Crimes That Shocked The World - The Most Chilling True-Life Stories From the Last 40 Years. Danny Collins
negotiations had broken out to secure the safety of the Muslim population in the Serb occupied territory but Radovan Karadžić had other plans. Along with presidential associate Momčilo Krajišnik he ordered Serb General Ratko Mladić to ensure that the region be ‘swept clean’ of the former Bosniak population, to which the general replied: ‘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 or Mr Karadžić will explain that to the world. That is genocide.’
As Mladić received his orders and UN negotiations continued, the 30,000 civilians who had fled the Serb advance were now crowding into the UN compound at Potocari. Two thousand succeeded in gaining entry to the compound while others camped in neighbouring fields. The refugees were mainly made up of the elderly, women, and children, with a small minority of men, later estimated by the Dutch at around 1200. Food and water was at a premium and people among the crush of frightened refugees were dying of heat exhaustion as the fierce conditions took their toll.
By now the advancing Drina Corps had linked up with the main body of the Serbian Army and elements of the Skorpionis had surrounded the Potocari compound, clearing buildings of refugees and summarily executing the occupants. No discrimination was made between the old and the young, and babies barely out of the womb died with their skulls crushed against walls or under rifle butts. Old men and women were eviscerated by bayonets and young boys and girls submitted to multiple rapes before being despatched with a bullet to the head. The main target of men and youths of military age was forgotten among the carnage. Some refugees were seen to hang themselves or cut their own throats in terror of a more painful death at the hands of the rampaging Serbs.
Many reports would later circulate of the inaction of the Dutch peacekeepers to prevent the blood bath, one witness reporting the murder of a baby that was torn from its mother’s arms and had its throat slit when a Serb objected to the infant’s frenzied crying, this atrocity done under the eyes of Dutch soldiers who did nothing; but one would have had to be in the position of the Dutchbat soldiers to realise that they were a hair’s breadth away from death themselves and that their lives depended on the whim of the blood-crazed Serb army.
On the morning of 12 July, agreement had been reached that buses would ferry the refugees north to Kladanj in Bosniak-held territory but as queues formed, Serb forces entered the Potocari compound and separated men and boys of military age into groups that were then marched away at rifle-point. The selection was purely arbitrary, with some elderly men and younger teenage boys ordered out of the line for the buses. The selected men and boys were taken to a holding point in Potocari where Dutchbat soldiers reported hearing occasional gunshots. A UN military observer who attempted to approach the holding area was turned back by Serb troops who made it clear he would be shot if he attempted to approach further.
The mass executions at Potocari were carried out blatantly in full view of the UNPROFOR contingent. At night, arc lights illuminated a scene reminiscent of the Nazi death camps as industrial bulldozers pushed the bodies of the dead and dying into mass graves. The rank smells of blood and putrefaction clung to the throats of those forced to witness the scenes and many of the Serb execution squads wore rags tied around their mouths and nostrils to avoid the stench of death. Streets were littered with corpses as the Serb forces continued with their rape and torture that had developed into a rage of ethnic hate. Noses, ears, and lips were cut from their victims as trophies, and parents were forced to watch their children murdered before their eyes. Many of the buses carrying women and children to Bosniak territory failed to reach their destination, the occupants ordered out of the vehicles en route and executed at the roadside.
It was clear that the Serbs were embarking on genocide on a massive scale, with reports that a column of 15,000 male refugees, who had attempted to break out of the Potocari perimeter to Tuzla on the night of 11 July, prior to the arrival of the Serbs, were ambushed by Serb artillery at Kemanica Hill between Konjević Polje and Nova Kasaba. Five thousand survivors of the shelling who had been at the rear of the column took to the woods alongside the road, where they hid from the Serb searchers.
Gradually, as thirst and hunger overcame them, the survivors of the artillery bombardment began to surrender or were captured by Serbs who promised their exchange for Serb PoWs. Some Serb soldiers were even reported to be wearing UN uniforms in an effort to get the Muslims to come out of hiding. The ruse worked and close to Sandići 300 surrendering Muslims were lined up in ranks before being mown down by machine-gun fire.
Only a few survived to tell their stories to the War Crimes Commission at The Hague. Among those killed were the political leaders of the Srebrenica enclave, medical staff of the local hospital at Potocari, and members of prominent Srebrenica families. Also killed were a number of women, children, and elderly who had chosen to accompany the column.
Reports of the Srebrenica massacres gradually filtered back to UN observers as the war continued through to the fall of 1995. At the end of August of that year NATO launched a bombing campaign that lasted until 20 September. NATO was aware of the criticism that its negotiations with the Bosnian Serbs had shown it to be weak and without conviction while thousands died, calling for the observation by one shrewd political observer that ‘More might have been done if the Bosniaks’ lifeline had been oil rather than beetroot soup…’. The war ended with the Dayton Peace Agreement of November 1995.
In the aftermath of the peace agreement the Dutch government accepted responsibility for the failure of the under-resourced Dutchbat mission to defend the population of Srebrenica and the cabinet resigned in 2002. A Serbian report issued in the same year and endorsed by leading Bosnian Serb politicians claimed that 1800 Muslim soldiers had died in combat, adding that ‘the number of Muslim soldiers killed by Bosnian Serbs out of personal revenge or lack of knowledge of international law is probably around 100…’
In 2004 a disputed Republika Srpska committee formed at the request of the international community’s High Representative, Paddy Ashdown, released the names of 8731 persons confirmed missing or dead from the Srebrenica enclave. However, a resolution passed by the US House of Representatives a year later made it clear that the world saw the actions of the Serbs in Bosnia Herzegovina in 1995 ‘as genocide as defined in Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of genocide created in Paris on December 9 1948 and entered into force on January 12 1951’.
By the fall of 2005, possibly demonstrating an anxiety to be accepted as part of the international community as well as that of the expanding EEC, the Special Bosnian Serb Government Working Group stated that 25,083 people were involved in the massacre at Srebrenica, including 19,471 members of Bosnian Serb armed forces that actively gave orders or directly took part in the massacre, claiming to have identified 17,074 by name. Eight hundred and ninety-two of those named still hold positions at, or are employed by, the government of the Republika Srpska. The names have not been revealed.
Up to 2006, 42 mass graves had been discovered around Srebrenica and 22 more are believed to exist in the area. The number of victims identified totalled 2070, with more than 7000 bags of body parts awaiting identification. At Kamenica Hill, site of the Artillery bombardment of a refugee column escaping from Potocari, another 1000 body parts were exhumed.
In May 2007 former Serb general Zdravko Tolimir was arrested by Serbian police and transferred to the International Criminal tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Radovan Karadžić was arrested in Belgrade in July 2008. Former Serbian president Slobodan Milosević was accused of complicity in genocide in Srebrenica but died in March 2006 during his trial in The Hague before a verdict was returned.
Radovan Karadžić dubbed ‘The Beast of Bosnia’, was discovered working as a homeopathic doctor in Belgrade 13 years later. His face was almost covered by a long white bushy beard and side whiskers and his trademark bush of hair had been tamed into plaits. Karadžić went on trial at the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague on charges of genocide in October 2009, refusing to recognise the authority of the court. The trial continued in his absence.
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