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Excavation Begins at Srebrenica Mass Grave
‘We will concentrate on previously-visited sites,
By Mark Heinrich
A multinational team sent by the International Criminal Tribunal on former Yugoslavia sealed off their first excavation site, an embankment off a dirt road on a wooded hill 35 km (21 miles) west of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia.
After a Norwegian mine-clearing unit checked for unexploded ordnance or booby traps, finding none, workers moved in to remove brambles and underbrush to prepare for several days of digging starting Monday. U.S. troops in NATO's Bosnia peace force provided a security net of Bradley combat vehicles and Humvee jeeps mounted with machine-guns to deter possible attempts by local Serbs keen to thwart war crimes prosecutions.
The U.N. tribunal in The Hague has indicted separatist Serb army commander General Ratko Mladic and wartime political chief Radovan Karadzic for genocide and crimes against humanity. Both remain at large seven months after the Dayton peace treaty that split into Serb and Croat-Muslim halves and exactly a year after the bloodbath at Srebrenica which may have been Europe's worst atrocity since the Nazi Holocaust.
At least 3,000, and possibly as many as 8,000, mostly unarmed Muslim males are believed to have been killed after capture or killed in ambushes as Serb forces overran Srebrenica, a supposed U.N.-protected "safe area."
The tribunal's investigators are returing to suspected mass grave sites after several "test trenches" were dug by hand in preliminary inspections earlier this year. They then found several bodies twisted over each other and at least two had their arms tied behind their backs, hardening suspicions of mass graves containing scores, hundreds or possibily even thousands of victims.
This time, the investigators will be disinterring entire sites with the help of earth-moving machines, including a seven-ton backhoe, and local Serbs recruited as laborers equipped with shovels and wheelbarrows. "During the excavation process, we will expose entire graves. We will concentrate on previously visited sites," said John Gerns, a leading U.S. pathologist on the team.
He said the team, including forensic anthropologists, odontologists, geneticists and ballistics experts, would be at the iirst site in Cerkka for several days. Excavated human remains will be packed into refrigerated trucks and taken to a secure morgue where experts will try to identify them, ascertain their injuries and pinpoint the cause and date of death. Problems complicating identification include a lack of medical and dental records as well as cooperation by Serbs who have denounced the tribunal as a kangaroo court biased against their people.
Indications that some grave sites may have been tampered with to destroy evidence have lent impetus to the tribunal's probe. It expected to excavate at least a half dozen sites in the wooded hills of the Drina Valley near Srebrenica. It also planned to uncover a total of 20 sites over the next three months, some of them elsewhere in Bosnia and Croatia and unconnected with Srebrenica.
All sites were pinpointed either by survivors, witnesses or satellite photographs provided by the United States to the U.N. Security Council late last year. The Srebrenica sites include a meadow at Nova Kasaba that U.S. officials say may contain up to 2 ,700 bodies, a reservoir spillway near Zvornik and a field at Pilica where a former Serb soldier held by the tribunal has admitted involvement in hundreds of killings in a single day.
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CERSKA, Bosnia (Reuters) - War crimes investigators began a three-month quest Sunday to unearth mass graves of victims of ethnic massacres in Bosnia and Croatia, starting with Muslims killed in the Bosnian Serb conquest of Srebrenica.
Berserkistan, July 3 · Bosnians Venture into Serb Land to Visit Srebrenica Graves
Berserkistan, July 3 · Mladic Promised Safety to Srebrenica Muslims
Berserkistan, June 27 · Finnish Forensics Experts to Exhume Srebrenica Graves
Berserkistan, June 8 · Srebrenica Victim Graves Probed at Brnica
Berserkistan, June 5 · Mass Grave at Nova Kasaba May Hold 2700 Srebrenica Victims
Berserkistan, May 29 · Documentary Claims Serbia Provided Srebrenica Arms
Berserkistan, May 29 · War Crimes Team Probes Suspected Mass Grave
Berserkistan, Apr 5 · Tribunal Probes Srebrenica Killing Fields
Berserkistan, Massacre Hill Jim Bartlett in Bosnia's Killing Fields
Berserkistan, Ghosts in the Woods Team Berserkistan Investigates a Srebrenica Massacre Site
Serbs Massacre Muslims in "Safe Area" of Srebrenica
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia United Nations
Coalition for International Justice
Reports concerning human rights abuses in Bosnia Intac Access
Major War Criminals/Suspects CalTech's Bosnia Site
Reports on War Crimes in the Former Yugoslavia CalTech's Bosnia Site
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