SPIONICA, June 5, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - A horrifying video depicting the 1995 cold-blooded execution of young Muslims by Serb forces in Srebrenica has had a devastating effect in Bosnia, giving the families of the massacre victims a painful glimpse of the last moments in the lives of their loved ones.

“I was devastated, he was my only brother,” Safeta Muhic told Agence France-Presse (AFP) after seeing the execution of her brother in the gruesome video first released Wednesday, June 1, during the trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic at the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

Muhic was 14 when she last saw her brother Safet, then 17, and has long known he died when Bosnian Serb forces overran the UN-protected enclave in July 1995.

But nothing prepared her for the shock of seeing his cold-blooded killing.

Safet was one of six Muslim civilians in the video shown being unloaded from a truck, hands bound behind their backs, and then shot from behind by members of the Serbian Interior Ministry’s Scorpions special forces unit.

Muhic still remembers vividly the day she parted from her brother.

“He was wearing a blue T-shirt when he left us to try and escape Srebrenica through forests with other men... he did not make it,” she said.

Two years ago Safet's remains were found in a mass grave and his sister was called to identify him.

“My mother could not do it. I did not tell her about the video either for I know it would kill her to see it,” said Muhic, whose father was also killed in Srebrenica.

Some 8,000 Muslim men and boys were executed when Bosnian Serb forces and irregular Serbian police units backed by the Milosevic regime overran Srebrenica near the end of Bosnia's 1992-1995 war.

Considered the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II, the massacre has led to genocide charges against suspects including Milosevic, former Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic and his military commander, Ratko Mladic.

Karadzic and Mladic remain at large in the Balkans, reportedly moving between Serb-controlled areas of Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro.

Nura Alispahic still remembers her son’s last kiss before being slain by the Serbian forces when he was only 16.

“I thought he had already left but then I saw him. He said he had to come back because he forgot to kiss me,” she told AFP with tears streaming down her face.

She was shattered by the footage in which she recognized her son Azmir.

“I saw with my own eyes how the bastards killed my baby,” she said. “He had his brother's trousers on... and sneakers... they shoot, he falls.”

The grieved sister has been trying to push the horrifying images she has seen out of her mind by staring at her brother's photo and repeatedly playing a short video of him made in Srebrenica in April 1995 when he completed school.

The video was obtained last December from an unnamed and now protected source by Hague prosecutors and Natasa Kandic, a Serbian human rights activist.

They spent months authenticating it and investigating the men it showed. It was shown to Serbian war crimes prosecutors a week ago and its broadcast to a national audience was coordinated with the government of Kostunica.

Del Ponte said her office has more video evidence on the 1995 massacre. (Reuters)

The video has also been difficult for many Serbs, forcing them to confront for the first time the brutal reality of what occurred in Bosnia.

Eleven former paramilitary troops apparently seen killing civilians in the video were swiftly arrested.

Serbian Premier Vojislav Kostunica called it “terrible” while President Boris Tadic described the perpetrators as “monsters” and offered to travel to Srebrenica to mark the 10th anniversary of the massacre next month.

Serbia and Montenegro Humanitarian Affairs Minister Rasim Ljajic said he hoped the video would be a wake-up call to Serbs who routinely deny any part in war crimes and resent the fact that their bid for EU membership is conditional on handing over suspects to the Hague tribunal.

Meanwhile, a Bosnian newspaper revealed Saturday, June 4, that copies of the shocking videotape were passed around for years among Serbian police.

The daily Blic quoted residents of Sid, where the Scorpions battalion was based, as saying the local video rental shop once possessed five copies of the execution tape, Reuters reported.

The copies were not for the general public, with only those close to the Scorpions allowed to view them, the paper quoted locals as saying.

“When I saw the video (on television) I was speechless,” Blic quoted one unnamed Sid resident as telling its reporter.

“The killers are people I saw every day. On the street. At the coffee shop. People I said hello to and asked how they were.”

UN chief war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte said Friday, June 3, her office has more video evidence on the 1995 massacre.

“It will be made public only when we provide it in the court.”