Dutch Supreme Court upholds Srebrenica deaths liability
The Dutch Supreme Court has upheld a lower court's ruling that the Netherlands is partially liable in the deaths of some 350 Muslim men who were murdered by Bosnian Serb forces during the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.
The Netherlands' highest court said Friday that Dutch United Nations peacekeepers evacuated the men from their military base near Srebrenica on July 13, 1995, despite knowing that they "were in serious jeopardy of being abused and murdered" by Bosnian Serb forces. The ruling was the latest in a long-running legal battle by a group of relatives known as The Mothers of Srebrenica to hold the Dutch government liable for the deaths of their family members in Europe's worst massacre since World War II.
The men were among 5,000 terrified Muslim residents of the Srebrenica area who took shelter in the Dutch peacekeepers' base when the region was overrun by Bosnian Serb forces commanded by Gen. Ratko Mladic, who was convicted of genocide by a U.N. war crimes tribunal in 2017 for masterminding the massacre that left some 8,000 Muslim men and boys dead. Mladic has appealed.
"They are responsible and they will always have a stain," Munira Subasic, one of the relatives who brought the case, said of the Dutch. "We know what happened we don't need this court to tell us. I am shaken, I did not expect this."
