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Tribunal Hears How U.N. Troops Abandoned Srebrenica Victims By Andrew Kelly
"We didn't get any support at all," said Colonel Ton Karremans, former commander of the 400 Dutch peacekeepers assigned to protect the Muslim "safe haven" in eastern Bosnia. He was testifying at hearings in the case of Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander General Ratko Mladic who are accused of the genocide of thousands of Muslims after Srebrenica fell to the Bosnian Serbs in July 1995.
Karremans said a long Serb blockade prior to the attack had left the lightly armed Dutch battalion desperately short of food and fuel but that requests for fresh supplies went unheeded.
He said he had first requested NATO air strikes when Mladic's troops began their assault on July 6 but that the request was not granted until July 11 when Srebrenica fell. "Everybody knows that the air strikes or close air support was too late and too little," he said.
Karremans said Mladic had threatened to kill 30 Dutch hostages and shell the Dutch base where thousands of terrified Muslims had fled unless the air strikes ended immediately. Over the next three days, Mladic dictated terms for the evacuation of some 25,000 refugees, thwarting the Dutch peacekeepers' attempt to monitor the process, Karremans said.
Karremans said his troops had reported the summary execution of nine people by Serb troops, but his evidence did not touch on the mass killings which prosecutors have described.
The indictment against Karadzic and Mladic says that thousands of Muslim men were rounded up in Srebrenica, taken to remote locations and summarily executed. It charges them with sharing overall responsibility for the killings. Both men remain at large in the Serb-controlled area of Bosnia and have not been represented at this week's hearings.
The so-called Rule 61 hearings do not amount to a trial in absentia -- forbidden under the tribunal's statute -- but are intended to create a forum for prosecutors to present evidence and call witnesses against accused persons who remain free.
Created by the U.N. Security Council in May 1993, the tribunal is the first body of its kind since the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes trials after World War Two. So far it has indicted 75 men, mainly Serbs, and holds seven of the accused at its cells in The Hague. |
THE HAGUE, July 4 (Reuters) - The U.N. and NATO failed to provide vital logistic and military support to U.N. peacekeepers during last year's Bosnian Serb assault on Srebrenica, a Dutch colonel told the Yugoslavia war crimes tribunal on Thursday.
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Berserkistan, July 3 · Bosnians Venture into Serb Land to Visit Srebrenica Graves
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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