Bosnia Genocide: Court found Dutch state liable for three Srebrenica deaths
The Dutch Supreme Court has ruled that the Netherlands was liable for the deaths of three Bosnian Muslim men killed in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.
The three Muslim men were reported ordered to leave a secured UN compound run by Dutch peacekeeping forces when Bosnian Serb forces overran it.
The ruling upheld an earlier decision by an appeals court in 2011.
The Massacre is considered Europe’s worst massacre since World war 2. Over 7,500 Bosnian Muslims particularly men and boys were killed in the atrocity.
The Srebrenica massacre, also known as the Srebrenica genocide was the July 1995 killing of more than 8,000 Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), mainly men and boys, in and around the town of Srebrenica during the Bosnian War. The killing was perpetrated by units of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) under the command of General Ratko Mladić. The Secretary-General of the United Nations described themass murder as the worst crime on European soil since the Second World War. A paramilitary unit from Serbia known as the Scorpions, officially part of the Serbian Interior Ministry until 1991, participated in the massacre, along with several hundred Russian and Greek volunteers.
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