Posted on 07/16/2014 9:21:20 AM PDT by DeaconBenjamin
A court in the Netherlands ruled Wednesday that the Dutch state was liable for the deaths of over 300 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in the Srebrenica massacre, the worst atrocity on European soil since World War II.
Families of the victims had brought a case the Dutch government over the 1995 killings, accusing Dutch UN peacekeepers of failing to protect the 8,000 slaughtered by ethnic Serb troops just a few months before the end of the Bosnian war.
The judgement was greeted with a mixture of satisfaction and dismay by relatives after the court found the state was liable for those killed after being expelled from a UN compound but not all of the deaths.
"Today we got justice for one group, that's good," said Munira Subasic, one of the representatives of the Mothers of Srebrenica group who were in court for the judgement.
"But how do you explain to a mother that the Dutch are responsible for the death of one son that stood on one side of the fence, and not for the one on the other side?" she said through tears.
"The Dutch compound was so big that everyone should have been let in the compound. We will continue to seek truth and justice."
The tiny Muslim enclave was under UN protection until July 11, 1995 when it was overrun by ethnic Serb forces under the command of Ratko Mladic, who is currently on trial on genocide and war crimes charges over the war in Bosnia, including Srebrenica.
Mladic's troops brushed aside the lightly-armed Dutch peacekeepers in a "safe area" where thousands of Muslims from surrounding villages had gathered for protection.
In the subsequent days, almost 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered and their bodies dumped in mass graves in what two international courts have ruled was genocide.
"The state is liable for the loss suffered by relatives of the men who were deported by the Bosnian Serbs from the Dutchbat (Dutch battalion) compound in Potocari in the afternoon of 13 July, 1995," judge Larissa Elwin said.
"Dutchbat should have taken into account the possibility that these men would be the victim of genocide and that it can be said with sufficient certainty that, had the Dutchbat allowed them to stay at the compound, these men would have remained alive," she ruled.
"By cooperating in the deportation of these men, Dutchbat acted unlawfully."
However, the court ruled that the state was not liable on all counts.
"Dutchbat's acts prior to the fall of Srebrenica can neither be attributed to the State, nor are they considered to be unlawful," the judge said.
"The fact that air support failed to materialise or that it was stopped, cannot be attributed to the state either, just as the fact that the enclave was not recaptured."
The Mothers of Srebrenica, representing some 6,000 widows and victims' relatives, have been seeking justice for years for the massacre, which the UN's highest International Court of Justice has ruled was genocide.
In April, the Dutch government said it would pay 20,000 euros to relatives of three Bosnian Muslim men murdered after peacekeepers expelled them from the UN compound at Srebrenica in 1995.
That move followed a Dutch court's landmark ruling last year that the state was liable for the deaths, the first time a government had been held responsible for the actions of peacekeepers operating under a UN mandate.
Lawyers for the Dutch government left the courtroom on Wednesday without commenting on the judgement.
Wednesday's ruling come just days after thousands of people gathered in Srebrenica to mark the 19th anniversary of the killings.
So far, the remains of 6,066 people have been exhumed from mass graves in the Srebrenica region for reburial.
The massacre took place just a few months before the end of Bosnia's 1992-1995 war, which claimed some 100,000 lives in total.
Both Mladic, dubbed the "Butcher of Bosnia", and Bosnian Serb wartime political leader Radovan Karadzic, considered masterminds of the massacre, are now being tried by a UN court for war crimes and genocide.
So the lesson from this should be, keep your blue helmet thugs at home.
Nice lil jizzya tax for the dhiminis.
I don’t get it. Aren’t the Dutch troops under the command of the UN....unless they explicitly disobeyed orders from the UN, how can the Dutch nation be liable?
So these troops discover that the UN had the expectation theat they die in place over a bunch of terrorists and their socialist government agrees. We need to be out of the UN.
“The White Man’s Burden” by Rudyard Kipling.
Take up the White Man’s burden, Send forth the best ye breed
Go bind your sons to exile, to serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child.
Take up the White Man’s burden, In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple, An hundred times made plain
To seek another’s profit, And work another’s gain.
Take up the White Man’s burden, The savage wars of peace—
Fill full the mouth of Famine And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly Bring all your hopes to nought.
Take up the White Man’s burden, No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper, The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter, The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living, And mark them with your dead.
Take up the White Man’s burden And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better, The hate of those ye guard—
The cry of hosts ye humour (Ah, slowly!) toward the light:—
“Why brought he us from bondage, Our loved Egyptian night?”
They were in a 'safe area' - that is, protected by the UN - that was used as a staging post to make bloody raids on non-Muslim villages. The UN allowed heavy arms to be brought into this enclave of murderers by helicopter - allowing them to continue their fanatic pogrom against Orthodox Christians.
Then their own side decided not to withdraw artillery support and to let them be snuffed out in order to provide Clinton political cover.
The Muslim dead weren't men and boys; they were armed raiders killed in a fire-fight. Doubtless some of the dead were non-combatants sent in as human shields: a cowardly tactic all too common in Islam. See also Hamas.
Hey...Hey...you just can’t tell the truth about Bosnia.
It is often pointed out that Srebrenica was an UN protected zone, but it is seldom noted that the enclave was simultaneously an armed camp used for attacks against Serb villages in the surrounding areas. Muslim General Sefer Halilovic confirmed in his testimony at the Hague Tribunal that there were at least 5,500 Bosnian Army soldiers in Srebrenica after it had obtained the safe haven status, and that he had personally arranged numerous deliveries of sophisticated weapons by helicopter.
The Muslim General Sefer Halilovic confirmed that there were at least 5,500 Bosnian Muslim Army soldiers in Srebrenica. More importantly these fighters had slaughtered more than 3,500 Christians prior to the fall of Srebrenica and this applies to young children, women and the elderly in surrounding villages.
Even worse, the so-called 'safe haven' meant that Bosnian Muslim forces would attack outside of the main area of central Srebenica and kill Orthodox Christians. However, they would then return to Srebrenica in order to be protected and to re-enforce their stronghold and this applies to re-arming and so forth.
The UNPROFOR commander, French General Philippe Morillon, testified that the crimes committed by Bosnian Muslim forces were extraordinary
On February 12 in 2004 at The Hague Tribunal Philippe Morillon testified that Bosnian Muslim forces under the Bosnian Muslim commander Naser Oric engaged in attacks during Orthodox Christian holidays and destroyed villages, massacring all the inhabitants. This created a degree of hatred that was quite extraordinary in the region.
Here Philippe Morillon is referring to the massacres of thousands of Orthodox Christians in the surrounding region. These are events when Christians were burnt alive, beheaded and so forth.
Srebrenica was a 'safe zone' - guaranteed by the UN! - that allowed Muslims to massacre Christian villages in the surrounding area.
The destruction of those heavily armed Muslim forces was an act of self-defense. The fact that the Muslims emplaced themselves in a populated area - effectively using the inhabitants as human shields - also makes them responsible for any true civilian deaths in the crossfire.
As if all this were not enough: there are also indications that Naser Oric made a deal with Clinton to let the Muslim forces in Srebrenica be destroyed (by withholding artillery support). This was to create exactly the sort of false-flag that Clinton needed to be able to publicly support the Muslim cause.
The fact that Clinton extorted official apologies from politicians of nations that he had bombed into the ground means nothing.
This is the reality of Srebrenica. It was a firefight against a murderous group of Jihadis hiding behind human shields. Their destruction was turned by a subservient media into a reason for war.
Few prisoners were taken at Srebrenica. A great many of the dead were executed. But the 3500 Christians killed by the Muslims of Srebrenica weren't even combatants.. The Muslims (on the other hand) were armed combatants out of uniform who had committed atrocities.
Failure to protect? Wait till the police force here hears about this.
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