Dutch Troops Planned to "Fight" Serbs – Mladic Lawyer

Defence alleges that before fall of Srebrenica, peacekeepers were preparing to “attack and fight” Bosnian Serb army. 

A former member of the Dutch peacekeeping battalion in Srebrenica this week described the fall of the enclave in July 1995 and his subsequent meetings with General Ratko Mladic.

Evert Rave appeared as a prosecution witness in the Hague trial of the commander of the Bosnian Serb army, which overran the town of Srebrenica in July 1995. The indictment holds Mladic responsible for the ensuing massacre of over 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys.

Mladic is accused of responsibility for crimes of genocide, persecution, extermination, murder and forcible transfer which "contributed to achieving the objective of the permanent removal of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats from Bosnian Serb-claimed territory".

Rave was liaison officer and assistant commander for terrain security with the Dutch battalion of the United Nations Protection Force, UNPROFOR. He was deployed in Srebrenica from January 1995.

He is just one of several ex-officers of the Dutch battalion, or Dutchbat to appear as prosecution witnesses in the trial of Mladic.

Rave has previously testified before the Hague tribunal in the 2000 trial of Bosnian Serb general Radislav Krstic, who was found guilty of aiding and abetting genocide and sentenced to 35 years imprisonment; and in the trial of General Zdravko Tolimir, convicted of genocide late last year and given a life sentence. He appeared in the ongoing trial of wartime Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic in late 2011.

In court this week, Rave described accompanying Dutchbat commander Thomas Karremans to a meeting with Mladic and other officials at the Hotel Fontana in Bratunac on the evening of July 11, 1995. Earlier that day, the Srebrenica enclave had fallen to Bosnian Serb forces, and thousands of civilians were fleeing to the UN compound in nearby Potocari.

Rave said Mladic was “very upset” about NATO air strikes on his troops earlier in the day, and he demanded to know whether Dutchbat commanders were responsible for calling them in.

“[Mladic] remained upset after we told him we weren't [responsible], and I wondered if we would be taken outside and shot. Mladic then said that if air attacks on his forces continued, he would retaliate by shelling the Potocari combat of Dutchbat and killing Dutch hostages currently under his custody,” the witness said.

In his statement, Rave said he witnessed Bosnian Muslim men being separated from their families in Potocari on July 12, and later hearing gunshots after the separation took place.

"General Mladic was aware of the separation of men, as it took place while he was in Potocari. When he was walking towards a blockade on the road [from Potocari], I saw that a large number of separated Muslim men were already in a house on the road and others were being led there, so it was impossible for him not to see them,” Rave said.

During the defence’s cross-examination, Mladic's lawyer Branko Lukic suggested to the witness that the Bosnian government army and UNPROFOR planned to "jointly attack and fight” the Bosnian Serb army. He further claimed that there was "a tactical attempt by the Bosnian Muslims in May 1995 to test Dutchbat and see what their true intentions were, and whether they would help fight the Serbs".

The witness answered that he was aware of some "tactical games" going on when he arrived in Srebrenica. However, he said, while the Bosnian government army may have "attempted to determine the direction of Dutchbat and to see how far we would go", one could not speak of any "joint attempt".

Lukic, however, went on to claim that there were clear orders for UNPROFOR to "fight” the Bosnian Serb army.

He cited the so-called “green light” order from Dutchbat deputy commander Robert Franken. According to Lukic, on July 9 – shortly before Srebrenica fell – Franken ordered his troops to "use all available means" to defend Srebrenica. This did not adhere to the “restrictions imposed by the UN mandate", Lukic said, calling it an open declaration of war on the Bosnian Serb army.

"We were attacked, as if we were at war ourselves, and were trying to use whatever we could to defend ourselves. It was the situation we were brought into", Rave said.

Lukic then asked the witness why UNPROFOR did not do more to demilitarise Bosnian Muslim soldiers in the enclave, to which the witness replied that Dutch forces did "take weapons away whenever weapons were found". He added that the same applied to "both sides".

The lawyer asked the witness whether he was aware that Bosnian Muslim troops boasted of having cheated the Serbs. He claimed that Naser Oric, who commanded Bosnian government forces in Srebrenica, said in an interview that he gave Dutchbat “only useless old weapons, but kept all the good ones and the ones [they] couldn't find".

"There were weapons, yes; there were armed civilians on both sides as well. In addition, in such a big area, it is not difficult to hide weapons. But it was also impossible to know they had weapons [that] they told us nothing about, you see,” Rave said.

The trial will continue next week.

Turkey condems Srebrenica massacre on 17th anniversary

Bosnia commemorates the 17th anniversary of Srebrenica massacre and cries for hundreds of victims. 

Bodies of victims found in mass graves are laid to rest

 Women weep over caskets at the Potocari Memorial Center during the funeral in Srebrenica, where 520 newly-identified Bosnian Muslims were buried. A man places Bosnian coffee cups, each of them symbolizing the victims of the Srebrenica massacre, during a memorial ceremony mark the 17th anniversary of the massacre in Istanbul.

Bosnians yesterday buried 520 newly-identified victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, with the two alleged masterminds of the slaughter finally on trial for genocide.

Some 30,000 Muslims traveled to a memorial center in Srebrenica, Bosnia, yesterday to bury the victims – from among the 8,000 Muslim men and boys slaughtered in July 1995 by Serb forces.

After speeches and the Muslim prayer for the dead, people began hoisting the simple coffins covered in green cloth to carry them to the freshly dug graves.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said yesterday that Turkey would never forget the Srebrenica massacre that had happened at the heart of Europe, during a speech at his party’s meeting in Ankara. Recalling that Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdağ attended the ceremony in Bosnia-Herzegovina representing Turkey, Erdoğan said Turkey was committed to protecting the Bosnians.

Memorial ceremonies mark 17th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre

Turkey condemns massacre

Bozdağ visited the Potocari Memorial Center and a nearby museum. Bozdağ said that July was “the month of sorrow” for Bosnia-Herzegovina. “We are here to share pain of our brothers and sisters in Bosnia-Herzegovina,” he said. In a statement yesterday, the Turkish Foreign Ministry also condemned attempts to deny or underestimate the significance of the massacre. A group from the Young Bosnians Association also held a memorial ceremony in Istanbul’s Taksim Square, filling cups with coffee to represent those killed in Srebrenica.

Srebrenica was a U.N.-protected Muslim town in Bosnia besieged by Serb forces throughout Bosnia’s 1992-95 war. Serb troops, led by Gen. Ratko Mladic overran the enclave in July 1995, executed 8,372 men and boys in just a few days. Dutch troops stationed in Srebrenica as U.N. peacekeepers were failed to stop the slaughter. The bodies of the victims are still being found in mass graves throughout eastern Bosnia. So far 5,325 Srebrenica massacre victims found this way have been laid to rest. Mladic and political leader Radovan Karadzic have gone on trial at the U.N. war crimes court.

World leaders also rejected any moves to down play the scale of the massacre. “The U.S. rejects efforts to distort the scope of this atrocity, rationalize the motivations behind it, blame the victims, and deny the indisputable fact that it was genocide,” U.S. President Barack Obama said in statement. His remarks were a clear swipe at Serbia’s new President Tomislav Nikolic, who said last month that the killings constituted “grave war crimes” but not genocide. But for many survivors and relatives in Srebrenica, the trials at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) are too little, too late. They fear Karadzic, 67, and Mladic, 70, could die before any verdict is delivered.

Thousands in Sarajevo pay respect to Srebrenica victims

Bosnian watch trucks carrying 520 coffins of newly identified victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in Podlugovi.

Thousands lined the streets of Sarajevo yesterday to pay tribute to the remains of 520 victims of the Srebrenica massacre who will be buried on the 17th anniversary of the atrocity.

Three trucks loaded with 520 coffins passed through the Bosnian capital on their way to the Potocari cemetery near Srebrenica where they will be buried tomorrow, anniversary of the massacre of some 8,000 Muslim males by Bosnian Serb forces.

“Our children are returning to where they left from in 1995. Unfortunately, they are not alive,” Munira Subasic, who heads an organization of women of Srebrenica whose husbands and sons were killed, told Agence France-Presse as she watched the vehicles.

The convoy stopped briefly in front of the Bosnian presidency building in Sarajevo where people, many in tears, threw flowers on to the trucks.

Each year on July 11, the day the U.N.-protected enclave fell to the Bosnian Serbs, a mass burial is held at the special memorial centre in Potocari. So far 5,137 identified victims have been laid to rest after their remains found in mass graves were identified. In Europe’s worst atrocity since World War II, Bosnian Serb forces killed some 8,000 Muslim men and boys in only a few days after they captured the eastern town. The massacre was ruled a genocide by two international courts.

After being on the run for years, Bosnian Serb wartime political and military chiefs Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic are currently both on trial before the U.N. war crimes court, notably for their role in the Srebrenica massacre.

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THE HAGUE 

Bosnian Serb ex-army chief Ratko Mladic’s genocide and war crimes trial resumed yesterday with the first prosecution witness telling how Bosnia’s ethnic groups lived in peace before its brutal war erupted.

“Before the war we had a great time,” said Elvedin Pasic, who as a 14-year-old boy lived in the village of Hvracani in northern Bosnia. “We were playing basketball and football, we used to do everything together. Muslim, Croats and Serbs, we were all having a great time, respecting each other,” he said. But things began to change in the spring of 1992, when Pasic first noticed a convoy of military vehicles with soldiers in the uniform of the Yugoslav national army (JNA), giving Muslims the three-fingered Serbian salute.

Mladic, 70, has been indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on 11 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the Balkan country’s war.