Posted on 10/04/2005 1:10:33 PM PDT by Grzegorz 246
BANJA LUKA, Bosnia (Reuters) - More than 19,000 Bosnian Serbs participated in the massacre at Srebrenica, Europe's worst atrocity since World War Two, a Bosnian government panel said on Tuesday.
Policemen, army officials and civilians worked to enable the killings through tasks that included logistics, transport and communications as well as military operations, according to a report by the inter-ethnic panel.
The figure came from a Bosnian government attempt to identify exactly who killed 8,000 Muslims in July 1995 after Bosnian Serb forces captured the town under the protection of U.N. troops.
"Among those who took part in the crimes were both officials who issued orders and executors," Smail Cekic, a Muslim member of the panel, told a news conference.
He said that 17,000 of those had been identified by name. An even higher figure of 25,000 were in the area of Srebrenica for the capture of the town and the killings that followed though some of those would simply have been on standby, he said.
The panel gathered information from the Serb Republic's interior and defense ministries, army headquarters and the state security agency, Cekic said.
The U.N. war crimes tribunal provided crucial help for the panel and its report would be sent back to The Hague, he said.
Paddy Ashdown, the country's international peace overseer, first ordered the Bosnian Serb government to identify the perpetrators.
"The report ... represents a serious attempt to comprehensively catalog all persons implicated in the crimes in the Srebrenica area in the period from 11-19 July 1995," Ashdown's office said in a statement.
RESPONSIBILITY
The panel did not assess the level of involvement or responsibility of the massacre participants, Cekic said.
But he declined to comment on the sensitive issue of how many still hold positions in the government, army or police.
The Bosnian Serb government has said nearly 900 people suspected of participating in the atrocity may still be employed by the Serb Republic.
The state prosecutor's office said it would use the panel's report and would focus its investigation on people who still held official positions in the Serb government.
The report would not be made public to avoid undermining the investigation and prosecution of war crimes suspects, the state prosecutor said in a statement.
The Bosnian Serb government admitted last year under international pressure that its forces killed more than 7,000 Muslims in the three-day rampage in the former U.N. "safe area" of Srebrenica and offered the formal apology to the victims.
Did you ever see the picture on the Internet of some Muslim fighters with a box full of Serbian heads?
Europe's worst atrocity since World War 2???
Apparently the author is not familiar with the behavior of the USSR with regards to Eastern Europe!
I don't know how accurate the 8000 figure is, but whatever the correct number of islamofascist dead at Srebrenica, it's too few.
“The figure came from a Bosnian government attempt”
It should read Muslim government in Bosnia but in that case would be to obvious, wouldn’t it? Other observations:
I like this part - “8,000 Muslims” – nice, easy to remember round number.
“More then 19000” look tad too high - Serbs should definitely work on their efficiency.
http://www.balkan-archive.org.yu/
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