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More than 7,000 Muslim men and boys were summarily executed in July 1995
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SARAJEVO,
June 25 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - The survivors of the
Srebrenica massacre will file a compensation claim to the Dutch
government next week for failing to prevent Europe’s worst atrocity
since World War II, a lawyer said on Friday, June 25.
A
former Dutch officer giving evidence before the UN Tribunal in The
Hague said the world organization also failed to stop the slaughter of
at least 7,000 Muslims who were buried in mass graves during the 1995
massacre, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"We
are to file a request for out-of-court settlement to the Dutch
government on July 1, demanding compensation for the victims,"
said Semir Guzin, one of the lawyers representing families of the
Srebrenica massacre.
"The
government has to respond to the claim within six weeks. If they
reject it, we will then file a suit against the government before a
Dutch court," he added.
The
lawyer denied a Bosnian national television report that the survivors
would sue the Dutch government on July 1.
He
refused to reveal the amount of compensation being sought, but last
year he said they had planned to sue the Netherlands and the United
Nations for more than half a billion dollars for failing to protect
the enclave.
More
than 7,000 Muslim men and boys were summarily executed in July 1995
after Bosnian Serb troops overran Srebrenica, a Muslim enclave in
eastern Bosnia that had been declared a UN "safe haven" and
was protected by Dutch peacekeepers.
Bosnian
Serbs authorities admitted
for the first time on June 11, that their forces had
slaughtered several thousand Muslims in the Srebrenica massacre.
Bosnian
Serb president Dragan Cavic also offered apology on Tuesday, June 22,
calling the massacre a black page in the history of the Serb people.
Not
For Money
Sabaheta
Fejzic, whose 16-year-old son was wrested from her arms by Bosnian
Serb soldiers in the Dutch base before the massacre, said the legal
action was not about money.
"Serb
forces committed genocide in Srebrenica, but the Dutch soldiers made
that possible. They allowed the Serbs to do it. This is not about the
money. No money in the world can compensate the loss of a child,"
she told AFP.
Fejzic
also lost her husband at Srebrenica and now represents an association
of mothers of the victims.
"The
compensation is kind of punishment for those responsible," she
asserted.
The
atrocity became a symbol of the brutality of the 1992-95 war in Bosnia
and moved one judge at the UN war crimes court in The Hague to
describe the episode as "scenes from Hell, written on the darkest
pages of human history".
UN
Blamed
Guzin’s
announcement came one day after Commander Thom Karremans, a former
Dutch officer assigned to defend Srebrenica in 1995, gave a testimony
to the UN Tribunal in the Hague.
Karremans
was in charge of a lightly-armed force, dubbed Dutchbat, which was
sent to protect the enclave, the Dutch news network Expatica said on
its website.
Bosnian-Serb
troops led by war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic surrounded the enclave.
Karremans,
who surrendered on July 11, 1995, has been very critical of the UN's
failure to provide air cover, as he requested, to drive off the Serb
attackers.
Nevertheless,
he has become a hate figure for his apparent failure to protect the
civilians.
His
critics were particularly incensed by a photograph showing him
drinking with Mladic shortly after surrendering, said the Dutch
network.
The
former Dutch officer recently fled the Netherlands and moved to Spain,
claiming he felt threatened.
The
Dutch government was later ordered by the tribunal to find Karremans
so he could be brought back to testify.
The
entire Dutch government resigned in 2002 after a damning official
report blamed the country's political and military leaders for giving
their peacekeepers an "impossible" mission to protect the
enclave.
In
a report issued by Secretary General Kofi Annan in 1999, the United
Nations admitted it failed to do its part to protect the Muslims of
Srebrenica from mass murder.
The
two men believed responsible for the slaughter, Bosnian Serb wartime
leader Radovan Karadzic and Mladic, have been indicted by the UN
tribunal at The Hague for genocide and war crimes but remain at large.
In
a landmark ruling, the Appeals Chamber of the UN war crimes tribunal
confirmed in April that the 1995 massacre amounted to a "genocide".
Then
U.S. President Bill Clinton was the key advocate of NATO air strikes
against Bosnian Serbs in September 1995 that forced them to sit down
at the negotiating table.
The
Bosnian war ended in November 1995 after marathon US-led negotiations
in Dayton, Ohio, led by Clinton 's Bosnia envoy Richard Holbrooke.
The
peace accord split Bosnia into two highly-autonomous entities - the
Serbs' Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation - and brought
in NATO-led peacekeepers to maintain security.
