For nearly a quarter of a century, the massacre of Srebrenica has been reappearing in the headlines of the western media. The usual allegation: 8,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred on July 11, 1995, in “the worst war crime since World War II.” The Hague Tribunal has ruled that these assumed 8,000 executed males constitutes “genocide.”
In NATO countries – most recently Canada – efforts are being made to outlaw discussion of Srebrenica, particularly discussion of whether the presumed “mass execution” ever happened, but also whether the presumed “mass execution” of only men constitutes “genocide”– when the women, children and the elderly had been orderly evacuated to the Muslim lines.
The figure of “8.000 victims” is repeated mantra-like without much interest in the origins of this figure. This is particularly worrying, since no evidence of 8,000 execution victims has been found, yet everyone continues to use this figure.
It would be a major contribution to the ongoing investigation into what actually happened in Srebrenica to learn the origin of the “8,000” figure. This is the figure used to justify the “genocide” charge brought by the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) against Bosnian Serb leaders. This in turn forms the basis for demands on Serbian political figures to publicly accept responsibility for the “genocide” assumed to have been committed by Bosnian Serbs in Srebrenica.
Over the past two and a half decades, there have been few who have been interested enough to look deeper into what happened in Srebrenica in July 1995. Some, who question the “genocide” verdict, assume that the figure of “8,000” is merely an arbitrary “guesstimate.”
On the other hand, research of media and eyewitness reports of the period gives a different picture, one of deliberate falsification. These “guesstimates” actually had their origins in concrete numbers, which were then inflated.
One thing should be clear – contrary to what the media would have us believe – the Serb troops, who walked into Srebrenica, were not an “invading force,” but rather Srebrenica, along with Zepa and Gorazde, was being handed over to the Serb side in exchange for Serb enclaves in predominantly Muslim or Croat regions, in preparation of imminent peace negotiations.
Two months after Srebrenica was handed over to Serb forces the representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) issued the following press statement:
“The ICRC’s head of operations for Western Europe, Angelo Gnaedinger, visited Pale and Belgrade from 2 to 7 September to obtain information from the Bosnian Serb authorities about the 3,000 persons from Srebrenica whom witnesses say were arrested by Bosnian Serb forces. The ICRC has asked for access as soon as possible to all those arrested (so far it has been able to visit only about 200 detainees), and for details of any deaths.
“The ICRC has also approached the Bosnia-Herzegovina authorities seeking information on some 5,000 individuals who fled Srebrenica, some of whom reached central Bosnia. (…) ”
However, Angelo Gnaedinger’s unnamed “witnesses” were the United Nations Dutch Blue Helmet Protection Force (UNPROFOR), stationed in Srebrenica. When the Dutchbat were evacuated from Srebrenica, journalists asked them, among other things, about the behavior of Serb troops. In their answers they mentioned a quite different figure.
“Dutch peacekeeping troops evacuated from Srebrenica (…) say that Bosnian Serbian invaders (…) abducted from 150 ‑ 300 men aged 16 ‑ 60. (…)”
In other words the 300 “abducted” Muslim men taken prisoner by Serb troops upon entering Srebrenica, became 3,000 (multiplied by ten) in the Red Cross press statement even while referring to what these “witnesses” had reported. The 200 prisoners the Red Cross had visited in custody, comes much closer to 300 prisoners, the Dutchbat had seen being arrested, than to the Red Cross allegation of 3,000, especially since the Dutchbat had estimated “from 150 ‑ 300 men”.
The hyperbole in the Red Cross press statement became even further exaggerated in an AP news item picked up by the US flagship daily, the New York Times:
“About 8,000 Muslims are missing from Srebrenica. (…) Among the missing were 3,000, mostly men, who were seen being arrested by Serbs. (…) In addition to those arrested, about 5,000 ‘have simply disappeared.” (See also the AP original)
There is no mention of the fact that the Red Cross statement says that “some of [the 5,000 had [already] reached central Bosnia.” In the AP/New York Times article, they “simply disappeared.”
Already by the time the two ICRC news items hit the wires, it had long since been established that most of the 5,000 were safe. In fact, they had “disappeared” behind Muslim lines:
The New York Times itself informs that:
“Some 3,000 to 4,000 Bosnian Muslims who were considered by UN officials to be missing after the fall of Srebrenica have made their way through enemy lines to Bosnian government territory. The group, which included wounded refugees, sneaked past Serb lines under fire and crossed some 30 miles through forests to safety.”
And the Times of London wrote:
“Thousands of the ‘missing’ Bosnian Muslim soldiers from Srebrenica who have been at the center of reports of possible mass executions by the Serbs, are believed to be safe to the northeast of Tuzla. Monitoring the safe escape of Muslim soldiers and civilians from (…) Srebrenica and Zepa has proved a nightmare for the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross. For the first time yesterday, however, the Red Cross in Geneva said it had heard from sources in Bosnia that up to 2,000 Bosnian Government troops were in an area north of Tuzla. They had made their way there from Srebrenica ‘without their families being informed’, a spokesman said, adding that it had not been possible to verify the reports because the Bosnian Government refused to allow the Red Cross into the area. [1]
Even those of the 5,000 who went to defend Zepa were also accounted for:
“The wounded troops were left behind, and when the Bosnian Serbs overran the town on Tuesday, the wounded were taken to Sarajevo for treatment at Kosevo Hospital. Many of them had begun their journey in Srebrenica and fled into the hills when that ‘safe area’ fell to the Bosnian Serbs on July 11. These men did not make it to Tuzla, where most of the refugees ended up, but became the defenders of Zepa instead. ‘Some 350 of us managed to fight our way out of Srebrenica and make it into Zepa,’ said Sadik Ahmetovic, one of 151 people evacuated to Sarajevo for treatment today. (…) They said they had not been mistreated by their Serb captors.”
In a previous text I asked the reader to simply use logic: “It might seem strange that the Muslim soldiers of Zepa would abandon their wounded comrades and that 5,000 Srebrenica soldiers would abandon their women and children to an enemy with a reputation – at least in the media – of being sadists, and rapists seeking to commit ‘genocide.’ Could it be that these Muslim soldiers knew that they need not be particularly worried about their women, children and wounded comrades falling into the hands of their Serb countrymen? The Serb forces had the wounded Muslim soldiers evacuated behind Muslim lines to their Muslim hospital in Sarajevo. Is this how one goes about committing genocide? Is this the military force compared to Nazis? What a trivialization of Nazi barbarism! Even the fact that the Serbs provided safe passage to women and children is interpreted as sinister, when it is proof that ‘genocide’ was not happening.”
Two weeks before the above Red Cross representatives gave their inflated figures to the press, another spokesperson for the International Red Cross in Geneva, Pierre Gaultier, provided an important detail, picked up two weeks later in the Gnaedinger statement above. In an interview for the German daily Junge Welt, he explained:
“All together we arrived at the number of approximately 10,000 [missing from Srebrenica]. But there may be some double counting… Before we have finished [weeding out the double counting] we cannot give any exact information. Our work is made even more complicated by the fact that the Bosnian government has informed us that several thousand refugees have broken through enemy lines and have been reintegrated into the Bosnian Muslim army. These persons are therefore not missing, but they cannot be removed from the lists of the missing (…) because we have not received their names.” [2]
Since the number of “missing” (and therefore presumed dead) has remained at roughly 8,000 throughout the past quarter of a century, it is reasonable to assume that the Muslim government had never furnished the Red Cross with the names of those who had reached Muslim lines.
Also to be noted is that when Prof. Milivoje Ivanisevic at the University of Belgrade scrutinized the Red Cross’ list, he discovered it contained the names of 500 people who had died already before Bosnian Serb troops had entered Srebrenica. Even more interesting, when he compared the Red Cross’ list with the Bosnian electoral lists for the 1996 fall elections, he found that 3,016 people listed by the Red Cross as “missing” were on the electoral lists the following year. [3] This means that either the Muslims were having their dead vote in the elections – election fraud – or the voters were in fact alive – additional evidence that the massacre is a hoax.
Then there were the 300 prisoners of war. What happened to them? A few examples will suffice.
“Hundreds of Bosnian Muslim prisoners are still being held at 2 secret camps within neighboring Serbia, according to a group of men evacuated by the Red Cross to a Dublin hospital from one camp – at Sljivovica. (…) A group of 24 men was flown to Ireland just before Christmas [1995] (…). But some 800 others remain incarcerated in Sljivovica and at another camp near Mitrovo Polje, just three days before the agreed date for the release of all detainees under the Dayton peace agreement on Bosnia (…). The Red Cross in Belgrade has been negotiating for several weeks to have the men released and given sanctuary in third countries. A spokeswoman said most were bound for the United States or Australia, with others due to be sent to Italy, Belgium, Sweden, France and Ireland. (…) Since late August, the Red Cross has made fortnightly visits from its Belgrade field office. (…) Teams from the War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague have been in Dublin to question and take evidence from the men.” [4]
“[The] US decided to accept 214 Bosniaks who, (…) had been detained in Serb camps and give them refugee status.” [5]
“‘[One] Hundred‑three Bosnian soldiers who were recently released from prisons in Serbia, were sent to Australia against their will,’ claims their commander, Osmo Zimic. Zimic also criticizes the UNHCR, whose spokesman claimed these soldiers demanded departure to Australia and by no means return to Bosnia for they would allegedly face criminal charges as deserters there. ‘This is not true,’ says Zimic. Australian immigration & ethnic affairs office spokesman says he was informed [of] Zimic’s allegation from the Bosnian embassy in Canberra and that the investigation was initiated.” [6]
“The Bosnian Embassy in Australia requested the Hague International Tribunal (ICTY) to start an investigation on the deportation of Bosniaks (800 persons) from Serbia to Australia and Europe in which, supposedly, UNHCR assisted, instead [of] involving Bosniaks in the exchange of prisoners, especially since they had been in the camps in Serbia, which claimed not to be involved in the war in Bosnia. The principal witness for the prosecution is Osmo Zimic, a Bosnian Army Officer, one who had been deported to Australia against his will.” [7]
The main evidence of the gigantic massacre in Srebrenica is the testimony of Drazen Erdemovic, who had claimed to have been a member of a Serb execution detachment, which had executed 1,200 Muslims in the course of five hours. The author, Germinal Civikov, who was an observer of various ICTY trial cases, mathematically demonstrated that the timetable Erdemovic claims to have been the cadence to carry out 1,200 executions, ranged from extremely doubtful to impossible.
In her article published in “The Nation” (USA), Diana Johnstone, author of the book “Fools Crusade, Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions” points to the travesty of justice in plea bargaining trials (i.e. the extortion of a “guilty” plea in exchange for a lighter sentence). In the Erdemovic case, the accused pleaded guilty not only to flee prosecution in Serbia for mass murder, but also because the ICTY had promised him a light sentence, a new identity, and safe residence in a third country in exchange for his tailored, incriminating testimony against Serb political leaders. His testimony was intended to fill the gaping hole left by the absence of hard evidence supporting the charges.
Diana Johnstone points to the fact that:
“(…) inasmuch as [Erdemovic] confessed to his crimes, there was no formal trial and no presentation of material evidence to corroborate his story. In any case, since he had turned ‘state’s evidence’, there would have been no rigorous cross-examination from either a contented prosecution or a complaisant defense regarding the discrepancy between the number of Muslims he testified having helped execute at a farm near Pilica – 1,200 – and the number of bodies actually found there by the Tribunal’s forensic team: about 150 to 200.” [8]
Again, the figure used in this “evidence” was nearly multiplied by 10 in relationship to the number of bodies actually found.
In his written statement, Erdemovic had alleged that men of all ethnicities had participated in the executions. During the course of the Milosevic trial cross examination by the defendant himself, Erdemovic was asked, whether he had seen or heard Serbs from neighboring Serbia participating in the shootings. Erdemovic admitted that he had not.
Among the information introduced into evidence by the defendant, President Milosevic, during his cross examination of the tribunal’s key witness, was that, in fact, Erdemovic’ execution detachment had been a group of mercenaries commanded by the secret service of a NATO country. As Germinal Civikov’s exposes in his book, ”Srebrenica: Der Kronzeuge” (Wien: Promedia, 2009) President Milosevic’ cross examination was persistently interrupted by Judge Richard May obviously to protect the prosecution’s case from being discredited.
Still the defendant was able to bring to light that on November 11, 1999, a group of mercenaries was arrested in Belgrade. One of the members of the group, Milorad Pelemis, had been Drazen Erdemovic’s commander in the Srebrenica execution unit. This detachment, working for France’s DGSE, foreign intelligence service, had been operating for ten years on Yugoslav territory under the name “Pauk” (the Spider). It had been committing various atrocities in Srebrenica and in Kosovo, for which Serb forces were subsequently accused. Some of its members were with the French Foreign Legion and held French citizenship. Among their planned operations was also the overthrow the government of President Milosevic. This is what had led to their discovery and arrest in Belgrade.[9]
Gen. Radislav Krstic was the first Serb to be convicted of “genocide” for Srebrenica. According to the New York Times, when the guilty verdict “for his role in the massacre of more than 7,000 Muslims” was announced, “tribunal investigators ha[d] exhumed 2,028 bodies from mass graves in the region. An additional 2,500 bodies ha[d] been located.”
But he was pronounced guilty of the murder of “more than 7,000.” Where is the evidence? “Located” bodies do not count. Ever since 1996 – the first year of exhumations – in press conferences, the ICTY’s specialists have been making estimates of how many bodies they suppose to be in the unopened “mass grave,” only to sheepishly re-close the grave with a much smaller count.
It should be remembered, 1) that during the exhumations, no attempts were made to learn the identities of the bodies, the time or circumstances of death, and 2) that this was a region, where civil war had raged for nearly four years, making victims on all sides. However, the tribunal would like for us to believe that Serbs were the only ones shooting and Muslims the only ones dying. This is why all bodies were counted as “victims of Srebrenica” and why their identities, time, and cause of death were unimportant to the forensic teams.
During exhumations another fact came to light: Reuters News Agency published the following information in the spring of 1998: During “the opening of a mass grave in Bosnia, according to the United Nations, experts found the remains of skulls, clothes and hundreds of spent rounds.” Further down in the article, one learns that “more than 1,500 spent rounds have been discovered in this area over the past two years.” [10]
This means that the tribunal was not only lacking bodies, but bullets as well. Or are we to believe that every shot fired by a Serb killed more than five Muslims?
The above-mentioned AP falsification of the Red Cross’ hyperbole is an often-used method of US intelligence services. AP is one of the CIA’s preferred conduits of its disinformation and the New York Times lends it credibility. AP, having journalists and stringers all over the world, can be called upon to make “interviews,” where parts of statements are then taken out of context and redacted to produce the government’s desired impression.
Already back in the 1970s when CIA manipulation of the press was still a scandal, the International Herald Tribune wrote:
“An agency official said that the CIA had in the past used paid agents in the foreign bureaus of the Associated Press and United Press International to slip agency-prepared dispatches onto the news wire. In some cases, as in the AP’s Singapore bureau in the early 1950s, the agents were natives known as ‘local hires.’ But in others they were Americans.” [11]
In July 1995, with not even enough time to investigate whether a crime had been committed in Srebrenica, and if so, who could have been responsible, President of the ICTY, Antonio Cassese, boasted in an interview, that “‘the decision [to indict Dr. Karadzic and Gen. Mladic] marks a fundamental step,’ Antonio Cassese, an Italian, told the newspaper L’Unita. ‘I challenge anyone to sit down at the negotiating table with someone accused of genocide,’ he said.”
However he was contradicted by the spokesman for the United Nations, Ahmad Fawzi, who told reporters: “‘It’s a dilemma, I think, that we’ve been thinking about for some time,’ (…) ‘When you are in a war situation you negotiate with all the parties in that field of operation,’ he told reporters.” [12] Dr. Karadzic and Gen. Mladic were not permitted to participate in the Dayton negotiations. The question, however, is, what do phony political indictments have to do with the judicial process?
Long before Serb troops walked into Srebrenica, it had been determined that the number of those supposedly killed by Serbs in Srebrenica had to range somewhere beyond 5,000 to credibly justify other major developments in international politics.
Former President of the (Muslim) Social Democratic Party in Srebrenica, Hakija Meholjic, who also served there as police chief, gave an interview to the Muslim journal Dani. In the course of his interview, he exposed a very important element of background information.
In September 1993, Meholjic had been a member of Srebrenica’s delegation to his party’s congress in Sarajevo. He recounted that before the congress Izetbegovic had taken the Srebrenica delegation aside in confidence. Izetbegovic then explained:
“You know, I [Izetbegovic] was offered by [US President Bill] Clinton in April 1993 (…) that [if] the Chetnik forces enter Srebrenica, carry out a slaughter of 5,000 Muslims, (…) there will be a [NATO-US] military intervention.” (Hakija Meholjic: “5,000 Muslim Lives for Military Intervention, Interview by Hasan Hadzic,” Dani, 22 June 1998, also mentioned in §115 of the Srebrenica Report of the UN Secretary General pursuant to General Assembly resolution 53/35 (1998) (S. A/54/549)
Though the Srebrenica delegates turned down the offer, this indicates what the US needed in order to to sway Western public opinion into accepting a NATO intervention outside of NATO’s area of engagement (“out of area”) in the Bosnian Civil War on the Muslim/Croat side – and against the Serbs. The Clinton and Izetbegovic governments had already hatched the idea of a “Srebrenica massacre,” long before Srebrenica was turned over to Serb forces. Their objective was to lock Bosnian Serbs into a strategic position where they could only accept terms dictated by the West.
Serb forces, under the illusion of a territory exchange, had no reason to commit a massacre. After all, it is evident that not even Serb forces can massacre soldiers that had fled before they arrived.
The way the Muslim combatants in Zepa were treated by the Serb forces should serve as a good indication of Serb military discipline and character.
However, as far as summary executions are concerned: Yes, according to eyewitnesses, there had been summary executions in Srebrenica:
“(…) Lieutenant Gen. Hans Couzy, the commander‑in chief of Dutch ground forces, said Dutch troops had witnessed no incidents of rape and were aware of only limited incidents that could be labeled war crimes.
“In one incident, Bosnian Serb invaders had taken a Muslim man, placed him against a wall and shot him in the back of the head. In another, nine men had been executed in a house, shot in the back in the same room.
These may be war crimes, but they seem never to have interested the tribunal.
Political “Plea Bargain” Offer
Given the fact that neither NATO, its kangaroo court in The Hague, nor its EU auxiliary in Brussels can provide tangible evidence of a “mass execution of 8,000 men” in Srebrenica, they have begun applying pressure on Serb politicians – particularly those in Serbia, (who have nothing to do with what Bosnian Serbs may or may not have done in Bosnia), to force them to “admit” and accept responsibility for a “genocide” that (Bosnian) Serbs are alleged to have committed in Srebrenica. Consideration for eventual EU membership would be the “thirty pieces of silver” for making this kowtow. (Serbia need only look at neighboring EU-member Greece to see just how poisoned this “gift” would be.)
Once such a kowtow is made, it is permanent, and without guarantee that the other side will uphold its side of the deal. Giving in to blackmail whets the appetite of the blackmailer. Suppose they then ask for recognition of Kosovo?
The EU is offering Serbia a “plea bargain”
The purpose of a plea bargain is to spare the court system the duty of having to furnish proof 1) that a crime has been committed, and 2) that the defendant was personally involved in the commission of that crime. If the defendant pleads guilty– even to a crime that had never been committed or even to a lesser crime – the state has its conviction and no longer needs to prove guilt. In practice, the plea bargain today serves a similar purpose to torture in the middle ages. The defendant has been put under such pressure that he/she would prefer to shorten the agony that still awaits him/her.
This is why the highest political authorities of Serbia are being subjected to this pressure. Should Serbian authorities bow to that pressure, in the eyes of the world they will be assuming for the 21st century the historical role in international collective memory that the Nazis had held in the second half of the 20th century – with the difference, that the Serbs are innocent. The kangaroo court in The Hague was incapable of providing proof of a massacre, let alone “genocide,” so they now seek to induce Serbian authorities to “voluntarily” accept this role, so that they can “close their books” claiming “justice has been served.” As seen in Judge Antonio Cassese’s statement above, the ICTY has always mistaken politics for justice.
The anti-Serb World War II symbolism in the propaganda images surrounding Srebrenica was no accident. It was aimed at US public opinion, but it did not originate there. It was tailored to German political needs.
The image of Srebrenica was designed to exonerate the German government of its World War II Holocaust stigma, and have it replaced with a Serb “Srebrenica” stigma.
Srebrenica was intended to humiliate and “expose” the United Nations – a post-war instrument designed for and working best in a bipolar international balance of power – as being “out of date” for the new – unipolar – world order with the claim that the UN had been powerless to prevent “genocide” from happening on its watch. So, NATO must take over “to prevent genocide and restore ‘human rights.’”
However, most important is that the depiction of Srebrenica, was to furnish justification for NATO’s new mission allowing it to leave the confines of its post-war “collective defense” area of operations – limited to the defense of the territories of the member nations – to become a globally operating alliance of military aggression.[13] For this, it needed a “humanitarian” façade. “Genocide” would do the trick. It was for this reinvention of NATO that Clinton needed his body count of more than 5,000.
Throughout the 90s, Bosnian Serbs had been accused of one “Nazi-like” crime after the other, from refugee camps becoming “concentration camps” to “genocide” by rape and forced insemination – the first genocide in history that ends with a larger population than when it began.
Therefore, a certain number of victims had to be created by media organs. A kangaroo “court” – with no justifiable jurisdiction over the territory or the population it claimed to judge – was created to make the criminalization of the victim of this aggression, seem justifiable.
This is also why Srebrenica cannot be solely seen as a “Serbian” or a “Serb” issue, it is a global issue.
Serb politicians today are standing at the frontline of defense that will determine whether humanity will continue to suffer this rollback to an international law of the jungle or regain its momentum that began with the United Nations and the establishment of the equality of the sovereignty of nations under the UN Charter.
As was exposed during the inquisition of President Slobodan Milosevic, one of the objectives in forming the ICTY was to break the Serbs. Arguing against Slobodan Milosevic’s continued self-representation, Michael Scharf, one of the participants in the establishment of the UN ad hoc courts, enumerated in a Washington Post op-ed the ICTY’s objectives:
“In creating the Yugoslavia tribunal statute, the U.N. Security Council set three objectives: first, to educate the Serbian people, who were long misled by Milosevic’s propaganda, about the acts of aggression, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by his regime; second, to facilitate national reconciliation by pinning prime responsibility on Milosevic and other top leaders and disclosing the ways in which the Milosevic regime had induced ordinary Serbs to commit atrocities; and third, to promote political catharsis while enabling Serbia’s newly elected leaders to distance themselves from the repressive policies of the past. [Judge Richard] May’s decision to allow Milosevic to represent himself has seriously undercut these aims.” [14]
This is but another piece of evidence that the ICTY – from its inception – had nothing to do with being a judicial entity. It was a political body already in its conceptualization.
This is why the steadfastness demonstrated, so far, by Serb politicians in their resistance to these attempts to extort a political “plea-bargain” can only be applauded. They deserve the full solidarity and support of all of us continuing the fight for justice.
Serbia’s Prime Minister Ana Brnabić demonstrated this resilience in her November 15, 2018 interview – actually a cross examination by a journalist seeming to mistake himself for a chief prosecutor – in the government-funded German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle. The interviewer sought, in the last series of questions, to get the prime minister to say that Srebrenica was “genocide.” (Srebrenica questioning begins at Minute 22.49)
Having no tangible proof of a massacre, the interviewer used the usual argument that “Two courts, the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice both ruled that it was genocide.” Prime Minister Brnabić held her ground.
Of course, Germany’s state television will not remind its audience that West Germany, which, by law, is identical to the German Empire, has NEVER recognized either the verdicts of the Nuremberg trials nor the Potsdam Agreements.
Besides, courts make mistakes in their rulings. That is the reason for having courts of appeal, to correct the rulings.
As for the ICTY, it has recognized one such mistake in the Milosevic trial. After having refused the defendant the needed medical help, which led to his death, the court posthumously exonerated President Milosevic during the course of the Karadzic trial in recognizing that:
“With regard to the evidence presented in this case in relation to Slobodan Milošević and his membership in the JCE, the Chamber recalls that he shared and endorsed the political objective of the Accused and the Bosnian Serb leadership to preserve Yugoslavia and to prevent the separation or independence of BiH and co-operated closely with the Accused during this time. The Chamber also recalls that Milošević provided assistance in the form of personnel, provisions, and arms to the Bosnian Serbs during the conflict. However, based on the evidence before the Chamber regarding the diverging interests that emerged between the Bosnian Serb and Serbian leaderships during the conflict and in particular, Milošević’s repeated criticism and disapproval of the policies and decisions made by the Accused and the Bosnian Serb leadership, the Chamber is not satisfied that there was sufficient evidence presented in this case to find that Slobodan Milošević agreed with the common plan.” [15]
As for the ICTY’s “genocide” verdict, the verdict itself admits that Gen. Krstic was not convicted on the basis of the internationally recognized UN Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide but rather on Article 4 of its own statutes. The statutes of the ICTY have no further jurisdiction than within the walls of the ICTY.
“541. The Trial Chamber must interpret Article 4 of the [ICTY]] Statute taking into account the state of customary international law at the time the events in Srebrenica took place (…)
598.The Chamber concludes that the intent to kill all the Bosnian Muslim men of military age in Srebrenica constitutes an intent to destroy in part the Bosnian Muslim group within the meaning of Article 4 and therefore must be qualified as a genocide.”
However, in spite of this open admission that the internationally recognized UN Genocide Convention was not the basis of the ICTY judgment, the International Court of Justice ruled that the ICTY’s judgment was correct, based on the Genocide Convention. The judges appear not to have read the Krstic verdict or were following instructions not to rule otherwise.
If the ICJ ruling stands, the Genocide Convention – which Prime Minister Brnabić quoted from in her interview on German television, has been rendered null and void.
Keep up your resilience. Do not allow them to make it appear as if you have agreed to your own subjugation.
You are truly upholding the very best traditions of the Non-Aligned Nations.
*
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This article was originally published on Srebrenica Historical Project.
Notes
[1] Evans, Michael and Kallenbach, Michael:”’Missing’ enclave troops found,” The Times, 2 August 1995, p. 9.
[2] Pierre Gaultier (interview), “Wo sind die Vermißten aus Srebrenica?” Junge Welt, 30.8.95
[3] “Faux électeurs … ou faux cadavres,” Balkans Infos, Paris; Oct. 1996 – No. 6; See also Ivanisevic, Milivoje; “Un Dossier qui pose bien des Questions,” Balkans Infos, Paris; Dec. 1996 No. 8
[4] Ed Vulliamy, ”Bosnia: The secret War – Serbs ‘run secret camps’: Men freed from clandestine detention tell Ed Vulliamy of random beatings and ‘mobile torture machines’,” Guardian, 17 January 1996
[5] S.K., Another Two Mass Graves Discovered, Press TWRA, 19 January 1996
[6] A.S., ”Bosnian Soldiers in Australia Against Their Will,” Press TWRA, 6 February, 1996
[7] A.S.,”Investigation on Deportation of Bosniaks Requested,” Press TWRA, 9 March 1996
[8] Selective Justice in The Hague: “The War Crimes Tribunal on Former Yugoslavia is a Mockery of Evidentiary Rule,” The Nation, 22. September 1997
[9] Germinal Civikov, “Srebrenica, Der Kronzeuge” [Promedia, Vienna, 2009], page 130
[10] lae/gwa: ”Schädelreste und Kugeln in Massengrab in Bosnien,” Reuters (Germany) 20 April 1998
[11] John M. Crewdson, “CIA Secretly Built, Manipulated a Global Propaganda Network,” International Herald Tribune, January 3, 1978
[12] ANP English News Bulletin Karadzic a Pariah, Says War Crimes Tribunal Chief, Stichting Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau, July 27, 1995
[13] As the US Senator Richard Lugar once put it, NATO must go “out of area, or out of business.”)
[14] Michael Scharf, ‘‘Making a Spectacle of Himself: Milosevic Wants a Stage, Not the Right to Provide His Own Defense,’’ Washington Post (August 29th, 2004), p. B2, quoted by Dr. Tiphaine Dickson in ”The World’s Court of Justice”: http://milosevic.co/929/tiphaine-dickson-historiography-of-war-crimes-prosecutions/
[15] Paragraph 3460: http://www.icty.org/x/cases/karadzic/tjug/en/160324_judgement.pdf , quoted by Andy Wilcoxson in http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/08/01/the-exoneration-of-milosevic-the-ictys-surprise-ruling/
