of Kravica. An aerial photograph taken at 14:00 hours that afternoon shows two buses standing in front of the sheds.[55]
At around 18:00 hours, when the men were all being held in the warehouse, VRS soldiers threw in hand grenades and shot with various weapons, including rocket propelled grenades. In the local area it is said that the mass murder in Kravica was unplanned and started quite spontaneously when one of the warehouse doors suddenly swung open.[55]
Supposedly, there was more killing in and around Kravica and Sandići. Even before the murders in the warehouse, some 200 or 300 men were formed up in ranks near Sandići and then were executed en masse with concentrated machine guns. At Kravica, it seems that the local population had a hand in the killings. Some victims were mutilated and killed with knives. The bodies were taken to Bratunac or simply dumped in the river that runs alongside the road. One witness states that this all took place on 14 July. There were three survivors of the mass murder in the farm sheds at Kravica.[55]
Armed guards shot at the men who tried to climb out the windows to escape the massacre. When the shooting stopped, the shed was full of bodies. Another survivor, who was only slightly wounded, reports:
I was not even able to touch the floor, the concrete floor of the warehouse.... After the shooting, I felt a strange kind of heat, warmth, which was coming from the blood that covered the concrete floor and I was stepping on the dead people who were lying around. But there were even men (just men) who were still alive, who were only wounded and as soon as I would step on him, I would hear him cry, moan, because I was trying to move as fast as I could. I could tell that people had been completely disembodied and I could feel bones of the people that had been hit by those bursts of bullets or shells, I could feel their ribs crushing. Then I would get up again and continue....
[47]
When this witness climbed out of a window, he was seen by a guard who shot at him. He then pretended to be dead and managed to escape the following morning. The other witness quoted above spent the night under a heap of bodies; the next morning, he watched as the soldiers examined the corpses for signs of life. The few survivors were forced to sing Serbian songs, and were then shot. Once the final victim had been killed, an excavator was driven in to shunt the bodies out of the shed; the asphalt outside was then hosed down with water. In September 1996, however, it was still possible to find the evidence.[55]
Analyses of hair, blood and explosives residue collected at the Kravica Warehouse provide strong evidence of the killings. Experts determined the presence of bullet strikes, explosives residue, bullets and shell cases, as well as human blood, bones and tissue adhering to the walls and floors of the building. Forensic evidence presented by the ICTY Prosecutor established a link between the executions in Kravica and the 'primary' mass grave known as Glogova 2, in which the remains of 139 people were found. In the 'secondary' grave known as Zeleni Jadar 5 there were 145 bodies, a number of which were charred. Pieces of brick and window frame which were found in the Glogova 1 grave that was opened later also established a link with Kravica. Here, the remains of 191 victims were found.[55]
As the buses crowded with Bosnian women, children and elderly made their way from Potočari to Kladanj, they were stopped at Tišća village, searched, and the Bosnian men and boys found on board were removed from the bus. The evidence reveals a well-organised operation in Tišća.[55]
From the checkpoint, an officer directed the soldier escorting the witness towards a nearby school where many other prisoners were being held. At the school, a soldier on a field telephone appeared to be transmitting and receiving orders. Sometime around midnight, the witness was loaded onto a truck with 22 other men with their hands tied behind their backs. At one point the truck stopped and a soldier on the scene said: "Not here. Take them up there, where they took people before." The truck reached another stopping point where the soldiers came around to the back of the truck and started shooting the prisoners. The survivor escaped by running away from the truck and hiding in a forest.[55]
A large group of the prisoners who had been held overnight in Bratunac were bussed in a convoy of 30 vehicles to the Grbavci school in Orahovac early in the morning of 14 July 1995. When they got there, the school gym was already half-filled with prisoners who had been arriving since the early morning hours and within a few hours, the building was completely full. Survivors estimated that there were 2,000 to 2,500 men there, some of them very young and some quite elderly, although the ICTY Prosecution suggested this may have been an over-estimation and that the number of prisoners at this site was probably closer to 1,000. Some prisoners were taken outside and killed. At some point, a witness recalled, General Mladić arrived and told the men: "Well, your government does not want you and I have to take care of you."[55]
After being held in the gym for several hours, the men were led out in small groups to the execution fields that afternoon. Each prisoner was blindfolded and given a drink of water as he left the gym. The prisoners were then taken in trucks to the execution fields less than one kilometre away. The men were lined up and shot in the back; those who survived the initial shooting were killed with an extra shot. Two adjacent meadows were used; once one was full of bodies, the executioners moved to the other. While the executions were in progress, the survivors said, earth-moving equipment was digging the graves. A witness who survived the shootings by pretending to be dead, reported that General Mladić drove up in a red car and watched some of the executions.[55]
The forensic evidence supports crucial aspects of the survivors’ testimony. Both, aerial and satellite photos show that the ground in Orahovac was disturbed between 5 and 27 July 1995 and again between 7 and 27 September 1995. Two primary mass graves were uncovered in the area and were named Lazete 1 and Lazete 2 by investigators.[55]
The Lazete 1 gravesite was exhumed by the ICTY Prosecution between 13 July and 3 August 2000. All of the 130 individuals uncovered, for whom sex could be determined, were male; 138 blindfolds were uncovered in the grave. Identification material for 23 persons, listed as missing following the fall of Srebrenica, was located during the exhumations at this site. The gravesite Lazete 2 was partly exhumed by a joint team from the Office of the Prosecutor and Physicians for Human Rights between August and September 1996 and completed in 2000. All of the 243 victims associated with Lazete 2 were male and the experts determined that the vast majority died of gunshot injuries. In addition, 147 blindfolds were located.[55]
Forensic analysis of soil/pollen samples, blindfolds, ligatures, shell cases and aerial images of creation/disturbance dates, further revealed that bodies from the Lazete 1 and 2 graves were removed and reburied at secondary graves named Hodžići Road 3, 4 and 5. Aerial images show that these secondary gravesites were created between 7 September and 2 October 1995 and all of them were exhumed in 1998.[55]
Delegates of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) examine an exhumed mass grave of victims of the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre, outside the village of Potocari, Bosnia and Herzegovina. July 2007.
On 14 and 15 July 1995, another large group of prisoners numbering some 1,500 to 2,000 were taken from Bratunac to the school in Petkovići. The conditions under which these men were held at the Petkovići school were even worse than those in Grabavci. It was hot, overcrowded and there was no food or water. In the absence of anything else, some prisoners chose to drink their own urine. Every now and then, soldiers would enter the room and physically abuse prisoners, or would call them outside. A few of the prisoners contemplated an escape attempt, but others said it would be better to stay since the International Red Cross would be sure to monitor the situation and they could not all be killed.[55]
The men were called outside in small groups. They were ordered to strip to the waist and to remove their shoes, whereupon their hands were tied behind their backs. During the night of 14 July, the men were taken by truck to the dam at Petkovići. Those who arrived later could see immediately what was happening there. A large number of bodies were strewn on the ground, their hands tied behind their backs. Small groups of five to ten men were taken out of the trucks, lined up and shot. Some begged for water but their pleas were ignored.[55] A survivor described his feelings of fear combined with thirst thus:
I was really sorry that I would die thirsty, and I was trying to hide amongst the people as long as I could, like everybody else. I just wanted to live for another second or two. And when it was my turn, I jumped out with what I believe were four other people. I could feel the gravel beneath my feet. It hurt.... I was walking with my head bent down and I wasn’t feeling anything.... And then I thought that I would die very fast, that I would not suffer. And I just thought that my mother would never know where I had ended up. This is what I was thinking as I was getting out of the truck. [As the soldiers walked around to kill the survivors of the first round of shooting] I was still very thirsty. But I was sort of between life and death. I didn’t know whether I wanted to live or to die anymore. I decided not to call out for them to shoot and kill me, but I was sort of praying to God that they’d come and kill me.
[47]
After the soldiers had left, two survivors helped each other to untie their hands, and then crawled over the heap of bodies towards the woods, where they intended to hide. As dawn arrived, they could see the execution site where bulldozers were collecting the bodies. On the way to the execution site, one of the survivors had peeked out from under his blindfold and had seen that Mladić was also on his way to the scene.[47]
Aerial photos confirmed that the earth near the Petkovići dam had been disturbed, and that it was disturbed yet again some time between 7 and 27 September 1995. When the grave here was opened in April 1998, there seemed to be many bodies missing. Their removal had been accomplished with mechanical apparatus, causing considerable disturbance to the grave and its contents. At this time, the grave contained the remains of no more than 43 persons. Other bodies had been removed to a secondary grave, Liplje 2, prior to 2 October 1995. Here, the remains of at least 191 individuals were discovered.[47]
On 14 July 1995 more prisoners from Bratunac were bussed northward to a school in the village of Pilica, north of Zvornik. As at other detention facilities, there was no food or water and several men died in the school gym from heat and dehydration. The men were held at the Pilica school for two nights. On 16 July 1995, following a now familiar pattern, the men were called out of the school and loaded onto buses with their hands tied behind their backs. They were then driven to the Branjevo Military Farm, where groups of 10 were lined up and shot.[106]
Dražen Erdemović—who confessed killing at least 70 Bosniaks—was a member of the VRS 10th Sabotage Detachment (a Main Staff subordinate unit) and participated in the mass execution. Erdemović appeared as a prosecution witness and testified: "The men in front of us were ordered to turn their backs. When those men turned their backs to us, we shot at them. We were given orders to shoot."[107]
On this point, one of the survivors recalls:
When they shot, I threw myself on the ground... one man fell on my head. I think that he was killed on the spot. I could feel the hot blood pouring over me.... I could hear one man crying for help. He was begging them to kill him. And they simply said “Let him suffer. We’ll kill him later.”
Erdemović said that all but one of the victims wore civilian clothes and that, except for one person who tried to escape, they offered no resistance before being shot. Sometimes the executioners were particularly cruel. When some of the soldiers recognised acquaintances from Srebrenica, they beat and humiliated them before killing them. Erdemovic had to persuade his fellow soldiers to stop using a machine gun for the killings; while it mortally wounded the prisoners it did not cause death immediately and prolonged their suffering.[107] Between 1,000 and 1,200 men were killed in the course of that day at this execution site.[109]
Aerial photographs, taken on 17 July 1995 of an area around the Branjevo Military Farm, show a large number of bodies lying in the field near the farm, as well as traces of the excavator that collected the bodies from the field.[110]
Satellite photo of Nova Kasaba mass graves.
Erdemović testified that, at around 15:00 hours on 16 July 1995 after he and his fellow soldiers from the 10th Sabotage Detachment had finished executing the prisoners at the Branjevo Military Farm, they were told that there was a group of 500 Bosnian prisoners from Srebrenica trying to break out of a nearby Dom Kultura club. Erdemović and the other members of his unit refused to carry out any more killings. They were then told to attend a meeting with a Lieutenant Colonel at a café in Pilica. Erdemović and his fellow-soldiers travelled to the café as requested and, as they waited, they could hear shots and grenades being detonated. The sounds lasted for approximately 15–20 minutes after which a soldier from Bratunac entered the café to inform those present that "everything was over".[111]
There were no survivors to explain exactly what had happened in the Dom Kultura.[111] The executions at the Dom Kultura were remarkable in that this was no remote spot but a location in the centre of town on the main road from Zvornik to Bijeljina.[112] Over a year later, it was still possible to find physical evidence of this atrocity. As in Kravica, many traces of blood, hair and body tissue were found in the building, with cartridges and shells littered throughout the two storeys.[113] It could also be established that explosives and machine guns had been used. Human remains and personal possessions were found under the stage, where blood had dripped down through the floorboards.
Two of the three survivors of the executions at the Branjevo Military Farm were arrested by local Bosnian Serb police on 25 July and sent to the prisoner of war compound at Batkovici. One had been a member of the group separated from the women in Potočari on 13 July. The prisoners who were taken to Batkovici survived the ordeal.[114] and were later able to testify before the Tribunal.[115]
Čančari Road 12 was the site of the re-interment of at least 174 bodies, moved here from the mass grave at the Branjevo Military Farm.[116] Only 43 were complete sets of remains, most of which established that death had taken place as the result of rifle fire. Of the 313 various body parts found, 145 displayed gunshot wounds of a severity likely to prove fatal.[117]
The exact date of the executions at Kozluk is not known, although it can be narrowed down to the period of 14 to 17 July 1995. The most probable dates are 15 and 16 July, not least due to the geographic location of Kozluk, between Petkovići Dam and the Branjevo Military Farm. It therefore falls within the pattern of ever more northerly execution sites: Orahovac on 14 July, Petkovići Dam on 15 July, the Branjevo Military Farm and the Pilica Dom Kultura on 16 July.[118] Another indication is that a Zvornik Brigade excavator spent eight hours in Kozluk on 16 July and a truck belonging to same brigade made two journeys between Orahovac and Kozluk that day. A bulldozer is known to have been active in Kozluk on 18 and 19 July.[119]
Among Bosnian refugees in Germany, there were rumors of executions in Kozluk, during which the five hundred or so prisoners were forced to sing Serbian songs as they were being transported to the executions site. Although no survivors have since come forward, investigations in 1999 led to the discovery of a mass grave near Kozluk.[120] This proved to be the actual location of an execution as well, and lay alongside the Drina accessible only by driving through the barracks occupied by the Drina Wolves, a regular police unit of Republika Srpska. The grave was not dug specifically for the purpose: it had previously been a quarry and a landfill site. Investigators found many shards of green glass which the nearby 'Vitinka' bottling plant had dumped there. This facilitated the process of establishing links with the secondary graves along Čančari Road.[121]
The grave at Kozluk had been partly cleared some time prior to 27 September 1995 but no fewer than 340 bodies were found there nonetheless.[122] In 237 cases, it was clear that they had died as the result of rifle fire: 83 by a single shot to the head, 76 by one shot through the torso region, 72 by multiple bullet wounds, five by wounds to the legs and one person by bullet wounds to the arm. The ages of the victims were between 8 and 85 years old. Some had been physically disabled, occasionally as the result of amputation. Many had clearly been tied and bound using strips of clothing or nylon thread.[121]
Along the Čančari Road are twelve known mass graves, of which only two—Čančari Road 3 and 12—have been investigated in detail by 2001.[123] Čančari Road 3 is known to have been a secondary grave linked to Kozluk, as shown by the glass fragments and labels from the Vitinka factory.[124] The remains of 158 victims were found here, of which 35 bodies were still more or less intact and indicated that most had been killed by gunfire.[125]
On 13 July, near Konjević Polje, Serb soldiers summarily executed hundreds of Bosniaks, including women and children.[126]
The men who were found attempting to escape by the Bratunac-Konjević Polje road were told that the Geneva Convention would be observed if they gave themselves up.[127] In Bratunac, men were told that there were Serbian personnel standing by to escort them to Zagreb for an exchange of prisoners. The visible presence of UN uniforms and UN vehicles, stolen from Dutchbat, were intended to contribute to the feeling of reassurance. On 17 to 18 July, Serb soldiers captured about 150–200 Bosnians in the vicinity of Konjevic Polje and summarily executed about one-half of them.[126]
After the closure of the corridor at Baljkovica, several groups of stragglers nevertheless attempted to escape into Bosnian territory. Most were captured by VRS troops in the Nezuk—Baljkovica area and killed on the spot. In the vicinity of Nezuk, about 20 small groups surrendered to Bosnian Serb military forces. After the men surrendered, Bosnian Serb soldiers ordered them to line up and summarily executed them.[91][126]
On 19 July, for example, a group of approximately 11 men was killed at Nezuk itself by units of the 16th Krajina Brigade, then operating under the direct command of the Zvornik Brigade. Reports reveal that a further 13 men, all ARBiH soldiers, were killed at Nezuk on 19 July.[128] The report of the march to Tuzla includes the account of an ARBiH soldier who witnessed several executions carried out by police that day. He survived because 30 ARBiH soldiers were needed for an exchange of prisoners following the ARBiH's capture of a VRS officer at Baljkovica. The soldier was himself exchanged late 1995; at that time, there were still 229 men from Srebrenica in the Batkovici prisoner of war camp, including two men who had been taken prisoner in 1994.[citation needed]
At the same time, RS Ministry of the Interior forces conducting a search of the terrain from Kamenica as far as Snagovo killed eight Bosniaks.[129] Around 200 Muslims armed with automatic and hunting rifles were reported to be hiding near the old road near Snagovo.[129] During the morning, about 50 Bosniaks attacked the Zvornik Brigade line in the area of Pandurica, attempting to break through to Bosnian government territory.[129] The Zvornik Public Security Centre planned to surround and destroy these two groups the following day using all available forces.[130]
According to ICTY indictments of Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić, on 20 to 21 July 1995 near the village of Meces, Bosnian Serb military personnel, using megaphones, urged Bosnian men who had fled Srebrenica to surrender and assured them that they would be safe. Approximately 350 men responded to these entreaties and surrendered. Serb soldiers then took approximately 150 of them, instructed them to dig their own graves and summarily executed them.[131]
ICMP's Podrinje Identification Project (PIP) was formed to deal with the identification primarily of victims of 1995 Srebrenica massacre. PIP includes a facility for storing, processing, and handling exhumed remains. Much of the remains are only fragments or commingled body fragments since they were recovered from secondary mass graves. The photo depicts one section of the refrigerated mortuary.
During the days following the massacre, American spy planes overflew the area of Srebrenica, and took photos showing the ground in vast areas around the town had been removed, a sign of mass burials.
On 22 July, the commanding officer of the Zvornik Brigade, Lieutenant Colonel Vinko Pandurević, requested the Drina Corps to set up a committee to oversee the exchange of prisoners. He also asked for instructions where the prisoners of war his unit had already captured should be taken and to whom they should be handed over. Approximately 50 wounded captives were taken to the Bratunac hospital. Another group of prisoners was taken to the Batkovići camp (near Bijeljina), and these were mostly exchanged later.[132] On 25 July, the Zvornik Brigade captured 25 more ARBiH soldiers who were taken directly to the camp at Batkovići, as were 34 ARBiH men captured the following day.
Zvornik Brigade reports up until 31 July continue to describe the search for refugees and the capture of small groups of Bosniaks.[citation needed]
A number of Bosniaks managed to cross over the River Drina into Serbia at Ljubovija and Bajina Bašta. 38 of them were returned to RS. Some were taken to the Batkovići camp, where they were exchanged. The fate of the majority has not been established.[132] Some of those attempting to cross the Drina drowned.[132]
By 17 July 201 Bosniak soldiers had arrived in Žepa, exhausted and many with light wounds.[132] By 28 July another 500 had arrived in Žepa from Srebrenica.[132][133]
After 19 July 1995, small Bosniak groups were hiding in the woods for days and months, trying to reach Tuzla.[132] Numerous refugees found themselves cut off for some time in the area around Mount Udrc. They did not know what to do next or where to go; they managed to stay alive by eating snails, leaves and mushrooms. The atmosphere was one of tension, hunger and desperation. On or about 23 July, the Bosnian Serbs swept through this area too, and according to one survivor they killed many people as they did so.[citation needed]
Meanwhile, the VRS had commenced the process of clearing the bodies from around Srebrenica, Žepa, Kamenica and Snagovo. Work parties and municipal services were deployed to help. In Srebrenica, the refuse that had littered the streets since the departure of the people was collected and burnt, the town disinfected and deloused.[citation needed]
Many people in the part of the column which had not succeeded in passing Kamenica did not wish to give themselves up and decided to turn back towards Žepa. Others remained where they were, splitting up into smaller groups of no more than ten. Some wandered around for months, either alone or groups of two, four or six men. Few knew the way and attempted to navigate by following overhead power cables. They often found corpses, by now in a state of decomposition. Sometimes one group met another group from Srebrenica who knew of a deserted Bosniak village in the region; they would then proceed there together.[citation needed]
Some of the Bosniak men decided to retrace their steps towards the Srebrenica region, since this was familiar territory and they knew where to find food. From here, they would once again set out towards Žepa or attempt to reach Tuzla. Some arrived in Tuzla after many months, having been wandering around the area between Srebrenica and Udrc with absolutely no sense of direction. A few hundred managed to reach Žepa just before the Serb military, paramilitary and police forces occupied the enclave on 25 July 1995. Once Žepa had succumbed to the Serb pressure, they had to move on once more, either trying to reach Tuzla or crossing the River Drina into Serbia.[citation needed]
To feed themselves, the men took potatoes and other vegetables from the fields around the Serbian villages at night. The local Serb population therefore began to mount patrols around their villages. The Bosniaks would generally sleep by day and wait for the cover of darkness before moving on. This continued for a long time. For example, the people of Milici, a village on the route to Tuzla, discovered the disappearance of livestock in November 1995 and formed an armed group in search of stragglers from the column.[citation needed]
There are many stories recalling the experiences of those who lost contact with the column, their wanderings and the horrors they saw. One involves three young men aged 17, 18 and 19, who on several occasions attempted to cross the main Konjević Polje to Nova Kasaba road but were unsuccessful in doing so each time. They eventually managed to reach Žepa only after the enclave had fallen as well. The group had set up camp in a couple of deserted Bosniak villages where they managed to hide out for several months without attracting attention. Sometimes the teenagers would escort groups of other refugees as far as the next obstacle, before eventually returning to their base. Finally, on 26 April 1996, a full six months after the signing of the Dayton Accord, they crossed the Drina into Serbia.[citation needed]
Zvornik 7
The most famous group of seven men wandered about in occupied territory for the entire winter. On 10 May 1996, after nine months on the run and over half a year after the end of the war, they were discovered in a quarry by American IFOR soldiers. They immediately turned over to the patrol; they were searched and their weapons (two pistols and three hand grenades) were confiscated. The men said that they had been in hiding in the immediate vicinity of Srebrenica since the fall of the enclave. They did not look like soldiers and the Americans decided that this was a matter for the police.[134] The operations officer of this American unit ordered that a Serb patrol should be escorted into the quarry whereupon the men would be handed over to the Serbs.
The prisoners said they were initially tortured after the transfer, but later were treated relatively well. In April 1997 the local court in Republika Srpska convicted the group, known as the Zvornik 7, for illegal possession of firearms and three of them for the murder of four Serbian woodsmen. When announcing the verdict the presenter of the TV of Republika Srpska described them as the group of Muslim terrorists from Srebrenica who last year massacred Serb civilians.[135] The trial was widely condemned by the international community as "a flagrant miscarriage of justice,"[136][137] and the conviction was later quashed for 'procedural reasons' following pressure from the international community. In 1999, the three remaining defendants in the Zvornik 7 case were swapped for three Serbs serving 15 years each in a Bosnian prison.
From approximately 1 August 1995 to 1 November 1995, there was an organised effort to remove the bodies from primary mass gravesites and transport them to secondary and tertiary gravesites.[138] In the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia court case "Prosecutor v. Blagojevic and Jokic", the trial chamber found that this reburial effort was an attempt to conceal evidence of the mass murders.[139] The trial chamber found that the cover up operation was ordered by the VRS Main Staff and subsequently carried out by members of the Bratunac and Zvornik Brigades.[140]
The cover-up operation has had a direct impact on the recovery and identification of the remains. The removal and reburial of the bodies have caused them to become dismembered and co-mingled, making it difficult for forensic investigators to positively identify the remains.[141] For example, in one specific case, the remains of one person were found in two different locations, 30 km apart.[142] In addition to the ligatures and blindfolds found at the mass graves, the effort to hide the bodies has been seen as evidence of the organised nature of the massacres and the non-combatant status of the victims, since had the victims died in normal combat operations, there would be no need to hide their remains.[141][143]
According to Agence France Presse (AFP), a dozen Greek volunteers fought alongside the Serbs at Srebrenica.[144] They were members of the Greek Volunteer Guard (ΕΕΦ), or GVG, a contingent of Greek paramilitaries formed at the request of Ratko Mladic as an integral part of the Drina Corps. Some had links with the Greek neo-Nazi organisation Golden Dawn, others were mercenaries. The Greek volunteers were motivated by the desire to support their "Orthodox brothers" in battle.[8] They raised the Greek flag at Srebrenica after the fall of the town at Mladic's request, to honour "the brave Greeks fighting on our side."[145] Radovan Karadžić subsequently decorated four of them.[146][147][148][149]
In 2005 Greek deputy Andreas Andrianopoulos called for an investigation of the Greek volunteers' role at Srebrenica.[150] The Greek Minister of Justice Anastasios Papaligouras commissioned an inquiry, which had still not reported as of July 2010.[151]
In 2009 Stavros Vitalis announced that the volunteers were suing the writer Takis Michas for libel over allegations in his book Unholy Alliance, in which Michas described aspects of the Greek state's tacit support for Serbia during the Bosnian war. Insisting that the volunteers had simply taken part in what he described as the "re-occupation" of the town Vitalis acknowledged that he himself was present with senior Serb officers in "all operations" for Srebrenica's re-occupation by the Serbs.[152][153] Michas notes that the volunteers were treated like heroes and at no point did Greek justice contact them to investigate their knowledge of potential crimes to assist the work of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague.[154]
After the Markale massacre on 28 August, NATO launched a bombing campaign in Bosnia and Herzegovina lasting from 30 August until 20 September. The Dayton Peace agreement of November 1995 effectively ended the war.
On 16 November 1995 Radovan Karadzic, "President of the Republika Srpska" and Ratko Mladic, Commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, were indicted by the International Criminal Trial for the Former Yugoslavia for their alleged direct responsibility for the atrocities committed in July 1995 against the Bosnian Muslim population of Srebrenica.[155]
In 1999 UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan submitted his report on the Fall of Srebrenica. In it he acknowledged that the international community as a whole had to accept its share of responsibility for its response to the ethnic cleansing campaign that culminated in the murder of some 7,000 unarmed civilians from the town designated by the Security Council as a "safe area."[155][156][157]
A report by a committee of the French parliament, published in 2001, concluded that the fall of Srebrenica was "un échec de la France", a failure for France. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, France carried a great responsibility for the complex of events that eventually led to the fall of the enclave and the mass murder of thousands of Muslims, according to the report. On the evening of 10 July 1995, General Janvier should have approved the repeated requests for air support against the advancing Serbs made by Dutchbat. Moreover, Janvier "underestimated" General Mladic. According to a majority of the committee no evidence was found for the accusation that he and the French president Chirac had promised Mladic not to carry out any more air strikes in exchange for the release of French hostages. Curiously, in an appendix to the report it is also stated that no evidence was found that this promise had not been made.
The Srebrenica massacre led to long-running discussions in the Netherlands. In 1996, the Dutch government asked the Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie (NIOD, translation: Dutch Institute for War Documentation) to conduct research into the events before, during and after the fall of Srebrenica. The resulting report was published in 2002.[158] It concluded that the Dutchbat mission was not well considered and well-nigh impossible. The NIOD report is cited often, but it has not escaped criticism, leading the Institute for War and Peace Reporting to label the report controversial.[159]
As a result the Dutch government accepted partial responsibility and the second cabinet of Wim Kok resigned in 2002.[160][161]
In March 2010, former U.S. general and high ranking NATO official John Sheehan was quoted as saying "They [The Dutch] declared a peace dividend and made a conscious effort to socialise their military – that includes the unionisation of their militaries, it includes open homosexuality. That led to a force that was ill-equipped to go to war."[162] He claimed that his opinion was shared by the leadership of the Dutch armed forces, mentioning the name "Hankman Berman", most probably referring to the then chief of the Dutch defence staff, Henk van den Breemen.[163] General van den Breemen denied having said such a thing and called Sheehan's comments "total nonsense", and Sheehan's remarks were officially condemned by the Dutch authorities, with his remarks being dismissed as "disgraceful" and "unworthy of anyone in the military".[164][165][166][167][168] Sheehan apologized to Dutch military officials on 29 March 2010, withdrawing his comments and blaming instead "the rules of engagement...developed by a political system with conflicting priorities and an ambivalent understanding of how to use the military."[169]
In September 2002 the Republika Srpska Office of Relations with the ICTY issued the "Report about Case Srebrenica". The document, authored by Darko Trifunović, was endorsed by many leading Bosnian Serb politicians. It concluded that 1,800 Bosnian Muslim soldiers died during fighting and a further 100 more died as a result of exhaustion. "The number of Muslim soldiers killed by Bosnian Serbs out of personal revenge or lack of knowledge of international law is probably about 100...It is important to uncover the names of the perpetrators in order to accurately and unequivocally establish whether or not these were isolated instances."[170] The International Crisis Group and the United Nations condemned the manipulation of their statements in this report.[171]
On 30 September 2003, former US President Bill Clinton officially opened the Srebrenica Genocide memorial to honour the victims of the genocide. The total cost of the project was around $6 million, of which the United States government provided $1 million. "We must pay tribute to the innocent lives, many of them children who were snuffed out in what must be called genocidal madness," Clinton said.[172]
In 2004, the international community's High Representative Paddy Ashdown had the Government of Republika Srpska form a committee to investigate the events. The committee released a report in October 2004 with 8,731 confirmed names of missing and dead persons from Srebrenica: 7,793 between 10 and 19 July 1995 and further 938 people afterwards.[citation needed]
The findings of the committee remain generally disputed by Serb nationalists, who claim it was heavily pressured by the High Representative, given that an earlier RS government report which exonerated the Serbs was dismissed. Nevertheless, Dragan Čavić, the president of Republika Srpska, acknowledged in a televised address that Serb forces killed several thousand civilians in violation of the international law, and asserted that Srebrenica was a dark chapter in Serb history.[173]
On 10 November 2004, the government of Republika Srpska issued an official apology. The statement came after a government review of the Srebrenica committee's report. "The report makes it clear that enormous crimes were committed in the area of Srebrenica in July 1995. The Bosnian Serb Government shares the pain of the families of the Srebrenica victims, is truly sorry and apologises for the tragedy." the Bosnian Serb government said.[174]
On 2 June 2005 video evidence was introduced at the Milošević trial to testify to the involvement of members of police units from Serbia in the Srebrenica massacre.[175] The video, the only undestroyed copy of twenty and previously available for rental in the Serbian town of Sid, was obtained and submitted to the ICTY by Natasa Kandic, director of the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Center.[176]
The video footage (starting about 2hr 35 min. into the proceedings) shows an Orthodox priest blessing several members of a Serbian unit known as the "Scorpions". Later these soldiers are shown with tied up captives, dressed in civilian clothing and visibly physically abused; they were later identified as four minors as young as 16 and two men in their early twenties. The footage then shows the execution of four of the civilians and shows them lying dead in the field. At this point the cameraman expresses disappointment that the camera's battery is almost out. The soldiers then ordered the two remaining captives to take the four dead bodies into a nearby barn, where they were also killed upon completing this task.[175][176]
The video caused public outrage in Serbia. In the days following its showing, the Serbian government arrested some of the former soldiers identified on the video. The event was extensively covered by the newspaper Danas and radio and television station B92. Nura Alispahic, mother of the 16 year old Azmir Alispahic, saw the execution of her son on television.[177] She said that she was already aware of her son's death and said she had been told that his body was burned following the execution; his remains were among those buried in Potočari in 2003.[178][179]
The executions took place on 16/17 July, in Trnovo, about 30 minutes from the Scorpions' base near Sarajevo.[176]
On 10 April 2007 a special war crimes court in Belgrade convicted four former members of the Scorpions of war crimes, treating the killings as an isolated war crime unrelated to the Srebrenica genocide and ignoring the allegations that the Scorpions were acting under the authority of the Serbian Interior Ministry, MUP.[180]
House of Representatives Resolution: On 27 June 2005, the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution (H. Res. 199 sponsored by Congressman Christopher Smith and Congressman Benjamin Cardin) commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide. The resolution was passed by an overwhelming majority of 370 to 1, the only one to vote no being Ron Paul, with 62 absent.[181] The resolution states that:
...the policies of aggression and ethnic cleansing as implemented by Serb forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 to 1995 with the direct support of Serbian regime of
Slobodan Milošević and its followers ultimately led to the displacement of more than 2,000,000 people, an estimated 200,000 killed, tens of thousands raped or otherwise tortured and abused, and the innocent civilians of Sarajevo and other urban centres repeatedly subjected to shelling and sniper attacks; meet the terms defining the crime of genocide in Article 2 of the
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, created in Paris on 9 December 1948, and entered into force on 12 January 1951.
[182]
State of Missouri Resolution: On 6 July 2005, State of Missouri passed the resolution recognising the Srebrenica Genocide.[183]
City of St. Louis Proclamation: On 11 July 2005, City of St. Louis issued a Proclamation declaring 11 July Srebrenica Remembrance Day in St. Louis.[184]
On 6 July 2005, Bosnian Serb police found two powerful bombs at the memorial site just days ahead of a ceremony to mark the massacre's 10th anniversary, when 580 identified victims were to be buried during the ceremony and more than 50,000 people, including international politicians and diplomats, were expected to attend. The bombs would have caused widespread loss of life and injury had they exploded.[185][186]
In his address to the 10th anniversary commemoration at Potocari, the UN Secretary-General paid tribute to the victims of "a terrible crime – the worst on European soil since the Second World War", on a date "marked as a grim reminder of man's inhumanity to man". He said that the first duty of the international community was to uncover and confront the full truth about what happened, a hard truth for those who serve the United Nations, because great nations failed to respond adequately. There should have been stronger military forces in place, and a stronger will to use them.
Blame lay first and foremost with those who planned and carried out the massacre, assisted them, or harboured and continue to harbour them. However the UN also bore its share of responsibility, having made serious errors of judgement, rooted in a philosophy of impartiality and non-violence which, however admirable, was unsuited to the conflict in Bosnia; because of that the tragedy of Srebrenica would haunt the UN's history forever.
Rebuilding trust among the peoples of the region could only done by persisting in the struggle for justice, without which there could be no reconciliation, and no peace for the families of the victims, or for society as a whole.
The quest for justice remained incomplete while those charged with being the main architects of this massacre – Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic – were still at large and had not been made to answer the charges against them before the International Criminal Tribunal. He called on all Bosnians to search for truth and reconciliation.
Even while addressing the crimes of the past, the most important obligation was is to prevent such systematic slaughter ever recurring anywhere again. The world had to equip itself to act collectively against genocide, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. The “responsibility to protect” had to be given tangible meaning, not just rhetorical support.
He committed the UN helping the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina to rebuild a viable economy and secure a peaceful, prosperous future among the family of nations.[156]
On 4 October 2005, the Special Bosnian Serb Government Working Group said that 25,083 people were involved in the massacre, including 19,473 members of various Bosnian Serb armed forces that actively gave orders or directly took part in the massacre. They have identified 17,074 by name.[187] It has also been reported that some 892 of those suspects still hold positions at or are employed by the government of Republika Srpska. The names are still held secret.[188]
Exhumed Grave of Victims 2007.
By 2006, 42 mass graves have been uncovered around Srebrenica and the specialists believe there are 22 more mass graves. The victims identified number 2,070 while body parts in more than 7,000 bags still await identification.[189] On 11 August 2006 over 1,000 body parts were exhumed from one of Srebrenica mass graves located in Kamenica.[190]
On 24 August 2006, the Sarajevo daily newspaper Oslobodjenje started publishing a secret list of over 800 Bosnian Serbs who had participated in the Srebrenica massacre and were believed to be still in positions of power at government and municipal level. The names of the 892 individuals concerned were listed among 28,000 Bosnian Serbs reported to have taken part in the massacre by the official Republika Srpska report on Srebrenica. The list had been withheld from publication with the report by the chief prosecutor of the Bosnian War Crimes Chamber, Marinko Jurcevic.[191][192]
In December 2006 the Dutch government awarded the Dutch UN peacekeepers that served in Srebrenica an insignia because they believe they "deserved recognition for their behaviour in difficult circumstances", also noting the limited mandate and the ill-equipped nature of the mission. However, survivors and relatives of the victims condemned the move calling it a "humiliating decision" and responded with protest rallies in The Hague, Assen (where the ceremony took place) and Bosnia's capital Sarajevo.[193]
Women at the monument for victims of the July 1995 Srebrenica Massacre. At the annual memorial ceremony in Potocari, Bosnia and Herzegovina. 11 July 2007
On 31 May 2007 former Bosnian Serb general Zdravko Tolimir was apprehended by police from Serbia and the Bosnian Serb republic, turned over to NATO forces at the Banja Luka airport where he was read the ICTY indictment and formally arrested. On 1 June 2007 NATO forces conveyed him to Rotterdam where he was turned over to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. As of July 2010 Tolimir was being tried by the ICTY on charges of genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, extermination, persecution and forcible transfer. The indictment accuses Tolimir of participating in the “joint criminal enterprise to remove the Muslim population” from Srebrenica as well as the enclave of Zepa.[194][195]
Radovan Karadžić, with similar charges as Zdravko Tolimir, was arrested in Belgrade on 21 July 2008 (after 13 years on the run) and brought before Belgrade’s War Crimes Court.[196] He was transferred to the ICTY on 30 July 2008.[197] As of July 2010 Karadžić was being tried at the ICTY on 11 charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.[198][199]
On 15 January 2009 EU Parliament voted with overwhelming majority of 556 votes in favour, 9 against and 22 abstentions on resolution calling for recognition of 11 July as a day for EU commemoration of Srebrenica genocide.[200] Bosnian Serb politicians rejected the resolution stating that such commemoration is unacceptable to Republika Srpska.[201]
In late March 2010, Serbian Parliament passed a resolution condemning the Srebrenica massacre and apologizing for Serbia not doing more to prevent the tragedy. The motion was passed by a narrow margin with 127 out of 250 MPs voting in favor, with 173 legislators present during the vote. The Socialist Party of Serbia, formerly under Slobodan Milošević and now under new leadership, voted in favor of adopting the resolution. Opposition parties, in turn, expressed their discontent with the resolution claiming its text was "shameful" for Serbia, either claiming the wording was too strong or too weak.[202] Some relatives of Bosniak victims were also unhappy with the apology, as it did not use the word 'genocide', but rather pointed at the Bosnian Genocide Case ruling of the International Court of Justice.[203] Serbian president, Boris Tadić, said that the declaration is the highest expression of patriotism and that it represents distancing from crimes.[204] Sulejman Tihić, former Bosniak member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the current President of the House of Peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina stated that now Bosnia and Herzegovina must adopt a similar resolution condemning crimes against Serbs and Croats.[205]
On 21 April 2010, the government of Milorad Dodik, the prime minister of Republika Srpska, initiated a revision of the 2004 report saying that the numbers of killed were exaggerated and the report was manipulated by a former peace envoy.[206] The Office of the High Representative responded and stated that: "The Republika Srpska government should reconsider its conclusions and align itself with the facts and legal requirements and act accordingly, rather than inflicting emotional distress on the survivors, torture history and denigrate the public image of the country".[207]
On 12 July 2010, at the 15th anniversary of the massacre, Milorad Dodik declared that he acknowledges the killings that happened on the site, but does not regard what happened at Srebrenica as genocide, differently from the conclusions of the ICTY and of the International Court of Justice.[208]
Through the use of DNA profiling, the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) has revealed the identity of 6,598 persons missing from the July 1995 fall of Srebrenica, by analysing DNA profiles extracted from bone samples of exhumed human remains and matching them to the DNA profiles obtained from blood samples donated by relatives of the missing. The overall high matching rate between DNA extracted from these bone and blood samples leads ICMP to support an estimate of close to 8,100 individuals missing from the fall of Srebrenica.[209]
The prosecution proved that genocide was committed in Srebrenica and that General Radislav Krstić, among others, was personally responsible for that.
Olga Kavran, Deputy Coordinator, ICTY Outreach Programme
[210]
Radovan Karadžić (left), former president of Republika Srpska, and
Ratko Mladić (right), former Chief of Staff of the Army of the Republika Srpska are currently under trial.
Under Resolution 827 (1993) the UN Security Council established the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to try those responsible for violations of international humanitarian law, including genocide, on the territory of the former Yugoslavia[211]
Two officers of the Army of Republika Srpska have been convicted by the Tribunal for their involvement in the Srebrenica genocide, Radislav Krstić and Vidoje Blagojević. General Krstić, who led the assault on Srebrenica alongside Ratko Mladić, was convicted by the tribunal of aiding and abetting genocide and received a sentence of 35 years imprisonment. Colonel Blagojević received a sentence of 18 years imprisonment for crimes against humanity. Krstić was the first European to be convicted on a charge of genocide by an international tribunal since the Nuremberg trials[212] and only the third person ever to have been convicted by an international tribunal under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The ICTY's final ruling was that the Srebrenica massacre was indeed an act of genocide.[213]
Slobodan Milosevic was accused of genocide or complicity in genocide in territories within Bosnia and Herzegovina, including Srebrenica,[214] but he died on 11 March 2006 during his ICTY trial and so no verdict was returned.
On 10 June 2010 seven senior Serb military and police officers, Vujadin Popović, Ljubiša Beara, Drago Nikolić, Ljubomir Borovčanin, Vinko Pandurević, Radivoje Miletić and Milan Gvero, were found guilty of various crimes ranging from genocide to murder and deportation. Popovic and Beara were found guilty of genocide, extermination, murder, and persecution over the genocide, and were sentenced to life in prison. Nikolic was found guilty of aiding and abetting genocide, extermination, murder, and persecution and received 35 years in prison. Borovcanin was convicted of aiding and abetting extermination, murder, persecution, forcible transfer, murder as a crime against humanity and as a violation of the laws of customs of war, and was sentenced to 17 years in prison. Miletic was found guilty of murder by majority, persecution, and inhumane acts, specifically forcible transfer, and received 19 years in prison. Gvero was found guilty of persecution and inhumane acts and sentenced to five years in prison, but was acquitted of one count of murder and one count of deportation. Pandurevic was found guilty of aiding and abetting murder, persecution and inhumane acts, but was acquitted of charges of genocide, extermination and deportation, and sentenced to 13 years in prison.[215][216] On 10 September 2010, after the prosecution filed an appeal, Vujadin Popović, Ljubiša Beara, Drago Nikolić, Vinko Pandurević, Radivoje Miletić and Milan Gvero could face more charges or longer sentences.[217]
In 2011, former Chief of the General Staff of the Yugoslav Army, Momčilo Perišić, was sentenced to 27 years in prison for aiding and abetting murder because he provided salaries, ammunition, staff and fuel to the VRS officers.[218] The judges, however, ruled that Perišić did not have effective control over Mladić and other VRS officers involved in the crimes. According to the Trial Chamber, the evidence proved Perišić’s inability to impose binding orders on Mladić.[219]
On 31 May 2007, Zdravko Tolimir, long time fugitive and former general in the Army of Republika Srpska indicted by the Prosecutor of the ICTY on genocide charges in the 1992–95 Bosnia war was arrested by Serbian and Bosnian police.[220] Tolimir – "Chemical Zdravko" – is infamous for requesting the use of chemical weapons and proposing military strikes against refugees at Zepa.[221] Ratko Mladić's deputy in charge of intelligence and security and a key commander at the time of Srebrenica, Tolimir is also believed to be one of the organisers of the support network protecting Mladić and helping him elude justice.[222] Tolimir's trial began on 26 February 2010; he has chosen to represent himself.[223]
Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić have been indicted by the ICTY for genocide and complicity in genocide in several municipalities within Bosnia and Herzegovina, including Srebrenica. Karadžić was captured in Serbia on 21 July 2008 and Mladić, on 26 May 2011.[224] Karadzic declined to enter a plea at his first appearance before the war crimes tribunal on 31 July 2008,[225] a formal plea of "not guilty" was then made on his behalf by the judges.[226] Karadzic insists on defending himself (as he is entitled to under the United Nations court's rules) while at the same time is setting up a team of legal advisers.[227] Karadžić and Mladić, are both on trial on two counts of genocide and other war crimes committed in Srebrenica and also in other districts of Bosnia including Prijedor, Kljuc, Foča, Zvornik and other districts of Bosnia. Karadzic and Mladic are charged, separately, with:[228][229]
- Count 1: Genocide.
- Count 2: Genocide.
- Count 3: Persecutions on Political, Racial and Religious Grounds, a Crime Against Humanity.
- Municipalities: Banja Luka, Bijeljina, Bosanska Krupa, Bosanski Novi, Bratunac, Brčko, Foča, Hadžići, Ilidža, Kalinovik, Ključ, Kotor Varoš, Novi Grad, Novo Sarajevo, Pale, Prijedor, Rogatica, Sanski Most, Sokolac, Trnovo, Vlasenica, Vogošća, Zvornik and Srebrenica.
- Count 4: Extermination, a Crime Against Humanity.
- Count 5: Murder, a Crime Against Humanity.
- Count 6: Murder, a Violation of the Laws or Customs of War.
- Count 7: Deportation, a Crime Against Humanity.
- Count 8: Inhumane Acts (forcible transfer), a Crime Against Humanity.
- Count 9: Acts of Violence the Primary Purpose of which is to Spread Terror among the Civilian Population, aViolation of the Laws or Customs of War.
- Count 10: Unlawful Attacks on Civilians, a Violation of the Laws or Customs of War.
- Count 11: Taking of Hostages, a Violation of the Laws or Customs of War.
In addition, the Srebrenica massacre was the core issue of the landmark court case Bosnian genocide case at the International Court of Justice through which Bosnia and Herzegovina accused Serbia and Montenegro of genocide. The ICJ presented its judgement on 26 February 2007. It cleared Serbia of direct involvement in genocide during the Bosnian war,[230] but ruled that Belgrade did breach international law by failing to prevent the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, and for failing to try or transfer the persons accused of genocide to the ICTY, in order to comply with its obligations under Articles I and VI of the Genocide Convention, in particular in respect of General Ratko Mladić.[36][231][232] Citing national security, Serbia obtained permission from the ICTY to keep parts of its military archives out of the public eye during its trial of Slobodan Milosevic, which may have decisively affected the ICJ's judgement in the lawsuit brought against Serbia by Bosnia-Herzegovina, as the archives were hence not on the ICTY's public record – although the ICJ could have, but did not, subpoena the documents themselves.[233] Chief prosecutor’s office, OTP, rejects allegations that there was a deal with Belgrade to conceal documents from the ICJ Bosnia genocide case.[234]
- See also above 2005 Release of Scorpions massacre video
On 10 April 2007, a Serbian war crimes court sentenced four members of a paramilitary group known as the Scorpions to a total of 58 years in prison for the execution of six Bosniaks during the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995.[235]
On 11 June 2007, the ICTY transferred Milorad Trbic (former Chief of Security of the Zvornik Brigade of the Army of Republika Srpska) to Sarajevo to stand trial for genocide for his actions in and around Srebrenica before the War Crimes Chamber (Section I for War Crimes of the Criminal Division of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina; henceforth: the Court).[236] Milorad Trbic – "[Is]charged with Genocide pursuant to Article 171 of the Criminal Code of Bosnia and Herzegovina (CC BiH). ... The trial commenced on 8 November 2007, and the Prosecutor is currently presenting his evidence."[237]
The "Mitrović and others case ("Kravice")" was an important trial before the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The accused "according to the indictment, in the period from 10 to 19 July 1995, as knowing participants in a joint criminal enterprise, the accused committed the criminal offence of genocide. This crime was allegedly committed as part of widespread and systematic attack against the Bosniak population inside the UN protected area of Srebrenica carried out by the Republika Srpska Army (RSA) and the RS Ministry of Interior, with a common plan to annihilate in part a group of Bosniak people."[238] On 29 July 2008, after a two-year trial, the Court found seven men guilty of genocide for their role in the Srebrenica massacre including the deaths of 1000 Bosniak men in a single day.[239][240] The court found that Bosniak men trying to escape from Srebrenica had been told they would be kept safe if they surrendered. Instead, they were transported to an agricultural co-operative in the village of Kravica, and later executed en masse.[239][240]
On 20 April 2010, Croatia arrested Franc Kos, a member of the 10th commando detachment of the Army of the Republika Srpska, over genocide charges for the Srebrenica massacre. Bosnia and Herzegovina has an international warrant out for his arrest.[241] He is currently awaiting trial.[242]
On 29 April 2010, the United States extradited Marko Boškić on suspicions of having committed genocide.[243] He later plead guilty.[242]
On 18 January 2011, Israeli police arrested Aleksandar Cvetković, a former member of the Bosnian Serb army.[244][245] Božidar Kuvelja, a former Bosnian Serb policeman, was arrested in Čajniče, Bosnia and Herzegovina.[246][247]
- Found guilty of genocide
- Milenko Trifunović (commander of the 3rd "Skelani" Platoon, part of the 2nd Special Police Šekovići Squad)[238] – found guilty, sentenced to 42 years.[239][240]
- Brano Džinić (a special police force officer of the 2nd Special Police Šekovići Squad)[238] – found guilty, sentenced to 42 years.[239][240]
- Slobodan Jakovljević (special police force members of the 3rd "Skelani" Platoon)[238] – found guilty, sentenced to 40 years.[239][240]
- Branislav Medan (special police force members of the 3rd "Skelani" Platoon)[238] – found guilty, sentenced to 40 years.[239][240]
- Petar Mitrović (special police force members of the 3rd "Skelani" Platoon)[238] – found guilty, sentenced to 38 years.[239][240]
- Aleksandar Radovanović (special police force members of the 3rd "Skelani" Platoon)[238] – found guilty, sentenced to 42 years.[239][240]
- Milorad Trbić (former Assistant Commander for Security with the Zvornik Brigade of the Republika Srpska Army) found guilty on one count of genocide and sentenced to 30 years in jail.[248]
- Radomir Vuković (a special police force officer of the 2nd Special Police Šekovići Squad) – found guilty, sentenced to 31 years.[249]
- Zoran Tomić (a special police force officer of the 2nd Special Police Šekovići Squad) – found guilty, sentenced to 31 years.[249]
- Marko Boškić (10th Commando Squad of the Army of Republika Srpska)[243] – plead guilty, sentenced to 10 years.[250]
- Vlastimir Golijan – plead guilty[242]
- Acquitted
- Velibor Maksimović (special police force members of the 3rd "Skelani" Platoon)[238] – acquitted.[239][240]
- Milovan Matić (a member of RSA)[238] – acquitted.[239][240]
- Miladin Stevanović (special police force members of the 3rd "Skelani" Platoon)[238] – acquitted.[239][240]
- Dragiša Živanović (special police force members of the 3rd "Skelani" Platoon)[238] – acquitted.[239][240]
- Miloš Stupar (commander of the 2nd Special Police Šekovići Squad)[238] – found guilty, sentenced to 40 years.[239][240] – later acquitted.[251]
- Awaiting trial
- Awaiting extradition
- Aleksandar Cvetković[244]
Survivors and victims' relatives have sought to establish the responsibility of the State of the Netherlands and the United Nations for what happened at Srebrenica in civil law actions brought before The Hague District Court in the Netherlands.
In one case the Dutch law firm Van Diepen Van der Kroef,[20][254] is representing 11 plaintiffs including the organisation "Mothers of the Enclaves of Srebrenica and Žepa" (which represents 6,000 relatives of the victims[255]), who asked the court, among other things, to rule that the UN and the State of the Netherlands breached their obligation to prevent genocide, as laid down in the Genocide Convention and hold them jointly liable to pay compensation for the loss and injury suffered by the plaintiffs.[256] On 10 July 2008, the court ruled that it had no jurisdiction against the UN, however the court is set to rule against the State of the Netherlands[257][258] Plaintiffs have appealed the judgement (in relation to UN immunity).[259]
The second action combines two cases brought against the State of the Netherlands by a former UN interpreter, Hasan Nuhanović, and the family of Rizo Mustafić, an electrician employed by the UN at Srebrenica. The plaintiffs claim that Dutch troops in the peacekeeping contingent responsible for security in the UN-protected zone allowed VRS troops to kill their relatives, Nuhanović's entire immediate family (brother, father and mother)[260] and the Mustafić family's husband and father.[261] The plaintiffs sued the State of the Netherlands on the basis that the Dutch Government (Minister of Defence) had de facto operational command of the Dutch battalion in accordance with the Dutch Constitution (Article 97(2)), which grants the government superior command ("oppergezag") over Dutch military forces.[261] On 10 September 2008, the Court held that the Dutch Government could not be held responsible because the Dutchbat peacekeepers were operating in Bosnia under a United Nations mandate and operational command and control over the troops had been transferred to the UN command.[262] Plaintiffs appealed the judgement, and on 5 July 2011 the Court of Appeal judged that the Dutch Government was responsible for, and indeed actively coordinated, the evacuation once Srebrenica fell, and therefore is responsible for the decision to dismiss Nuhanović's brother and Mustafić from the Dutchbat compound. The Court further held that this decision was wrong, because the Dutch soldiers should have known that they were in great danger to be tortured or killed. Plaintiffs are therefore eligible for compensation.[263]
In response to the suggestion that the Bosniak forces in Srebrenica made no adequate attempt to defend the town, the Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly resolution 53/35—The Fall of Srebrenica,[264] delivered to the 54th session of the United Nations General Assembly on 15 November 1999 states:
"Concerning the accusation that the Bosniaks did not do enough to defend Srebrenica, military experts consulted in connection with this report were largely in agreement that the Bosniaks could not have defended Srebrenica for long in the face of a concerted attack supported by armour and artillery."
[265]
"Many have accused the Bosniak forces of withdrawing from the enclave as the Serb forces advanced on the day of its fall. However, it must be remembered that on the eve of the final Serb assault the Dutchbat Commander urged the Bosniaks to withdraw from defensive positions south of Srebrenica town—the direction from which the Serbs were advancing. He did so because he believed that NATO aircraft would soon be launching widespread air strikes against the advancing Serbs."[266]
"A third accusation levelled at the Bosniak defenders of Srebrenica is that they provoked the Serb offensive by attacking out of that safe area. Even though this accusation is often repeated by international sources, there is no credible evidence to support it. Dutchbat personnel on the ground at the time assessed that the few "raids" the Bosniaks mounted out of Srebrenica were of little or no military significance. These raids were often organised in order to gather food, as the Serbs had refused access for humanitarian convoys into the enclave. Even Serb sources approached in the context of this report acknowledged that the Bosniak forces in Srebrenica posed no significant military threat to them. The biggest attack the Bosniaks launched out of Srebrenica during the more than two years during which it was designated a safe area appears to have been the raid on the village of Višnjica, on 26 June 1995, in which several houses were burned, up to four Serbs were killed and approximately 100 sheep were stolen. In contrast, the Serbs overran the enclave two weeks later, driving tens of thousands from their homes, and summarily executing thousands of men and boys. The Serbs repeatedly exaggerated the extent of the raids out of Srebrenica as a pretext for the prosecution of a central war aim: to create a geographically contiguous and ethnically pure territory along the Drina, while freeing their troops to fight in other parts of the country. The extent to which this pretext was accepted at face value by international actors and observers reflected the prism of "moral equivalency" through which the conflict in Bosnia was viewed by too many for too long."
[267]
It is agreed by all sides that Serbs suffered a number of casualties during military forays led by Naser Orić. The controversy over the nature and number of the casualties came to a head in 2005, the 10th anniversary of the massacre.[268] According to Human Rights Watch, the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party "launched an aggressive campaign to prove that Muslims had committed crimes against thousands of Serbs in the area" which "was intended to diminish the significance of the July 1995 crime."[268] A press briefing by the ICTY Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) dated 6 July 2005 noted that the number of Serb deaths in the region alleged by the Serbian authorities had increased from 1,400 to 3,500, a figure the OTP stated "[does] not reflect the reality."[269] The briefing cited previous accounts:
- The Republika Srpska's Commission for War Crimes gave the number of Serb victims in the municipalities of Bratunac, Srebrenica and Skelani as 995; 520 in Bratunac and 475 in Srebrenica.
- The Chronicle of Our Graves by Milivoje Ivanisevic, president of the Belgrade Centre for Investigating Crimes Committed against the Serbs, estimates the number of people killed at around 1,200.
- For the Honourable Cross and Golden Freedom, a book published by the RS Ministry of Interior, referred to 641 Serb victims in the Bratunac-Srebrenica-Skelani region.
The accuracy of these numbers is challenged: the OTP noted that although Ivanisevic's book estimated that around 1,200 Serbs were killed, personal details were only available for 624 victims.[269] The validity of labeling some of the casualties as "victims" is also contested:[269] studies have found a significant majority of military casualties compared to civilian casualties.[270] This is in line with the nature of the conflict—Serb casualties died in raids by Bosniak forces on outlying villages used as military outposts for attacks on Srebrenica[271] (many of which had been ethnically cleansed of their Bosniak majority population in 1992).[272] For example the village of Kravica was attacked by Bosniak forces on Orthodox Christmas Day, 7 January 1993. Some Serb sources such as Ivanisevic allege that the village's 353 inhabitants were "virtually completely destroyed".[269] In fact, the VRS' own internal records state that 46 Serbs died in the Kravica attack: 35 soldiers and 11 civilians.[273] while the ICTY Prosecutor's Office's investigation of casualties on 7 and 8 January in Kravica and the surrounding villages found that 43 people were killed, of whom 13 were obviously civilians.[274] Nevertheless the event continues to be cited by Serb sources as the key example of heinous crimes committed by Bosniak forces around Srebrenica.[268] As for the destruction and casualties in the villages of Kravica, Siljkovići, Bjelovac, Fakovići and Sikirić, the judgement states that the prosecution failed to present convincing evidence that the Bosnian forces were responsible for them, because the Serb forces used artillery in the fighting in those villages. In the case of the village of Bjelovac, Serbs even used warplanes.[275]
The most up-to-date analysis of Serb casualties in the region comes from the Sarajevo-based Research and Documentation Centre, a non-partisan institution with a multiethnic staff, whose data have been collected, processed, checked, compared and evaluated by international team of experts.[270][276][277] The RDC's extensive review of casualty data found that Serb casualties in the Bratunac municipality amounted to 119 civilians and 424 soldiers. It also established that although the 383 Serb victims buried in the Bratunac military cemetery are presented as casualties of ARBiH units from Srebrenica, 139 (more than one third of the total) had fought and died elsewhere in Bosnia and Herzegovina.[270]
Serb sources maintain that casualties and losses during the period prior to the creation of the safe area gave rise to Serb demands for revenge against the Bosniaks based in Srebrenica. The ARBiH raids are presented as a key motivating factor for the July 1995 genocide.[278] This view is echoed by international sources including the 2002 report commissioned by the Dutch government on events leading to the fall of Srebrenica (the NIOD report).[279] However these sources also cite misleading figures for the number of Serb casualties in the region.[citation needed]
The efforts to explain the Srebrenica massacre as motivated by revenge have been dismissed as bad faith attempts to justify the genocide.[280] The ICTY Outreach Programme notes that the claim that Bosnian Serb forces killed the prisoners from Srebrenica in revenge for crimes committed by Bosnian Muslim forces against Serbs in the villages around Srebrenica provides no defence under international law and soldiers, certainly experienced officers, would be aware of the fact. To offer revenge as a justification for crimes is to attack the rule of law, and civilization itself, and nor does revenge provide moral justification for killing people simply because they share the same ethnicity as others who perpetrated crimes. Emotion cannot explain the killing of 7000–8000 people within the space of one week. The methodical planning and mobilization of the substantial resources involved required orders to be given at a high command level. The VRS had a plan to kill the Bosnian Muslim prisoners, as Dragan Obrenović confirmed.[281]
To quote the Report of the UN Secretary-General on the Fall of Srebrenica:[282]
Even though this accusation is often repeated by international sources, there is no credible evidence to support it... The Serbs repeatedly exaggerated the extent of the raids out of Srebrenica as a pretext for the prosecution of a central war aim: to create a geographically contiguous and ethnically pure territory along the Drina, while freeing their troops to fight in other parts of the country. The extent to which this pretext was accepted at face value by international actors and observers reflected the prism of 'moral equivalency' through which the conflict in Bosnia was viewed by too many for too long.
The ICTY's finding of genocide, as confirmed by the ICJ, has been disputed on a variety of grounds, evidential and theoretical. The number of the dead has been questioned as has the nature of their deaths. It has been alleged that considerably fewer than 8,000 were killed and/or that most of those killed died in battle rather than by execution. It has also been claimed that the interpretation of "genocide" is refuted by the survival of the women and children.[283]
Sonja Biserko, president of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, and Edina Bečirević, the Faculty of Criminalistics, Criminology and Security Studies of the University of Sarajevo have pointed to a culture of denial of the Srebrenica genocide in Serbian society, taking many forms and present in particular in political discourse, the media, the law and the educational system.[284]
Serbian critics have seen the discrepancy between a figure of over 8,000 victims and the number of bodies found and identified as casting doubt on the "Western explanation" of the events; there were long delays in locating mass graves in the area and identifying the bodies in them.
In March 2005, Milos Milovanovic, a former commander of the Serb paramilitary unit Serbian Guard who represents the Serbian Democratic Party in the Srebrenica Municipal Assembly said that "The massacre is a lie; It is propaganda to paint a bad picture of the Serbian people. The Muslims are lying; they are manipulating the numbers; they are exaggerating what happened."[285][286]
Serbian scepticism of events at Srebrenica has also been encouraged by Serbian state media.[287][288][289][290]
The individuals and groups who have challenged the account of events at Srebrenica accepted by the ICTY include:
Milorad Dodik, president of Republika Srpska, has repeatedly denied that genocide occurred at Srebrenica.
- Milorad Dodik, President of Republika Srpska, stated in an interview with the Belgrade newspaper Vecernje Novosti in April 2010 that "we cannot and will never accept qualifying that event as a genocide". Dodik disowned the 2004 Republika Srpska report acknowledging the scale of the killing and apologising to the relatives of the victims, alleging that the report had been adopted because of pressure from the international community. Without substantiating the figure, he claimed that the number of victims was 3,500 rather than the 7,000 accepted by the report, alleging that 500 listed victims were alive and over 250 people buried in the Potocari memorial centre died elsewhere.[291] In July 2010, on the 15th anniversary of the massacre, Dodik declared that he did not regard the killings at Srebrenica as genocide, and maintained that "If a genocide happened then it was committed against Serb people of this region where women, children and the elderly were killed en masse" (referring to eastern Bosnia).[208] In December 2010, Dodik condemned the Peace Implementation Council, an international community of 55 countries, for referring to the Srebrenica massacre as genocide.[292]
- Gregory Copley, President of the International Strategic Studies Association (ISSA) and ISSA’s Balkan & Eastern Mediterranean Policy Council and one of the founding directors of Australia's grand strategy research organisation Future Directions International (FDI)[293] described the 2004 Republika Srpska report as "a fraudulent document accepting the official version of events in Srebrenica" which US Ambassador Donald Hays, Deputy High Representative of Bosnia-Herzegovina, had used the power of the Office of the High Representative (OHR) governing Bosnia to force Bosnian Serb elected officials to sign.[294]
- Srebrenica Research Group The Srebrenica Research Group, led by Edward S. Herman of the University of Pennsylvania, describes itself as a self-financed group of journalists and academic researchers who have reviewed the evidence relating to the capture of Srebrenica and compared the facts with the public portrayal of events. Members of the Group include journalist and publicist Jonathan Rooper, journalist George Szamuely, the writer and film-director George Bogdanich, Michael Mandel, Professor of International Law at York University in Toronto, the commentator on media coverage of conflict Dr. Philip Hammond of London South Bank University, the researcher and archivist Tim Fenton, the foreign policy writer David Peterson and Dr Milan Bulajic, former head of the Yugoslav State Commission on War Crimes. Advisors and collaborators include Phillip Corwin, former UN Civilian Affairs Coordinator in Bosnia, Carlos Martins Branco, Deputy Director of the UN monitoring organisation in Bosnia, UNMO, Diana Johnstone, author of Fool's Crusade: Yugoslavia NATO and Western Delusions, Professor Vera Vratusa, the researcher George Pumphrey, the author Milivoje Ivanisevic, the military forensic specialist Dr. Zoran Stankovic, and the forensic archeologist Dr. Srboljub Zivanovic.
- Phillip Corwin, former UN Civilian Affairs Coordinator in Bosnia, advisor and contributor to the work of the Srebrenica Research Group[295] and contributor to the ISSA Special Report, stated "What happened in Srebrenica was not a single large massacre of Muslims by Serbs, but rather a series of very bloody attacks and counterattacks over a three year period."[296][297]
- Diana Johnstone, author of Fool's Crusade: Yugoslavia NATO and Western Delusions[298] and adviser and contributor to the work of the Srebrenica Research Group[295] and the Srebrenica Historical Project.[299] argued in an article "Srebrenica Revisited"[300] published by CounterPunch, an American newsletter, that initial estimates of the number of victims may have been exaggerated. She claimed that pointing to uncertainty about the number of victims did not constitute denial of the massacre as such nor show lack of respect for the victims.[300]
- Living Marxism – the British academic David Campbell has written of the now defunct British magazine that "LM’s intentions are clear from the way they have sought to publicise accounts of contemporary atrocities which suggest they were certainly not genocidal, and perhaps did not even occur."[301][302]
- Lewis MacKenzie, former commander of the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in Bosnia, was continuing to challenge the description of genocide in 2009 on the grounds firstly that the number of men and boys killed had been exaggerated by a factor of 4 and secondly that transfer of the women and children by bus contradicted the notion of genocide – the women would have been killed first if there had been an intent to destroy the group. Writing in the Journal of Military and Strategic Studies (Vol. 12, Issue 1, Fall 2009), MacKenzie expressed his opinion without reference to the detailed arguments published by the ICTY Trial and Appeal Chambers in the Krstic case judgements published several years earlier and confirmed by the ICJ since.[303][304]
- La Nation, a bi-monthly Swiss newspaper, published a series of articles claiming that 2,000 soldiers were killed in the "pseudo-massacre" in Srebrenica. The Society for Threatened Peoples and Swiss Association Against Impunity filed a joint suit against La Nation for genocide denial. Swiss law prohibits genocide denial.[212]
- Pamela Geller, an American blogger, author, political activist, and commentator and former executive of The New York Observer has strongly defended former Serbian president Slobodan Milošević. She denies the existence of Serbian concentration camps in the 1990s. She has also defended Radovan Karadžic, indicted for genocide and other war crimes against Bosnian Muslims and Croats during the Siege of Sarajevo and Srebrenica Massacre; in her article she argues that the Muslims were not murdered but killed their own for political gain.[305][306]
- ^ a b c Potocari Memorial Center PRELIMINARY LIST of Missing Persons from Srebrenica '95 [1]
- ^ a b c UN Press Release SG/SM/9993UN, 11/07/2005 "Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s message to the ceremony marking the tenth anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre in Potocari-Srebrenica", retrieved 9 August 2010.
- ^ a b Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Tribunal Update: Briefly Noted (TU No 398, 18 March 2005) [2]
- ^ Paramilitaries Get 15 – 20 Years for Kosovo Crimes – [Balkan Insight http://balkaninsight.com/en/main/news/20364/]
- ^ "Serbia: Mladic “Recruited” Infamous Scorpions". Institute for War and Peace Reporting. [3]
- ^ a b Williams, Daniel. "Srebrenica Video Vindicates Long Pursuit by Serb Activist". The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/24/AR2005062401501_pf.html. Retrieved 26 May 2011.
- ^ a b Michas, Takis (2002). Unholy Alliance: Greece and Milosevic's Serbia in the Nineties. Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 1-58544-183-X.
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- ^ a b "Two Bosnian Serbs Jailed For 31 Years Over Srebrenica". The New York Times. 22 April 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/04/22/world/international-uk-bosnia-warcrimes-sentence.html. Retrieved 22 April 2010. [dead link]
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- ^ Alternative Views
- Report of Srebrenica Research Group, alleged that "the contention that as many as 8,000 Muslims were killed has no basis in available evidence and is essentially a political construct".
- Report of International Strategic Studies Association (ISSA), claimed that the "alleged casualty number of 7,000 victims [is] vastly inflated and unsupported by evidence"
- The real story behind Srebrenica by the former UNPROFOR commander, Gen. Lewis MacKenzie, The Globe and Mail, 14 July 2005.
- "The Forbidden Srebrenica report", report denying the Srebrenica massacre issued by the Republika Srpska Bureau for Cooperation with the ICTY in September 2002.
- The Politics of the Srebrenica Massacre article argues that only some Bosniaks were executed, most died in battle, and some of the bodies in mass graves are actually Serbs, by Edward S. Herman, 7 July 2005
- ^ Denial of genocide – on the possibility of normalising relations in the region by Sonja Biserko (the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia) and Edina Bečirević (Faculty of Criminalistics, Criminology and Security Studies of the University of Sarajevo).
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- ^ Arslanagic, Sabina (3 December 2010). "Dodik Again Denies Srebrenica Genocide". Balkan Insight. http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/dodik-slams-international-community-for-referring-to-srebrenica-massacre-as-genocide.
- ^ "Gregory Copley Bio". 128.121.186.47. 28 October 1946. http://128.121.186.47/ISSA/issa/GRCbio.htm. Retrieved 26 May 2011.
- ^ Gregory Copley contributor to ISSA International Strategic Studies Association – Special Report Srebrenica Controversy Becomes Increasingly Politicized ISSA Special Report – Balkan Strategic Studies, 19 September 2003
- ^ a b "Srebrenica Research Group – Group members and mission". Srebrenica-report.com. http://www.srebrenica-report.com/people.htm. Retrieved 26 May 2011.
- ^ Phillip Corwin contributor to ISSA International Strategic Studies Association – Special Report Srebrenica Controversy Becomes Increasingly Politicized ISSA Special Report – Balkan Strategic Studies, 19 September 2003
- ^ Srebrenica Controversy Becomes Increasingly Politicized, 19 September 2003
- ^ Fool's Crusade: Yugoslavia NATO and Western Delusions. Google Books. http://books.google.com/books?id=uwQMLAAACAAJ&dq=inauthor:%22Diana+Johnstone%22&lr=&ei=AMijSpSVJIa6zATW36yACA. Retrieved 26 May 2011.
- ^ "Srebrenica Historical Project". Srebrenica-project.com. http://www.srebrenica-project.com/. Retrieved 26 May 2011.
- ^ a b Diana Johnstone "Srebrenica Revisited", CounterPunch, 12 October 2005
- ^ . ITN vs Living Marxism, Part 2. Footnote [49] cites Linda Ryan "What’s in a ‘mass grave’?, Living Marxism, Issue 88, March 1996" (The link he provides in the footnote does not exist any more so the link is a substitute). Retrieved 20 April 2008.
- ^ McGreal, Chris. Genocide? What genocide?, The Guardian 20 March 2000
- ^ MacKenzie (ret'd). Jmss.org. Retrieved 13 August 2010.
- ^ Balkan Witness – General Lewis MacKenzie. Glypx.com. Retrieved 13 August 2010.
- ^ "The Real Criminals Presiding over the International Criminal Court Part II of Nuremberg II – Atlas Shrugs". Atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com. 11 July 2010. http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2010/07/the-real-criminals-presiding-over-the-international-criminal-court-part-ii-of-nuremberg-ii.html. Retrieved 3 June 2011.
- ^ Chris McGreal in Washington (20 August 2010). "The US blogger on a mission to halt 'Islamic takeover'". The Guardian (UK). http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/20/rightwing-blogs-islam-america. Retrieved 3 June 2011.
- Michas, Takis (2002). Unholy Alliance: Greece and Milosevic's Serbia in the Nineties. Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 1-58544-183-X.
- National institutions
- Academic articles
- Brunborg, H., Lyngstad, T.H. and Urdal, H. (2003): Accounting for genocide: How many were killed in Srebrenica? European Journal of Population, 19(3):229–248. doi:10.1023/A:1024949307841
- Jasmina Besirevic Regan, Genocide Studies Program: Former Yugoslavia Yale University. Retrieved 16 March 2008
- David MacDonald, (University of Otago). Globalizing the Holocaust: A Jewish ‘useable past’ in Serbian Nationalism (PDF), Portal Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies Vol. 2, No. 2 July 2005 ISSN: 1449-2490
- Staff. The uncensored version of the Bosnian execution video, JURIST, University of Pittsburgh School of Law, Retrieved 16 March 2008 — Warning: shocking content!
- Books
- Reports
- News media
- Slavenka Drakulic Triumph of Evil, Eurozine, 12 February 2004
- Udo Ludwig and Ansgar Mertin. A Toast to the Dead: Srebrenica Widows Sue U.N., Dutch Government—Der Spiegel, 4 July 2006.
- Murat Karaali. The secret killings grounds of Srebrenica, Turkish Daily News, 10 January 1998.
- Marlise Simons. Serbia's darkest pages hidden from genocide court, International Herald Tribune, 8 April 2007
- Staff. New Srebrenica mass grave found, BBC News, 11 November 2006
- Staff Tarik Samarah: Srebrenica Fabrika Agency.Retrieved 16 March 2008
- Staff Sense Tribunal, is a specialised project of Sense News Agency Sense based in International War Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. The focus of this project is regular coverage of the work of the ICTY, and the activities of ICJ (International Court of Justice) and ICC (International Criminal Court). Retrieved 16 March 2008
- NGOs
- Other
- Fiction stories about Srebrenica women
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![Burial of 465 identified Bosniak civilians (July 11, 2007)The Srebrenica Massacre, also known as Srebrenica Genocide,[1] was the July 1995 killing of an estimated 8,000 Bosniak males, in the region of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina by units of the](http://web.archive.org./web/20120921081422/http://cdn7.wn.com/pd/95/a1/668aa3e9561b9b614ed42d3c81f5_medium.jpg "Burial of 465 identified Bosniak civilians (July 11, 2007)The Srebrenica Massacre, also known as Srebrenica Genocide,[1] was the July 1995 killing of an estimated 8,000 Bosniak males, in the region of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina by units of the")
