Special Report: The Truth about Srebrenica 20 years later

This past week the world was reminded that it has been 20 years since the events following the Bosnian Serb Army’s entry into Srebrenica and today I am posting a special report about this event which I personally consider of absolutely crucial importance in world history not only because of the large number of people who died in this event, but also because it served as the pretext for the first completely illegal war of aggression by the US/NATO which attacked the Bosnian Serbs in violation of the UN Charter. All the subsequent wars of aggression of the AngloZionist Empire (Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, etc.) have their prototype in the war against the Bosnian-Serbs.

I can personally attest that doubts about what really happened (or not) in Srebrenica were voiced in, shall we say, “well informed circles” within days of the Bosnian-Serb conquest of the city. I cannot name these circles, but let’s just that that I am talking about people with direct access to classified information coming out of Bosnia. One thing was immediately established: that a large number of armed Bosnian-Muslim men had attempted a breakthrough from Srebrenica to Tuzla and that 1) many had been killed in *combat* with Bosnian-Serbs and many actually made it to Tuzla.

[Sidebar: Srebrenica had been declared a “safe area” by the UN. That meant two main things: first, the Bosnian-Muslims had to totally demilitarize the entire town while the Bosnian-Serbs had to stop attacking it, nevermind entering it. These UN “safe heavens” were intended for civilians only. In reality, however, the Bosnian-Muslims kept and entire Mountain Division in Srebrenica and they continued to reinforce it both by land and by air. To make things even worse, the Bosnian-Muslims constantly used Srebrenica as a safe base to attack the Bosnian-Serb positions around the town. At the beginning of the war, the Bosnian-Muslims had already burned down all the Bosnian-Serb villages around Srebrenica and massacred most of the civilians living they found in them (we are talking about several thousand civilians). The local Bosnian-Serbs had promised that one day they would take revenge for these massacres and some of them, indeed, do that when the Bosnian-Serbs entered Srebrenica. Needless to say, none of that was ever reported by the western corporate Ziomedia].

The other fact which all “well informed” folks knew is that there had been several “false flag” massacres in Sarajevo, in particular the so-called “Markale market massacres” (1994 and 1995) both of which were not attributable to the Bosnian-Serbs, something which UNPRFOR knew but could not say publicly.

While I am personally convinced that the official narrative about Srebrenica (a deliberate mass murder or even genocide organized by the Bosnian-Serbs) is false, I have also come to believe that this was not a “simple” false flag attack either. Srebrenica was a simultaneous combination of the following:

1. Combat operations between regular Bosnian-Serb forces and Bosnian-Muslim forces attempting to break out of Srebrenica.

2. The “spontaneous” execution of a number of civilians and POWs by Bosnian-Serbs seeking revenge.

3. The deliberate execution of a number of civilians and POWs ordered not by Bosnian-Serbs but by some Yugoslav (Federal) officials.

4. A deliberate PSYOP by the USA to grossly inflate the number of victims and blame the Bosnian-Serbs.

I have to say here that I only learned about point #3 very recently from a well-informed Serbian contact whom I fully trust. While I cannot corroborate his claim, it does ‘fit’ perfectly with what I know. This contact is currently reluctant to go into details or name names, but I am confident that the truth about this will come out fairly soon.

What is no less important about what Srebrenica was is to also spell out what it was not.

1. It was not a genocide even by the most inclusive definition of this word. First, the Bosnian-Serbs and Bosnian-Muslims are exactly the same ethnic group and what differentiates them is their religion. So any talk of “ethnic cleansing” is nonsensical in the Bosnian context.

2. It is quite obvious that neither Radovan Karadzic nor Ratko Mladic ever gave any orders to commit massacres. Had they wanted to issue such orders, they would have kept away from the scene and not done what Mladic did that day: bring in several bus loads of reporters and then go on TV to publicly promise the Bosnian-Muslim civilians that he personally guaranteed their safety. It is absolutely clear to me that Mladic and the Bosnian-Serbs walked into a trap carefully laid by the USA.

3. However, there is now evidence that orders did come from Belgrade to “deliver” a certain amount of innocent victims which, in turn, would provide the US/NATO with a pretext to intervene. Yes, you read that right. I am claiming that certain officials in Belgrade were working hand-in-hand with the US.

[Sidebar: To those who might doubt that (at least some elements in) Belgrade and Washington were covertly working together I would remind that the Yugoslav Federal authorities (Milosevic) did join the AngloZionist blockade against the Bosnian-Serbs and that when the US/NATO attacked the Bosnian-Serbs Miloseciv ordered the Yugoslav forces to move back and betray the Bosnian-Serbs who had trusted them {Note: I was told by a reader that while the betrayal did take place–in the form of a blockade–but there were no Yugoslav units holding the line in 1995. They had been withdrawn in 1992, when they suffered heavy casualties withdrawing from Sarajevo. This might be true – it has been 20 years and I write from memory.} Likewise, Milosevic also betrayed the Serbs in Kosovo when he ordered his military to retreat even though it had survived the NATO bombing almost completely unscathed]

The main problem in establishing the truth about what happened in Srebrenica is the literally everybody, including the USA, NATO, European countries, and even Russia under Eltsin and Yugoslavia under Milosevic, had a huge interest in sticking by the official story. All these forces wanted to end the war and the stubborn Bosnian-Serbs were not willing to surrender. So everybody needed a pretext for the US/NATO to directly attack the Bosnian-Serbs and this is what Srebrenica became: a buzzword to justify a completely illegal (and, I would argue, immoral) attack of a superpower and military alliance against a small, largely rural, religious minority which was guilty of not obeying the Hegemon’s orders when told to do so.

My hope is that 20 years later this might change and that the biggest change might come from the least expected side: the Muslim world.

Why?

A number of reasons:

First, while the AngloZionist Empire did pretend to act in defense of Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo, it then turned to exactly the same set of PSYOPs to attack Muslim countries such as Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, etc. While initially it was the “Serbian Chetniks” who were on the receiving end of the “Empire of Kindness'” “responsibility to protect” (r2p) operations, but after Bosnia and Kosovo all the other “new Hitlers” were in Muslim nations. Do you remember the nonsense about “Gaddafi giving Viagra to his soldiers to rape opposition women”? Does that not remind you of “rape as a weapon of ethnic cleansing” of the Bosnian narrative? What about the Syrian “Houla massacre”? Is that not a “Markale massacre”? Now that the Muslims are themselves the victims of exactly the same old dirty tricks, they might be far more willing to question the official narrative about Srebrenica than before.

Second, a large number of Muslims did die in Srebrenica. Some in “legitimate” combat, but other were truly executed. The friends and relatives of these murdered Muslims will want to know who really ordered these murders. While it might be comforting for them to see Karadzic and Mladic in jail at the Hague, they might not be so happy at the idea that the real culprits are still free, especially if some of these culprits include Bosnian-Muslim officials from the Sarajevo government.

The full and real story of Srebrenica has not emerged yet, but the good news is that it is finally being researched and questioned. Even more importantly, Muslims and Orthodox Christians have begun looking at these events together (see below). What is crucial at this point in time is to fully separate two issues:

a) The investigation of actual events on the ground, what really happened in Srebrenica and the establishment the full list of those responsible for the massacres of civilians and POWs regardless of where they were or are.

b) Analyzing the use which was made by the AngloZionist Empire of the events in Srebrenica.

These are different issues which should be addressed separately. Both of these issues, however, absolutely mandate that we all accept to question the official narrative (which, frankly, makes no sense at all) and the we pursue the truth, whatever it might be, and at all costs.

As part of this quest for the truth through an open and frank debate I am presenting you with a number of very important documents:

1) A “Srebrenica Facsheet” prepared by Stefan Karganovic and Aleksandar Pavic.

2) A report entitled “”Srebrenica Fifteen Years Later – The Question of Evidence” written by by George Bogdanich and Jonathan Rooper.

3) A report entitled “Srebrenica Narrative Responsibly Challenged” about a about a recent conference in Banja Luka on the topic “Can politically weaponized Srebrenica be turned into a peace-making tool?”

4) The video of the address of Sheikh Imran Hussein to the Banja Luka Conference.

5) The video of the address of Professor Alexander Dugin to the Banja Luka Conference.

6) The video of an appeal to the Bosnian-Muslims by Sheikh Imran Hussein.

7) An analysis entitled “Reconciliation – the Empire’s way” by “S.P.” about the events surrounding the Russian veto at the UNSC of the “Srebrenica Genocide” Resolution submitted by the United Kingdom.

For those who have not seen them, I would like to also refer you to the following past articles concerning the war in Bosnia:

This is a lot to read, I understand that, however I do strongly believe that the topic is important enough to deserve a thorough and detailed analysis and discussion.

I also want to repeat here that while my personal position on what really happened in Srebrenica is pretty clear, I do invite those who will disagree with it, or with any of the documents presented here, to present their own evidence and analysis. While absolutely no ad hominems of any kind will be tolerated, I do encourage a vigorous and open ended debate on this, and any other, topic.

A lot of people put a lot of efforts presenting you with all this information and I hope that you will find it worthwhile and that you will make good use of it. To all those who helped prepare this report – my most heartfelt gratitude for all your time and efforts!

Srebrenica happened twenty years ago, but it is still used today as the primary weapon by those who want to oppose Muslims and Orthodox Christians. As long as we all accept to play by the “Chetniks vs Wahabis” playbook they will continue to divide and conquer us. Those who will insist against all evidence that this narrative is true ought to ask themselves who benefits from this dynamic. I submit that the real guilty party is the one which actually created all the conditions for Srebrenica to happen and who worked on this plan not in Pale or Sarajevo, but in Belgrade and Washington DC. I hope that the information below will contribute to establish this truth.

The Saker

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SREBRENICA 1995-2015: Just the Facts, Without Propaganda or Embellishment

What has been irrefutably established, and what hasn’t

For a full 20 years, the full picture about what happened, and did not happen, in and around the supposed UN “safe area” in the town of Srebrenica in Bosnia-Herzegovina in July 1995 has been suppressed. It’s time to lift the fog of secrecy and disinformation.

SREBRENICA 1995-2015: Just the Facts, Without Propaganda or Embellishment

This short info-book is based on the work of various American, British, Dutch, Serbian and Bosnian Muslim experts engaged in analyzing or investigating the events in Srebrenica over the past 20 years, media reports, and testimony of persons directly involved or affected.

Editors:

Stefan Karganovic

Aleksandar Pavic

Introduction

The 20th anniversary of the fall of the Srebrenica enclave in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in July 2015, is an important occasion. This brief fact book is dedicated to all those who are interested in truth, rather than politicization. After 20 years, it is time to take a hard look at the facts, and facts only. This is especially important not just from the standpoint of seeking the truth, but also because the Srebrenica events have become not just a local, or even a regional, but a globally important issue, one that consistently attracts broad mass-media coverage, stirs political controversy and serves as an instrument of political destabilization.

The basic intent of this booklet is to provide both experts and the broader public an overview of all the known facts regarding Srebrenica that have been established on the basis of verdicts issued by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the ad hoc court established by the UN in 1993, at the height of the Yugoslav civil war, on U.S. insistence. However, an equally important task is to demonstrate what has not been established and yet continues to be (mis)treated as fact, on the basis of which far-reaching political assessments and decisions are made.

What are the basic principles behind this publication?

– The truth is always needed, for the victims as well as the accused and the convicted, for historians interested in facts rather than propaganda, and for public figures who truly wish to work in the public interest; yet, in regard to Srebrenica, the truth has not been well served thus far, as will be shown;

– Although it still cannot be claimed with certainty exactly what took place in Srebrenica in 1995, enough has been ascertained over the past 20 years to be able to assert with confidence what did not happen – yet that is what is being presented as the truth. The numbers that are constantly being uncritically pushed in local, regional and international media, forums and political institutions and structures – centered around the claim that “Serbian forces” committed “genocide” over 7,000-8,000 Bosnian Muslim prisoners of war – simply do not stand up under scrutiny, and are not supported by evidence that has been established thus far;

– Arbitrary numbers and factually unfounded allegations, parliamentary and international “resolutions,” along with ICTY convictions, are being (ab)used to poison social, political, interfaith, interethnic and international relations, sow divisions and instability, deepen tensions, and foment extremism in the Balkan region and beyond. This serves only the interests of those who stand to profit from permanent destabilization, turbulence, artificial divisions and “clashes of civilizations”;

– The Srebrenica tragedy has been (ab)used numerous times, and continues to be (ab)used, as a pretext for organizing political and/or military intervention against sovereign states, or meddling in their internal affairs and fomenting inner turmoil on “humanitarian” grounds. “We must prevent another Srebrenica!” is a war cry that has been heard often in the past decade or so, as a preface to Western military interventions in Yugoslavia (Kosovo), Congo, Macedonia, Iraq, Syria, Libya. Srebrenica is also an important pillar in the ideology behind the so-called “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) doctrine that has been constructed to legalize global Western-instigated interventionism. This is why the truth about Srebrenica, no matter how unpleasant or incriminating for all involved, is a matter of global importance and ramifications;

– After almost 20 years of work, indictments, testimonies, trials and millions of pages of “evidence,” the ICTY has still not succeeded in establishing the truth. About the only success the ICTY can claim is that it has managed, by questionable means, to label the Srebrenica events “genocide” – without adequate evidence, and using highly questionable legal reasoning.

Thus, after two decades of futility, deliberate obfuscation and political gamesmanship with a human tragedy, it is time to try something new. In order to finally make a credible attempt at ascertaining what really took place in Srebrenica in July 1995, the best and the most legitimate course to take would be to establish a truly independent international Srebrenica Truth Commission. This would be the best way to halt further ugly politicization and (ab)use of this tragic event, as well as to finally bring peace to its true victims, on all sides of the conflict, and satisfaction to the true victims’ families, with whom all well meaning people share their pain. For, a crime certainly did take place in Srebrenica, and only its full and complete resolution would allow everyone to openly and fully deal with the past, reconcile and finally move on.

This publication is a contribution towards that end, an effort to facilitate the establishment of the full truth regarding what happened in Srebrenica, and not just in 1995, in the hope that it will be of use to the media, the general public, policy makers and all those with the power to undertake appropriate measures to finally deal with this international problem and put it in its proper perspective – without manipulation, abuse of facts, or ulterior motives.

Srebrenica: facts, presumptions, unknowns

1. According to judgments issued by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), how many people were killed in Srebrenica in July 1995?

The Memorial Center in Potocari, near Srebrenica, lists the number of 8,372 victims.

According to the “Bosnian Atlas of Crime,” issued by the Center for Research and Documentation in Sarajevo, 6,886 people were killed in and around Srebrenica in July 1995; however, a separate table published by the Center lists 4,256 killed and 2,673 missing Bosnian Muslims (it is evident here that the numbers don’t add up).

The ICTY judgment in the case of Bosnian Serb general Radislav Krstic cites the figure of “7,000-8,000 people” (Trial Judgment, par. 487).

The ICTY judgment in the case of Bosnian Serb colonel Vujadin Popovic, states: “The Trial Chamber has found that, from 12 July until late July 1995, several thousand Bosnian Muslim men were executed” (Trial Judgment, par. 793). The Chamber further stated that it “found that at least 5,336 identified individuals were killed in the executions following the fall of Srebrenica, and this number could well be as high as 7,826” (Trial Judgment, footnote 2862).

In the ICTY judgment in the case of Bosnian Serb general Zdravko Tolimir, the figure of “4,970 victims” is given (Appeals Judgment, par. 426).

Thus, not only do the figures offered and supposedly ascertained by the ICTY consistently vary, they also conveniently blur the distinction between casualties that were a) indeed victims of executions, b) those that died from other causes, either combat with Serbian forces, natural causes, as a result of suicide, battle or infighting between Muslim forces themselves, and c) those that are still missing and whose exact fate is unknown. Only those under a) can be considered to be victims of war crimes. Yet, all these victim categories are lumped together under a common figure, in order to inflate it sufficiently to warrant the “genocide” claim.

Conclusion: neither the ICTY nor any other institution has, as of July 2015, precisely determined the number of executed prisoners. In addition, victims of execution, casualties of battle, infighting, suicide, those that died of natural causes, and those missing are consistently being lumped together. The precise number of executed victims has yet to be established – and they alone can in this situation be classified as victims of a war crime.

2. How many persons have been actually convicted by the ICTY as direct perpetrators or accomplices in prisoner executions in and around Srebrenica in July 1995?

The only person convicted by the ICTY as a direct perpetrator of crime in Srebrenica is not a Serb, but a Bosnian Croat, Drazen Erdemovic, identified as a member of the “10th Sabotage Unit” within the Bosnian Serb army, who was convicted in 1998 for participating “in the deaths of hundreds of Bosnian Muslim male civilians, the exact number of which has not been ascertained” (Sentencing Judgment, March 5, 1998) – and sentenced to exactly 5 years. This absurdly low sentence was passed after Erdemovic made a deal with the ICTY Office of the Prosecutor, on the basis of his own testimony, which he changed several times, and on the condition that he testifies against Serb indictees whenever the ICTY summoned him. Another part of the deal was that Erdemovic was granted protected witness status, on the basis of which he was given a new identity and residence in an unnamed Western country.

By his own admission, Erdemovic fought on all three sides of the Bosnian conflict: the Bosnian Muslim army, the Bosnian Croat army and the Bosnian Serb army. Additionally detrimental to his credibility is the fact that, after conducting a psychiatric exam, the ICTY pronounced Erdemovic mentally impaired and unfit for further trial on June 27, 1996. Yet, only several days later, on July 5, 1996, Erdemovic, still formally under indictment, appeared as a witness of the Prosecution in the process against Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and commander of the Bosnian Serb army, General Ratko Mladic. Even though the ICTY had just deemed Erdemovic “unfit to be questioned,” the “unverified and unchallenged (and unchallengeable) testimony of this sick man and mass killer still facing his own trial and sentencing” (Prof. Edward Herman) was used to issue arrest warrants for Karadzic and Mladic.

Erdemovic was initially arrested by Yugoslav authorities on March 3, 1996, and almost immediately indicted, but was turned over to the ICTY under U.S. and ICTY pressure and on his own insistence on March 30, 1996.

Erdemovic’s contradictory and inconsistent testimony has been analyzed and exposed in detail in the book “Star Witness,” by Germinal Chivikov, a Bulgarian journalist who reported on the trial in the ICTY for German state radio Deutsche Welle.

One of the key matters that discredit Erdemovic is the fact that, on the very location where he testified that he participated in the execution of “about 1,200 prisoners,” ICTY forensic teams unearthed a total of 127 remains of potential victims, of which 70 with blindfolds and/or ligatures, which would indicate death by execution. Nevertheless, this glaring inconsistency did not prevent the ICTY from continuing to use Erdemovic as its “star witness” regarding Srebrenica.

Also, Erdemovic was not even able to confirm before the ICTY the exact date of the “massacre” in which he allegedly participated, alternatively offering both July 16 and July 20, 1995, as the possible dates.

Erdemovic could not even offer consistent testimony regarding the rank he held at the time of his alleged crime, alternatively claiming that he was either a sergeant or had been demoted to ordinary private.

Finally, to this day, Erdemovic “cannot remember” who issued the order for the executions in which he allegedly took part. In his version, it was “some lieutenant-colonel”, who has still not been identified after almost 20 years.

Some, but not all of Erdemovic’s named accomplices were subsequently convicted, but not by the ICTY, but by the Bosnia-Herzegovina War Crimes Court in 2012.

Franc Kos, Stanko Kojic, Vlastimir Golijan and Zoran Goronja were sentenced to varying prison terms for executions carried out at the Branjevo farm. What is especially interesting is the fact that neither they nor any of the other seven accomplices, or two superiors in the chain of command named by Erdemovic, were ever indicted by the ICTY or even called to testify as witnesses, probably because the ICTY was unwilling to run the risk of hearing testimonies that would contradict that of its “star witness.” Think about it: the accomplices in what is alleged to be “the gravest crime in post-WW II Europe” – have never been a subject of interest by the international tribunal in charge of the case. This would be akin to any criminal court ignoring all the participants in a group killing, and issuing a warrant for the arrest and interrogation of only one member of the group, without being interested in hearing testimony from the other accomplices.

Erdemovic and his accomplices were members of a Bosnian Serb military unit, the “10th Sabotage Detachment,” a multi-ethnic unit comprising Serbs, Croats, Muslims and a Slovenian, whose chain-of-command links with the Bosnian Serb army have never been established, and whose members were, according to testimony before the ICTY, on a 10-day leave from service at the time the alleged executions took place. A number of the unit members were clearly mercenaries, engaged by French interests in Africa after the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Erdemovic himself testified to having received up to 12 kilos of gold for certain “services rendered,” which is simply not the way that regular military units operate.

3. What judgments has the ICTY passed against others sentenced for crimes or “genocide” in Srebrenica?

Dragan Obrenovic (2003), sentenced to a 17-year prison term for persecution of the Muslim population of Srebrenica, after a plea bargain with the Prosecution.

Vidoje Blagojevic (2005), as accessory to murder, persecution and inhumane treatment, sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Dragan Jokic (2005), as accessory to extermination and crimes against humanity, sentenced to 9 years in prison.

Vujadin Popovic (2010), for genocide and crimes against humanity, life sentence.

Ljubisa Beara (2010), for genocide and crimes against humanity, life sentence.

Drago Nikolic (2010), as accessory to genocide and crimes against humanity, sentenced to 35 years in prison.

Radivoje Miletic (2010), for crimes against humanity and violation of the laws or customs of war, sentenced to 18 years in prison.

Vinko Pandurevic (2010), for crimes against humanity and violation of the laws or customs of war, sentenced to 13 years in prison.

Ljubisa Borovcanin (2010), for crimes against humanity and violation of the laws or customs of war, sentenced to 17 years in prison.

None of the above individuals was either accused or convicted of executing war prisoners, but on the basis of “command responsibility” and the controversial “Joint Criminal Enterprise” (JCE) doctrine developed by the ICTY, for which the legal experts have adopted an apt translation: “Just Convict Everybody.” Using this convenient legal device, the ICTY has been able to convict even people who had no knowledge of crimes having been committed, much less having participated in them, or having given orders for them.

4. After almost 20 years of trial proceedings, has the ICTY established who gave the orders for the execution of prisoners of war?

No. In his separate and partly dissenting opinion in the Appeals Judgment in the Tolimir case (April 2015), Appeals Chamber judge Jean-Claude Antonetti wrote that, if any of the victims’ family members were to ask him who ordered the executions and why, he would be unable to answer (Appeals Judgment, p. 400). No other ICTY judge has challenged this assessment.

In addition to this, there is another widely publicized testimony that simply must not be ignored if we are to place the entire Srebrenica tragedy in a proper context, and try, in good faith, to get to its root causes.

On several occasions and by way of various media, Hakija Meholjic, former Srebrenica police chief and member of its wartime presidency, has quoted the words of Alija Izetbegovic, the wartime Bosnian Muslim president, spoken in Meholjic’s presence at a meeting in Sarajevo in 1993, which were summed up in the following UN Report:

“Some surviving members of the Srebrenica delegation have stated that President Izetbegovic also told that he had learned that a NATO intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina was possible, but could occur only if the Serbs were to break into Srebrenica, killing at least 5,000 of its people. President Izetbegovic has flatly denied making such a statement.” [The Fall of Srebrenica (A/54/549), Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly resolution 53/35, November 15, 1999, par. 115.] Meholjic continues to claim to this day that he was one of nine witnesses that heard Izetbegovic say this, and that this was an offer directly communicated to Izetbegovic by then U.S. President Bill Clinton. Perhaps this is why another wartime Srebrenica leader, Ibran Mustafic, on the occasion of Clinton’s 2003 visit to Srebrenica, stated that it was a case of “the criminal returning to the scene of his crime.”

5. How many bodies have been buried thus far at the Potocari Memorial Center near Srebrenica, the cemetery reserved for the Muslim victims from July 1995?

As of 2015, approximately 6,300 “names” have been buried at the cemetery (making substantial progress toward the number of 8,372 inscribed on the Memorial monument, although the basis for this figure is unclear). The burial procedure is completely controlled by the Institute for Missing Persons of Bosnia-Herzegovina, based in Sarajevo, and the Muslim religious authorities who, under the pretext of respect for religious rules and prescriptions, have not allowed any third party access to the contents of the coffins, just as they have not allowed any independent examination of the interred remains. This means that even ICTY indictees’ defense teams have been denied access to independent confirmation of the identity of the human remains buried in Potocari.

As an illustration of the opaque nature of the Potocari Memorial Center and the dark games that surround it, it is instructive to read the words of Hasa Omerovic, a Bosnian Muslim woman who lost her husband, father and brother around Srebrenica in July 1995, but who has refused to have her husband buried at the Potocari Memorial Center cemetery:

“There are other families that have avoided speaking out, but who have quietly, at their own expense, buried their loved ones in other places, outside of Potocari. There are also people buried in Potocari who were not killed in 1995, who were soldiers or commanders. They are buried in Potocari, and their monuments are the same as those of the people who were indeed killed in July 1995. Also buried there are those killed in internecine or other types of battles. That was the dirtiest war, waged by Mafiosi, not by normal people.”

(“Hasa Omerovic – another Face of Srebrenica,” Novi Reporter magazine, Banja Luka, Bosnia-Herzegovina, March 2, 2011.)

And one of the founders of the main Bosnian Muslim political party, and long-time member of the Organization Committee for Srebrenica Remembrance, Ibran Mustafic, says:

“For a long time, Srebrenica has been an object of manipulation, and the chief manipulator is Amor Masovic (president of the Commission for Search of the Missing of the B-H Federation), whose plan was to live off the victims of Srebrenica for the next 500 years. There are also many others, who were close to Izetbegovic, who as early as the summer of 1992 started their project of maximally pumping up the numbers of Bosnian victims.”

(“Mustafic: More than 500 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica Were Killed by Bosnian Muslims,” Politika daily newspaper, Belgrade, Serbia, February 20, 2013.)

6. Has it been definitely ascertained that all the bodies buried at the Potocari Memorial Center are “Srebrenica victims”?

No. Other than forensic personnel of the ICTY and the ICMP (International Commission on Missing Persons) in Tuzla, under the control of the U.S. Government, no one has access to the bodies or the right to independently verify them.

Demographic data and ICTY judgments fail to mention combat casualties among the 28th Division of the Bosnian Muslim army – which had been based in the Srebrenica “demilitarized zone” during the previous three years – during its breakout through Bosnian Serb army lines toward the northern Bosnian city of Tuzla in mid-July 1995. On the average, UN reports and other competent sources estimate the number of these battle casualties to be around 3,000. It must be emphasized that these deaths, while doubtlessly tragic, are casualties of war and cannot be classified as victims of war crimes.

Mirsad Tokaca, director of the Information and Documentation Center in Sarajevo, stated in 2010 that “about 500 living residents of Srebrenica,” previously classified as “missing,” have been found, along with “70 persons buried at the Potocari Memorial Centre, who were not killed in Srebrenica.”

Ibran Mustafic, a Bosnian Muslim official from Srebrenica, has stated that about 1,000 people were killed in internecine battles during their withdrawal from Srebrenica in July 1995.

In his book, “Srebrenica Testifies and Accuses” (1994, pp. 190-244), commander of the Muslim forces in Srebrenica, Naser Oric published the names of 1,333 men from the supposedly demilitarized Srebrenica enclave who were killed in battles prior to the fall of Srebrenica in July 1995, when Oric’s units regularly launched murderous raids on surrounding Serb villages. Yet, many of these have been classified and buried as “genocide victims.”

Director of the Potocari Memorial Center, Mersed Smajlovic, and director of the Center for Missing Persons of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Amor Masovic, have admitted that about 50 persons who were killed in 1992, but who are “closely related” to persons classified as execution victims, are buried in the Potocari Memorial Center cemetery.

Former Srebrenica police chief Hakija Meholjic has stated that he is “angry at all those” responsible for the burial of 75 people who were not killed in July 1995 in the Potocari Memorial Center cemetery.

American Philip Corwin, the highest ranked UN civil official on the ground in Bosnia-Herzegovina in July 1995, has consistently claimed over the years that “700-800” people were executed in the vicinity of Srebrenica at that time.

Yossef Bodansky, Director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1988 to 2004, has referred to the figure of 7,000 Srebrenica victims as “disinformation”, adding that “all independent forensic evidence points to Muslim casualties in the hundreds, possibly the low hundreds. Continued emphasis on such allegedly high numbers of Muslim deaths at Srebrenica also obfuscates the Muslim murders in that city, earlier, of Serb civilians.”

(International Strategic Studies Association Special Report, “Osama bin Laden Focuses on the Balkans for the New Wave of Anti-Western Terrorism,” August 29, 2003.)

7. How many people were killed in battles around Srebrenica in July 1995?

ICTY expert witness Richard Butler has estimated that about 2,000 Bosnian Muslim fighters were killed; Portuguese officer and UN observer Carlos Martins Branco also estimates 2,000 Bosnian Muslim fighters killed; U.S. National Security Agency analyst John Schindler gives an estimate of 5,000 Bosnian Muslim fighters killed; former UN and EU envoy and high official Carl Bildt gives an estimate of 4,000 Bosnian Muslim fighters killed in his memoirs; the UN has estimated the number of Bosnian Muslim fighters killed to be around 3,000. All these estimates invariably point to the fact that a significant number of missing persons on the Bosnian Muslim side – who are nevertheless consistently being labeled by Western officials and media as “genocide victims” – were killed in battle, as legitimate casualties of war, not as victims of “genocidal” executions.

8. According to forensic evidence gathered under ICTY supervision, how many persons have been identified as indisputable victims of executions carried out in July 1995?

The exhumation of human remains from various graves that could potentially, although not necessarily, be linked with events in Srebrenica in July 1995, was under the control of the ICTY only between 1996-2001. In that period, a total of 3,568 “cases” were processed and classified. However, it should be noted that one “case” does not necessarily equal one body, but may only represent a body part. In fact, almost 44,4 % of the “cases” referred to a single body part, often just a bone. Forensic analysis of these “cases” has yielded the following results:

– Only 442 exhumed bodies could be classified as indisputable execution victims, as they had either blindfolds or ligatures;

– 627 bodies had shrapnel or other metal fragment injuries, which points to death in combat rather than execution;

– 505 bodies had bullet injuries, which may indicate death by execution, but also death in battle;

– cause of death could not be determined for 411 bodies;

– 1,583 of the “cases” represented only body fragments, and ICTY forensic experts concluded that cause of death could not be determined for 92.4% of them;

– in order to gain the closest estimate of the number of bodies among the 3,568 “cases”, a method was used by which left and right thigh bones (femurs) were matched, giving a total of 1919 right femurs and 1923 left femurs, which means that the total number of bodies was under 2,000.

To sum up: original forensic reports, produced under ICTY supervision and control between 1996-2001, indicate the presence of less than 2,000 bodies. However, upon closer examination, it is clear that most of the bodies represent victims of battle or other undetermined causes of death – rather than “execution victims.”

Since 2002, mass grave exhumation and body identification has been under the exclusive control of the State Department-founded and Western-financed International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) and the Commission for Missing Persons of Bosnia-Herzegovina. No one from the general public, independent media or any independent expert organization has ever been allowed independent access to the working area of the main forensic laboratory in Tuzla, where the data is “processed,” nor is the work conducted there transparent and open to independent international verification.

The personnel of these organizations have radically expanded the scope of their exhumation work since 2002, extending it to a broad regional area around Srebrenica, without distinguishing between graves of potential execution victims and those containing the remains of battle casualties incurred by the 28th Division of the Bosnian Muslim army in battles against Bosnian Serb forces, during their push toward Bosnian Muslim-controlled territory.

Finally, with great media fanfare, another methodology designed to arrive at the widely publicized figure of “8,000 genocide victims” has been adopted during the past several years – the effort to match DNA samples of exhumed victims and their family members. As a result, graves containing human remains of various type and origin, often far removed from any sort of “war crime,” are now being used as unlimited repositories of “genocide victims” whose remains are ceremonially buried by the hundreds each July 11 in the Potocari Memorial Center cemetery.

This is highly misleading. DNA matching cannot determine the time, cause and method of death, but only identity of the body. This was even confirmed by ICMP director Thomas Parsons, under cross-examination, at the Karadzic trial on March 22, 2012:

“The ICMP does not concern itself with whether — with the legal question of how these people were killed or — particularly with whether their deaths were lawful or not. I’m reporting on the identifications that have been made with regard to mortal remains recovered from these graves” (Karadzic trial, transcript, p. 26633).

Since it is an established fact that, along with executions that did take place, fierce battles were being waged in the immediate vicinity, along a 60 kilometer long trail between Srebrenica and Tuzla, it is obvious that mere identification of bodies found in the area, be it by DNA-based or any other methodology, is useless for the purposes of criminal investigation and, especially, the legal qualification of the cause of death. Nothing can replace sound, responsible, independently verifiable forensics.

The ICMP has claimed that a total of about 6,600 missing persons have been identified by name, through the method of DNA matching. For its part, the ICTY has implicitly accepted this number to represent the number of execution victims. If such a list of names does exist, no one has been able to see it or was allowed to trace its origin s . Defense teams of Srebrenica-related indictees before the ICTY have been denied the right to independently verify the existence of such persons, and to investigate whether these persons are in fact deceased, or may still be living.

Regardless of all these considerations, Western media and political interests have continued to try to impose the equation: DNA-based identification = “genocide victim.” This simply is not true.

9. How many Serbs from Srebrenica and its vicinity were killed by Bosnian Muslim forces operating from Srebrenica between spring 1992 and July 1995?

According to data provided in the study Serbian Victims of Srebrenica, 1992-1995, conducted under strict criteria in accordance with accepted international legal standards for defining civilian victims, and published by the Dutch-based NGO “Srebrenica Historical Project,” 705 Serb civilians were killed on the territory of Srebrenica during that time period. It must be emphasized that this number is not final.

The “Institute for Research of Serb Suffering in the 20th Century” has published a list of names of over 3,200 total Serb victims of Bosnian Muslim forces operating under the command of Srebrenica commander Naser Oric between 1992-1995, covering the area of the municipalities of Zvornik, Osmaci, Sekovici, Vlasenica, Milici, Bratunac and Srebrenica.

10. Has anyone been convicted by the ICTY for these crimes against the Serb population?

No one has been convicted for crimes committed against Serb civilians in the Srebrenica region between 1992-1995, when several thousand were killed, including women, children and the elderly, some after savage torture and butchering. The ICTY indicted Naser Oric, commander of the Bosnian Muslim forces in Srebrenica, but he was acquitted for “lack of evidence,” despite the fact that he talked freely about the killing of Serb civilians to some Western mass media outlets before 1995. Here are two such reports:

1. “SREBRENICA, Bosnia: Nasir Oric’s war trophies don’t line the wall of his comfortable apartment– one of the few with electricity in this besieged Muslim enclave stuck in the forbidding mountains of eastern Bosnia. They’re on a videocassette tape: burned Serb houses and headless Serb men, their bodies crumpled in a pathetic heap.

‘We had to use cold weapons that night,’ Oric explains as scenes of dead men sliced by knives roll over his 21-inch Sony. ‘This is the house of a Serb named Ratso,’ he offers as the camera cuts to a burned-out ruin. ‘He killed two of my men, so we torched it. Tough luck.’

Reclining on an overstuffed couch, clothed head to toe in camouflage fatigues, a U.S. Army patch proudly displayed over his heart, Oric gives the impression of a lion in his den. For sure, the Muslim commander is the toughest guy in this town, which the U.N. Security Council has declared a protected ‘safe area.’”

(“Weapons, Cash and Chaos Lend Clout to Srebrenica’s Tough Guy,” John Pomfret, Washington Post Foreign Service, The Washington Post, February 16, 1994.)

2. “Oric, as blood-thirsty a warrior as ever crossed a battlefield, escaped Srebrenica before it fell. Some believe he may be leading the Bosnian Muslim forces in the nearby enclaves of Zepa and Gorazde. Last night these forces seized armored personnel carriers and other weapons from U.N. peacekeepers in order to better protect themselves.

Oric is a fearsome man, and proud of it.

I met him in January, 1994, in his own home in Serb-surrounded Srebrenica.

On a cold and snowy night, I sat in his living room watching a shocking video version of what might have been called Nasir Oric’s Greatest Hits.

There were burning houses, dead bodies, severed heads, and people fleeing.

Oric grinned throughout, admiring his handiwork.

‘We ambushed them,’ he said when a number of dead Serbs appeared on the screen.

The next sequence of dead bodies had been done in by explosives: ‘We launched those guys to the moon,’ he boasted.

When footage of a bullet-marked ghost town appeared without any visible bodies, Oric hastened to announce: ‘We killed 114 Serbs there.’

Later there were celebrations, with singers with wobbly voices chanting his praises.”

(“Fearsome Muslim warlord eludes Bosnian Serb forces,” by Bill Schiller, The Toronto Star, July 16, 1995.)

Neither these nor other, much more graphic and direct witness testimonies, were deemed sufficient by the ICTY to convict Oric.

11. Was Srebrenica truly demilitarized, in line with its UN Protected Area status?

In spite of the agreement reached in May 1993, according to which the Srebrenica enclave was declared a UN “safe area,” it was never demilitarized, as reflected in the following statements:

1. Report of the UN General Secretary of May 30, 1995:

“In recent months, government forces have considerably increased their military activity in and around most safe areas, and many of them, including Sarajevo, Tuzla, and Bihac, have been incorporated into the broader military campaign of the government’s side… The government also maintains a substantial number of troops in Srebrenica (in this case a violation of a demilitarization agreement) Gorazde and Zepa, while Sarajevo is the location of the General Command of the government army and other military installations.”

(U.N. document S/1995/444.)

2. Yasushi Akashi, former UN Chief of Mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in an article for the Washington Times of November 1, 1995, wrote:

“It is a fact that the Bosnian government forces have used the ‘safe areas’ [that were supposed to be demilitarized] of not only Srebrenica, but Sarajevo, Tuzla, Bihac, Gorazde for training, recuperation and refurbishing their troops.”

3. Report of the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (NIOD), Srebrenica, a “safe” area, April 2002:

“The supposed demilitarisation in the enclave was virtually a dead letter. The Bosnian army (ABiH) followed a deliberate strategy of using limited military actions to tie up a relatively large part of the manpower of the Bosnian Serbian army (VRS) to prevent it from heading in full force for the main area around Sarajevo. This was also done from the Srebrenica enclave. ABiH troops had no qualms about breaking all the rules in skirmishes with the VRS. They provoked fire by the Bosnian Serbs and then sought cover with a Dutchbat unit which then ran the risk of being caught between two fires.”

12. What was the comparative strength of the Bosnian Serb forces around Srebrenica and the Bosnian Muslim forces inside the “demilitarized zone” in the Srebrenica enclave at the beginning of July 1995?

The Norwegian documentary film, “Srebrenica: a Town Betrayed,” directed by Ola Flyum and David Hebditch (2011) provides the figure of 400 Bosnian Serb army regulars, plus about 1,600 armed locals.

Philip Hammond, “The UK Press on Srebrenica,” Findings of the Srebrenica Research Group:

“Perhaps the most interesting explanation was that offered by The Times’ Defence Correspondent, Michael Evans, in a July 14 front-page report titled ‘Muslim soldiers ‘failed to defend town from Serbs’, which relied on military and intelligence service sources. The article noted that Bosnian Muslim forces in Srebrenica ‘put up only a brief fight…and their commanders left the night before the Serb tanks entered the town’. According to one ‘intelligence source’: ‘The BiH just melted away from Srebrenica and the senior officers left the night before’. Srebrenica had been effectively abandoned ‘to a relatively small Serb advancing force’. Challenging other reports that ‘up to 1,500 Serbs were involved in the assault’, Evans cited intelligence estimates that ‘the main attack was carried out by a force of about 200, with five tanks’. According to one of his unnamed intelligence sources: ‘It was a pretty low-level operation, but for some reason which we can’t understand the BiH (government) soldiers didn’t put up much of a fight’. This description of a ‘pretty low-level operation’ stands in marked contrast to the co-ordinated campaign of genocide suggested by later coverage.”

As for the strength of Bosnian Muslim forces, the Norwegian documentary speaks of their numbering “about 5,500 soldiers.”

Muslim General Sefer Halilovic has testified at the ICTY that there were at least 5,500 Bosnian Muslim Army soldiers in Srebrenica after it had obtained the “safe area” status, and that he had personally arranged numerous deliveries of sophisticated weapons by helicopter.

This is corroborated by John Schindler, former chief analyst for Bosnia-Herzegovina at the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), who stated in the Norwegian documentary that the “demilitarized zone” in Srebrenica was being armed by way of “black flights,” which UN forces were powerless to stop, as the air space over Bosnia-Herzegovina was under NATO, i.e. U.S. control.

Therefore, the Bosnian Muslim forces inside the “demilitarized zone” in Srebrenica were both numerically superior to the Bosnian Serb forces, and very well armed, courtesy of NATO conveniently shutting its eyes. Clearly, the Bosnian Serb forces, both numerically and technically inferior, could not realistically conceive of carrying out any sort of “mass killing” or “genocidal” plan. This is also the conclusion of the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (NIOD), “Srebrenica, a ‘safe’ area”:

“With hindsight there are no indications that the increased activity of the VRS in East Bosnia at the beginning of July 1995 was aimed at anything more than a reduction of the safe area Srebrenica and an interception of the main road to Zepa. The plan of campaign was drawn up on 2 July. The attack commenced on 6 July. It was so successful and so little resistance was offered that it was decided late in the evening of 9 July to press on and to see whether it was possible to take over the entire enclave.”

13. What is the main argumentation behind the Western-inspired assertion that “genocide” took place in Srebrenica?

The first major judgment of the ICTY, which made the greatest contribution to the construction of the “official version,” according to which “genocide” was committed in Srebrenica in July 1995, was in the case of Bosnian Serb army general Radislav Krstic, brought in August 2001.

As British professor Tara McCormack summed up the judgment against Krstic:

“Joint criminal enterprise is a new category that does not entail proving that the accused had any direct intent to commit, or knowledge of, the crime. At Krstic’s trial it was established that Krstic did not know of any murders that were being committed, and in no way participated. Moreover, the ICTY also accepted that Krstic had personally given orders that Bosnian Muslim civilians were not to be harmed. His conviction was based on the grounds that he had participated in a ‘criminal enterprise’, the capture of Srebrenica.”

(“How Did Srebrenica Become a Morality Tale,” Spiked-online, August 3, 2005.)

In the words of Michael Mandel, Professor of International Law at York University in Toronto:

“But if the Krstic case stands for anything, it stands for the fact that genocide did not occur at Srebrenica. And the Court’s conclusion that it did can only be considered a legal form of propaganda and another contribution to the spreading impression of the Tribunal as more a ‘political tool’ than a ‘juridical institution’, to paraphrase its most famous defendant.

The Tribunal’s claim that genocide occurred at Srebrenica was not supported by the facts it found or by the law it cited. Even the Trial Chamber’s conclusion that ‘Bosnian Serb forces executed several thousand Bosnian Muslim men [with the] total number of victims … likely to be within the range of 7,000 -8,000 men’ was not supported by its explicit findings. The number of bodies exhumed amounted to only 2,028, and the Chamber conceded that even a number of these had died in combat, in fact going so far as to say that the evidence only ‘suggested’ that ‘the majority’ of those killed had not been killed in combat: ‘The results of the forensic investigations suggest that the majority of bodies exhumed were not killed in combat; they were killed in mass executions.’”

(“The ICTY Calls it ‘Genocide,’” Srebrenica Research Group, 2005.)

Efraim Zuroff, Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and certainly a leading authority on what constitutes genocide, had this to say about the Srebrenica “genocide” qualification in June 2015, in a statement given to the Belgrade daily Politika:

“As far as I know, what happened there does not fit the description or definition of genocide and I think that the decision to call this genocide was adopted for political reasons.”

14. Did a Republika Srpska Government Commission truly “admit genocide” in its 2004 Report?

No. In its report, the Commission used the term “genocide” only in quoting the ICTY judgment against Bosnian Serb army general Radislav Krstic. The Commission did not accept the figure of “8,000 executed prisoners,” instead concluding that there was a list of 7,108 names of persons reported as missing between July 10-19, 1995. The Commission also did not state that all the persons on the list were killed or missing. Instead, it stated that the list contains persons killed in war operations prior to 1995, as well as those that died of natural causes, while others were found to have changed their identity and place of residence, or to be serving prison sentences for criminal activity.

The report itself was produced under highly irregular circumstances, under direct pressure of the High Representative for Bosnia-Herzegovina, Paddy Ashdown, as described by University of Pennsylvania professor emeritus Edward Herman:

“The Bosnian Serbs actually did put out a report on Srebrenica in September 2002, but this report was rejected by Paddy Ashdown for failing to come up with the proper conclusions. He therefore forced a further report by firing a stream of Republica Srpska politicians and analysts, threatening the RS government, and eventually extracting a report prepared by people who would come to the officially approved conclusions. This report, issued on June 11, 2004, was then greeted in the Western media as a meaningful validation of the official line-the refrain was, the Bosnian Serbs “admit” the massacre, which should finally settle any questions.”

(“The Politics of the Srebrenica Massacre,” July 7, 2005, Global Research.org)

As a reminder, according to general and international law, acts committed under coercion cannot be considered to be legitimate.

Conclusions

After 20 years, for all the media attention and limelight, the only conclusion that can be made with certainty is that nothing certain has been determined when it comes to Srebrenica. The number of victims of war crimes is yet to be determined, as is the number of total victims, on both the Bosnian Muslim and the Bosnian Serb side. The main reason for this failure lies in the fact that, in the case of Srebrenica, politics and pragmatic interests have trumped justice and the pursuit of truth. Only an independent, representative, international truth commission on Srebrenica could establish the full truth. It is high time that such a commission was established.

To summarize, this is what is known about Srebrenica, after 20 years:

– There is no established connection between prisoner executions and official structures of either the Republic of Serbia or Republika Srpska;

– Prisoner executions that did take place were carried out by a small number of people, of various nationalities, which lays waste to claims of any sort of collective “Serbian guilt” regarding Srebrenica;

– The number of prisoners for which it can be said with a great degree of certainty that they were victims of execution – is from 10 to 20 times lower than the number of “7,000-8,000” constantly being uncritically promoted in the mass media. The only plausible reason for this unfounded exaggeration is the intent to artificially build an image of collective “Serb guilt” as justification for permanent meddling in the Balkans, as well as justification for Western intervention worldwide, on “humanitarian grounds,’ to “prevent new Srebrenicas”;

– The thus far proven number of executed prisoners, who were killed by persons who have either been sentenced to prison terms, or were subsequently engaged as Western mercenaries in Africa, is lower that the number of murdered and butchered Serb civilians in Srebrenica and its vicinity – a crime for which no one has answered, nor is anyone seeking to attach the “genocidal” label to Bosnian Muslims for it.

Therefore, Serbia, Republika Srpska and the Serbian people as a whole are not obliged to apologize collectively for everything that happened in Srebrenica, not just in July 1995, but during the entire time of the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, between 1992-1995.

If any apologies and admissions of guilt are due, they are due from a) U.S. officials who continually sabotaged efforts to reach a peaceful solution in Bosnia-Herzegovina, from the failed Lisbon Plan in March 1992, by which the Bosnian Serbs were even willing to accept an independent Bosnia-Herzegovina and separation from ex-Yugoslavia, to the Owen-Stoltenberg Plan of 1993,

b) the Bosnian Muslim leadership headed by former president Alija Izetbegovic, which refused the above peace initiatives, actively imported thousands of mujahedeen fighters into Bosnia-Herzegovina during the war, and took deliberate actions that sabotaged peace efforts in order to provoke U.S. led intervention in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Balkans, and

c) all those who are obstructing efforts to arrive at the real, unadulterated truth regarding Srebrenica, as the only way forward to achieving genuine justice, punishing the truly guilty and opening the way to sincere and lasting reconciliation in the Balkans.

July 2015

Belgrade, Den Haag, Washington

*******

Srebrenica Fifteen Years Later – The Question of Evidence

by George Bogdanich and Jonathan Rooper

The conduct of recent international war crimes trials of the former Yugoslavia reveals that political considerations tend to trump provable facts. The arrest of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic last year was treated by commentators on both sides of the Atlantic as though it has been clearly established that he was a “mastermind” of bloody events at Srebrenica, and that some “7000 to 8000” men and boys of combat age were killed by Bosnian Serb forces in July of 1995. Much of the commentary implied that a trial would be a mere formality that should not hinder swift justice. But a good deal of evidence has emerged in the last fourteen years that casts doubt on the official narrative, the casualty figures and the ability of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) to render just verdicts in a case which has drawn worldwide interest.

It is worth noting that the July 1995 indictment of Karadzic by the International War Crimes Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) was issued before an official investigation had been mounted and long before the facts had been established. So too was the repeated use of the 7,000-8,000 casualty figures by the US State Dept at a time when Muslim refugees from Srebrenica were still arriving at UN refugee center at the Tuzla airport.

The overtly political nature of the ICTY’s actions was made clear when the first indictments against Karadzic and Bosnian Serb Army General Ratko Mladic were announced on July 27, 1995 — two weeks after the July 11 capture of Srebrenica — Antonio Cassesse, the US appointed President of the ICTY, applauded the action as a “a great political result” adding: “The indictment means that these gentlemen will not be able to take part in peace negotiations.” US envoy Richard Holbrooke was similarly candid about the political usefulness of the Tribunal thereafter, when he told the BBC “the War Crimes Tribunal was a huge valuable tool. We used it to keep the two most wanted war criminals in Europe out of the Dayton process and we used it to justify everything that followed.”

In her memoir published last year, former chief ICTY chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte acknowledges that the US State Department, which pushed relentlessly for the indictments of Serbian leaders, showed little interest or cooperation in pursuing serious war crimes by Croat and Muslim forces against Serbian civilians in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. Del Ponte was abruptly removed from her other position as the chief prosecutor in the International War Crime Tribunal of Rwanda when she informed the US State Dept of her intention to investigate crimes by the US-backed Rwandan Patriotic Front. She was apparently chastened by the experience. The public was never told about ICTY investigations of responsibility for war crimes authorized by Croatian President Franjo Tudjman and Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic until after their deaths, by which time the cases had been sealed.

In this context, it is not surprising that even such a fierce critic of the Bosnian Serbs as former BBC journalist Martin Bell has declared that the ICTY, as well as Mr. Karadzic, will be on trial. “The war crimes tribunal is a prosecutor’s court,” he observed, “more interested in securing convictions than in delivering justice.”

The official ICTY version of events at Srebrenica — Serbs entering a UN “safe zone” and slaughtering innocent Muslims while a UN battalion failed to protect them — did indeed serve the US political agenda, which was to prepare public opinion for Operation Deliberate Force, a long planned US bombing campaign against Bosnian Serb targets two weeks after the capture of the enclave. This would be followed nine days later by the massive US backed Croatian Army attack known as Operation Storm which cleansed 200,000 ethnic Serbs living in the UN Protected Zones in the Krajina region of Croatia.

Scorched Earth Raids of 1992-93 and the Cycle of Violence

For those who were willing to look, however, it did not take long to see through the Manichean picture of innocent Muslims and evil Serbs promoted by the US policy makers and self-described “journalists of attachment” such as Martin Bell. The BBC documentary “Lies and Allies” detailed how the US helped facilitate arms shipments in large C-130 cargo planes to Muslim forces at Tuzla airport. These shipments were then flown by helicopter to Zepa and Srebrenica according to former Muslim army Commander General Halilovic and turned the supposed “safe zones,” such as Srebrenica and Gorazde, into staging areas for Muslim attacks against nearby Serbian villages designed to provoke a Serbian reaction which would bring NATO air strikes. In testimony before the Hague in 2001, General Sefer Halilovic, former Commander of the Muslim Army of Bosnia Hercegovina, acknowledged that the Bosnian Government High Command issued “a large number of orders for sabotage operations from the safe areas” against Serbian villages.

Shortly after the outbreak of war in Bosnia, the Serbian population of Srebrenica began to be driven out by Muslim warlord Naser Oric, who thereafter led the 28th division in scorched earth raids against numerous Serbian villages, killing civilians, their livestock, and gaining a reputation for extreme brutality. Oric clearly understood that with uncritical US support for the Izetbegovic government, he could act with impunity. He even videotaped some of his butchery, including severed Serbian heads, showing these videotapes to John Pomfret of the Washington Post and Bill Schiller of the Toronto Star. Schiller writes that Oric was “as bloodthirsty a warrior as ever crossed a battlefield” and then recounts a visit to the warlord’s home in January 1994:

On a cold and snowy night, I sat in his room, watching a shocking video version of what might have been called Naser Oric’s Greatest Hits. There were burning houses, dead bodies, severed heads and people fleeing. . Oric grinned throughout, admiring his handiwork. “We ambushed them,” he said. The next sequence of dead bodies had been done in by explosives: “We launched those guys to the moon,” he boasted. When footage of a bullet marked ghost town appeared without any visible bodies, Oric hastened to announce. “We killed 114 Serbs there.” Later, there were celebrations, with singers with wobbly voices chanting his praises.

UN Commander General Phillipe Morillon who served in 1992-93 during these massacres told ICTY prosecutor “Naser Oric engaged in attacks during Orthodox holidays and destroyed villages, massacring all the inhabitants. This created a degree of hatred that was quite extraordinary in the region.” A report by Belgrade-based researcher Milivoje Ivanisevic, who has been documenting human rights abuses against Bosnian Serb civilians since 1992, notes that “of the 93 Serbian settlements in Srebrenica and Bratunac Counties, 82 of them were destroyed.” In 2005, the Center of the Investigation of Crimes against Serbian People released a list of 3,262 Serbs from the region who were killed by Oric’s unit. Of these, 880 were members of military or police organizations. The remaining 2382 were civilians and their names were published in Vecernje Novosti, a Belgrade daily newspaper in 2005. Ivanisevic points that not a single name was challenged in the year and half before the release of the full report in 2007.

Oric was no rogue commander acting on his own. As, Morillon testified: “Naser Oric’s reign implied a thorough knowledge of the area held by his forces. It appeared to me that he was respecting political instructions coming from the [Bosnian] Presidency.” Despite his 28th Division’s responsibility for well-documented massacres of Serbian villagers, many of them elderly residents who could not flee, the government of Izetbegovic awarded him the Golden Lily, Bosnia’s highest military decoration. When Serbs formed the Drina Corp in 1993 to stop the attacks, Morillon helped negotiate an agreement that was supposed to demilitarize Srebrenica, but the UN never gave the Dutch battalion overseeing the enclave the authority to carry out the terms of the agreement. Oric’s 28th Division not only remained in place in violation of the agreement, but received modern planeloads of illegal weaponry from Iran and other Middle Eastern countries facilitated by the US Defense Intelligence agency.

The Dutch Government Report at Odds with Official Story

Was Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic a “mastermind” of the carnage following the capture of Srebrenica in July of 1995? The comprehensive 2002 Dutch government report on Srebrenica, whose authors had access to all relevant intelligence documents — American, Serbian, Bosnian Muslim, German, Dutch — produced a wealth of information, but none linking Karadzic to atrocities following the capture of Srebrenica.

The Dutch government report notes that Karadzic had authorized a small unit of the Bosnian Serb Army to shrink the Srebrenica pocket by occupying the south end of the safe zone to prevent ongoing attacks from Muslim forces in Srebrenica against nearby Serbian villages like Visnica which had been assaulted the week before. Former Muslim Commander General Sefer Halilovic confirms that about 200 Serbian soldiers backed by five tanks entered the pocket on July 6, 1995. The Bosnian Serb unit was surprised to find no resistance whatsoever from the well armed 28th Division (which, according to the testimony of another Muslim Commander, General Enver Hadzihasanovic,) had billeted 5,500-6000 soldiers in the town.

The Muslim forces had a 25 to 1 advantage in manpower. But by July 9, the 28th Division and most civilian Srebrenica men of combat age had been ordered to leave the town. British military analyst Tim Ripley wrote that surprised Dutch UN troops “saw Bosnian troops escaping from Srebrenica move past their observation points carrying brand new anti-tank weapons, still in their plastic wrappings. This and other similar reports made many UN officers and international journalists suspicious.” The Muslim men regrouped the following day in the nearby village of Susnjari. Meanwhile the women, children and mostly elderly men left for the village of Potocari.

According to the Dutch Government report, the fact that that the larger Muslim 28th Division had abandoned its secure position in Srebrenica, encouraged the Bosnian Serbs to capture the town, which they decided to do on the evening of July 9. The Dutch report notes that in a written order from General Tolimer: “Karadzic had determined that the safety of UNPROFOR soldiers and of the population should be ensured. Orders to this effect were to be provided to all participating units. The safety of the population should also be guaranteed in the event that they should attempt to cross to the territory of the Republika Srpska. The orders made no mention of a forced relocation of the population. The VRS [Bosnia Serb Army] units were to be ordered not to destroy any civilian property unless they met with resistance. Buildings were not to be set on fire. A final instruction, also of significance, was that the population and prisoners of war should be treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention.”

On July 11, this small unit of Bosnian Serbs entered the nearly empty town of Srebrenica. The UN Dutch Battalion (DutchBat) had called in a NATO air strike earlier that day against Serb targets, but to little avail, because the Muslim defenders had left the town. Official reports note that little physical damage was done to the town and the only UN soldier killed at Srebrenica was shot by a retreating member of the Muslim 28th Division.

Under the gaze of international observers, Bosnian Serb forces provided buses at Potacari for at least 25,000 women and children from Srebrenica who wished to go to Muslim-held Tuzla. A small group of mostly elderly men – less than a thousand according to UN sources — were imprisoned briefly after being queried about possible involvement in war crimes by the 28th Division. Some 796 Muslim men were also allowed to make their way to Zepa, near the border with Serbia, which was itself later also captured by the Bosnian Serbs.

The overwhelming majority of the Muslim male population of Srebrenica refused offers to surrender. They had moved to Susnjari on July 9 and 10, trusting the Bosnian Serbs to provide safe passage for the civilian population. These Muslim soldiers and most military age males chose to fight their way across Serb held territory to get to Tuzla. Many died fighting in a series of confrontations and numerous minefields on the road to Tuzla, according to both Muslim and Serb testimony.

From Blood-Soaked Mercenary To Star Witness

Drazen Erdemovic, one of six Croatians along with a Muslim and a Slovene in an eight man mercenary unit which had become loosely attached to the Bosnian Serb Army, was turned over to the War Crimes Tribunal in 1996 when he was arrested in Serbia after being injured in a drunken shootout with his former comrades

War Crimes Tribunal psychiatrists questioned Erdemovic’s mental fitness and the ICTY decided his testimony could not be used in his own prosecution. Yet, this same highly dubious testimony was used in the controversial Rule 61 proceeding of the War Crimes Tribunal – a sort of “trial by press” procedure which allowed prosecutors to bring up all manner of undocumented allegations against Karadzic and Mladic without any rebuttal from defense lawyers, in order to exert public pressure for the arrest of the Bosnian Serb leaders. Though he had admitted to taking part in serious crimes, Erdemovic received the short sentence of five years (3 ½ already served), because, according to an official of the Tribunal, he “assisted in the public clamour to arrest Radovan Karadzic.” The ICTY has failed to this day to pursue other members of Erdemovic’s murderous unit who might have contradicted Erdemovic’s testimony or shed light on events.

Fortunately, a German author of Bulgarian descent named Germinal Civikov has investigated Erdemovic and recently filled in crucial information gaps with his German language book “Srebrenica: Der Kronzeuge (Star Witness) ” (Wien: Promedia, 2009) a meticulously documented and persuasive account of the activities of this mercenary unit. A key finding is that Erdemovic’s unit was actually on leave following the capture of Srebrenica when Erdemovic claimed that they had carried out executions. Civikov concludes that Erdemovic’s account of the executions, including the number of victims, is physically impossible. Erdemovic claimed that that his small unit killed 1200 men in five hours by lining up ten men at a time and having them shot. But, to do so, his small unit of eight soldiers would have had only 2.5 minutes to line up ten men and execute them. If it took only 10 minutes to assemble and execute 10 prisoners, it would have taken 20 hours to kill 1200 men in the manner that Erdemovic claimed. Not surprisingly, ICTY prosecutors referred in court proceedings to “hundreds” killed by Erdemovic and his seven bloody cohorts at Branjevo Farms near Pilica. Even that description overstates the number of those executed by this unit, because the remains of 153 persons were found by investigators at the killing site. Civikov also noted that Erdemovic had told a reporter for War Report that he was also involved in killings at Nova Kasaba, but later changed his story when it turned that he claimed to be elsewhere on the same day in another account.

Erdemovic Testimony Undermined by Witnesses

Erdemovic says he participated in the capture of Srebrenica on July 11 and he acknowledges that his unit was told by their superior Milorad Pelemis, Commander of the Bosnian Serb Army 10th Sabotage Detachment, not to harm civilians. Before the Tribunal, he testified:

Yes, there was an order that we should not harm civilians, that soldiers should not harm civilians. So, as I could see it at that time, soldiers were not shooting at civilians who had surrendered.

Erdemovic also testified that Pelemis was not present during the atrocities five days later, but claims he saw Pelemis at the nearby Vlasenica base a number of times prior to the killings at Branjevo Farms. That, however, would have been physically impossible, because Pelemis was seriously injured on July 12 in an Armored Personnel Carrier accident which killed his passenger Dragan Koljivrat. Pelemis was taken to a military hospital in Belgrade where he stayed until July 22. In 2004, Pelemis’s superior, Col Petar Salapura, a defense witness in another case, testified that he had called the Vlasenica camp on July 13th and was told that that Pelemis was in the hospital and the other soldiers were on leave.

Straining to tie the actions of his unit to the Bosnia Serb Army High Command and fulfill his agreement with ICTY prosecutors, Erdemovic offered an incredible story that a private in his unit named Brano Gojkovic was the one who gave execution orders. By this account, Erdemovic, then a sergeant, Franc Kos, a second lieutenant and five others were taking orders from this lowly private to carry out mass executions! How did lowly Private Gojkovic take command of the unit and order higher ranking soldiers to kill captive soldiers? Erdemovic testifies that “He [Gojkovic] said that Pelemis came and said to get ready, so I conclude, on the basis of that, that Pelemis told Brano what needed to be done”.

As a young lawyer defending a murder suspect, Abraham Lincoln once called the prosecutor’s case “thinner than the soup made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that starved to death.” A similar description could be made of Erdemovic’s constantly changing testimony. There is little chance it would survive in a normal court proceeding. To the consternation of ICTY prosecutors, but unnoticed by reporters, a prosecution witness in another later case named Dragan Todorovic eviscerates Erdemovic’s testimony. Todorovic testified that Franc Kos, the lieutenant of Slovenian origin was the commander of Erdemovic’s unit. Indeed, the ICTY judges had in their possession a receipt showing that Kos had signed for the equipment the unit would use, because he alone had the authority to do so.

Todorovic also confirms that Pelemis was not at Vlasenica as Edemovic claimed in the days before the killings. Todorovic had rushed to the scene of Pelemis’s accident on July 12 and helped bring the body of the dead soldier to his parent’s home in Trebinje. Upon his return, Todorovic tried to drop off presents from the soldier’s parents to Pelemis at the base in Vlasenica, but was told Pelemis was not there. Todorovic testifies: “I asked a soldier at the gate where Mr. Pelemis was, and he told me that he [Pelemis] was either in Bijeljina or at the hospital in Belgrade” and other members of unit were on leave.

The question of who Erdemovic and his cohorts were really working for on July 16 while his unit was on leave, is central to the case. Erdemovic acknowledged to the court that his group had been paid the equivalent of 1 million Euros in gold, but couldn’t or wouldn’t tell the Tribunal who paid them. ICTY prosecutors showed no further interest in the critical issue of the money, which is the main motive of mercenaries, presumably because it would distract from the effort to link these bloodstained soldiers of fortune to the Bosnian Serb High Command.

All of which begs the question: cui bono? Who would benefit if there was news that a large group of Muslim soldiers were executed? Certainly not the Bosnian Serbs. If either Karadzic or General Mladic harbored a desire to carry out a massacre of Muslim prisoners (with the whole world watching,) how likely is it that they would entrust the task to a mercenary unit led by unstable personalities that had fought previously with both the Muslim Bosnian government forces and the Croat HVO militia? No physical evidence has ever been presented tying the Bosnian leaders to this mercenary unit.

Rather, it was the testimony of one soldier of fortune named Drazen Erdemovic that enabled the ICTY to convict General Radislav Krstic of genocide and bring indictments against Karadzic, General Mladic, Serbian President Milosevic as well as General Vujadin Popovic and seven other top Bosnian Serb military leaders.

In “Srebrenica: Star Witness,” Civikov argues that by failing to indict Erdemovic’s seven partners in crime — or even question them, the ICTY showed a stunning lack of interest in a full account of what the tribunal has called ‘the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II’. If lowly private Brano Gojkovic gave the order to execute, why has he not been arrested and questioned? When one of Erdemovic’s fellow executioners, another Bosnian Croat named Marko Boskic, was arrested in Boston in 2004 for failing to disclose to US immigration authorities his service in a unit attached the Bosnian Serb Army, the Tribunal decided not to extradite him, even though Boskic reportedly admitted to the FBI that he had taken part in the executions at Branjevo Farms. When reporters asked why Boskic was not being extradited, Anton Nikiforov, the spokesman for the Office of the Prosecutor, replied that the prosecutor had to concentrate on going after the “the big fish.”

If there were any orders to Erdemovic’s unit from the leaders of the Bosnian Serb Army to carry out executions, Milorad Pelemis, Commander of the 10th Sabotage Division would have been the link to higher ups such as the Bosnian Serb High Command at Han Pijesak. But over 12 years the ICTY showed no interest in questioning Pelemis, while Erdemovic’s testimony enabled the ICTY to convict one top Bosnian Serb after another. Why take a chance that other, more credible witnesses would undermine Erdemovic’s testimony? Any nagging concerns about discovering the actual truth regarding the bloody events at Branjevo Farms – a prerequisite for a justice — were swept aside by prosecutors in the all consuming effort to convict “big fish” like Karadzic and Mladic.

Confirmed Survivors Rule Out Inflated Casualty Figures

Contrary to the official story, the combined tally of officially confirmed survivors from Srebrenica clearly rules out the possibility that 7,000 or 8,000 men were killed in battle, minefields or executions. The ICTY indictment of Bosnian Serb General Radislav Krstic placed the number of residents of Srebrenica between 38,000 and 42,000 before the town was captured. We know that the UN registered 35,632 surviving refugees at the Tuzla airport, as acknowledged by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Bosnian government, according to the 1996 Amnesty International report on Srebrenica. We also know from testimony by Bosnian Army Commander Hadzihasanovic, that 3,175 soldiers of the 28th division survived the fighting with the Bosnian Serbs on the way to Sapna Finger near Tuzla where Muslim soldiers regrouped and were redeployed to other theaters of conflict. Along with the 796 Muslims soldiers that fled to Zepa, who were acknowledged in the same Amnesty Report, there were at least 39,603 officially confirmed survivors from Srebrenica.

Even if one uses the Tribunal’s highest estimate of the pre-capture population of Srebrenica (42,000), subtracting the number of officially confirmed survivors (39,603) would indicate between 2000 and 2400 Muslims were killed, whether in battle, walking through minefields or by execution.

Senior US military officials in the best position to know, understood from the outset that the casualties for Srebrenica were inflated. In a 1995 article in Foreign Affairs, former Deputy Commander of NATO, Charles Boyd, in charge of intelligence, wrote that “except for the amount of handwringing and CNN footage,” the scope of the violence around Srebrenica in 1995 “differed little” from the US supported Croatian attack on the Serbian population of the UN Protected Zone in nearby Western Slavonia two months earlier.

The inflated number of Srebrenica casualties used by the US State Dept, however, was crucial in building public support for US/NATO military intervention against Serb targets in late July 1995. William Perry, who served as US Secretary of Defense during the Bosnian conflict, would observe to the New York Times years later ”you don’t go to war with people unless you demonize them first.”

Instead of gathering evidence first, and deciding what crimes had been committed, ICTY investigations were compromised by the need to justify indictments that had been made for the political reasons so candidly offered by Richard Holbrooke and ICTY President Antonio Cassesse. Five years after the largest exhumation of wartime casualties in history, the remains of 2000 bodies were recovered in a region where fierce fighting had raged for three years and these findings were offered as evidence in the trial of General Radislav Krstic who was in Zepa when the Muslim column with the 28th division clashed with Bosnian Serb units from the Drina Corps.

Various official casualty lists using the 7,000 to 8,000 figure, including one compiled by the International Committee of the Red Cross, used information provided on questionnaires filled out by purported surviving relatives. They have been found to be seriously flawed, because they include names of individuals still alive, persons who died prior to the capture of Srebrenica, and many others from different locations in Bosnia, as well as 3000 persons who voted a year later in the 1996 Bosnian election supervised by the OECD.

Was Srebrenica Sacrificed?

US officials focused on the responsibility of the Serbs for events in Srebrenica, but several key Muslim officials bitterly claimed that Srebrenica was “sacrificed” by the Bosnian government to set the stage for NATO intervention.

One of them is Ibran Mustafic, former Mayor of Sarajevo who was the head of the Muslim ruling party SDA organization in Srebrenica during the war. He was among the relative small number of Srebrenica men who joined the women and children at Potocari. He was interrogated by the Bosnian Serbs, taken prisoner and then released.

Mustafic, who has since written a book about events in Srebrenica (“Planned Chaos”) told the Bosnian Muslim publication Slobodna Bosna in a 1996 interview:

“The scenario for the betrayal of Srebrenica was consciously prepared. Unfortunately, the Bosnian presidency and the Army command were involved in this business; if you want the names, figure it out yourself. I understood the situation in Srebrenica and you can trust me on this, had I not been prevented by a group of criminals, many more inhabitants of Srebrenica would be alive today. Had I received an order to attack the Serb army from the demilitarized zone, I would have rejected to carry out that order without thinking and would have asked the person who had issued that order to bring his family to Srebrenica so that I can give him a gun and let him stage attacks from the demilitarized zone. I knew that such shameful, calculated moves were leading my people to a catastrophe.”

Mustafic had survived two assassination attempts by what he calls the “group of criminals,” led by Naser Oric. But Srebrenica’s police chief, Hakija Meholjic, a hardliner who served under Naser Oric, also believes that Srebrenica was deliberately sacrificed by the Izetbegovic government and the high command of the Bosnian Army to enable NATO forces to intervene.

In an interview with the Bosnian Muslim publication Dani, Meholjic recalls that at the Bosniak conference in Sarajevo in September 1993, Izetbegovic claimed to have discussed various scenarios for Srebrenica with President Clinton. According to Meholjic, an ally of Naser Oric:

We were received there by President Izetbegovic, and immediately after the welcome he asked us: “What do you think about the swap of Srebrenica for Vogosca [a Sarajevo suburb]?” There was a silence for a while and then I said: “Mr. President, if this is a done thing, then you should not have invited us here, because we have to return and face the people and personally accept the burden of that decision.” Then he said: “You know, I was offered by Clinton in April 1993 that the Chetnik [a derisive term for Serbs] forces enter Srebrenica, carry out a slaughter of 5,000 Muslims, and then there will be a military intervention.”

Meholjic, who was stunned by this disclosure from Izetbegovic, subsequently repeated this account to the producers of a Dutch documentary that was shown as evidence in the War Crimes Tribunal. According to the film, President Izetbegovic was questioned by UN investigators and denied making the disclosures. While there is no evidence, nor any way to confirm that President Clinton actually made such a proposal to Izetbegovic, however hypothetical, there were at least eight surviving witnesses to confirm what Izetbegovic told the Srebrenica delegation.

In negotiations between the Muslim and Bosnian Serb leaders, Senior Clinton administration figures, including Madeleine Albright and Alexander Vershbow, had consistently maintained that Srebrenica and other isolated Muslim enclaves such as Gorazde should be exchanged for Serb-held territory such as Vogosca near Sarajevo. Both sides expected Srebrenica to become part of Serb territory in a settlement and for that reason the Serbs had shown little interest in stretching their limited manpower to capture the enclave when their Western front was under pressure from major military attacks by Croat Muslim forces in Western Bosnia.

The Bosnian government set events in motion that led to the capture of Srebrenica when they withdrew Oric and 17 other top commanders of the 28th division to attend a Bosniak conference in Zenica, just before ordering the now leaderless unit in Srebrenica to engage in attacks against nearby Serb villages that were sure to provoke a response from the Bosnian Serb Army. UN officials involved in events share the belief of local Muslim leaders such as Mustafic and Meholjic that the Sarajevo government deliberately sacrificed Srebrenica to bring NATO military intervention against the Serbs. Carlos Martins Branco, Deputy Chief Operations Officer in the UN Peace Forces in Bosnia writes: “The besieged [Muslim 28th Division] forces could have easily defended the enclave.” Since it was going to be traded away “it was preferable to let this happen in the most beneficial manner possible.”

Michael Evans of the London Times said that the fact that Bosnian Army commanders and a large division “abandoned the town before the Serbs breached the perimeter, [was] a sign that a decision made to sacrifice Srebrenica for the sake of a political strategy.”

Before his death in 2003, Izetbegovic freely acknowledged that he had made false accusations in the course of the war in an effort to encourage NATO to bomb the Serbs. During a 1992 visit from French President France Mitterand, Izetbegovic accused the Bosnian Serbs of running “extermination camps,” a charge that created headlines worldwide and led to congressional hearings in the US. But, Bernard Kouchner, currently France’s Foreign Minister accompanied by Richard Holbrooke, visited Izetbegovic on his death bed, where the Bosnian President disowned his sensational charges against the Serbs.

“Yes,” he told Kouchner, “I thought that my revelations could precipitate [NATO] bombings. Yes, I tried, but the assertion was false. There were no extermination camps whatever the horror of those places”. At the very time that Izetbegovic was making his charges in 1992 about “death camps”, the International Committee of the Red Cross, which had visited prison camps run by the three factions in the Bosnian civil war, stated officially: “Serb, Croats and Muslim all run detention camps and must share equal blame”.

Izetbegovic’s government made similar headlines in December 1992 when its Foreign Minister Haris Silajdzic (the current President of Bosnia) told the NBC “Today” Show that “forty to fifty thousand women were raped and are being raped now, even as we speak” by Bosnian Serbs. Two years later, after extensive investigations, a report by UN Special Rapporteur Tadeusz Maziowiecki put the number of confirmed rapes at 337 for all sides, a finding which received little attention from news organizations that trumpeted the original Bosnian government charges.

Nor was Izetbegovic hesitant about using the word “genocide” without basis when it suited his purposes. Barely a week into the war, on April 6, 1992, Izetbegovic was already being quoted in news accounts using the word “genocide” to characterize a brief battle between Serbs and Muslims in the Eastern Bosnian town of Bijeljina. This pattern continued whenever the Bosnian leader called publicly for NATO military intervention.

On July 9, 1995, two days before the Serbian soldiers entered the empty town of Srebrenica, Izetbegovic was already on the phone with world leaders including US President Bill Clinton decrying “terrorism and genocide against the civilians of Srebrenica.” At this time, the small Serb unit which had entered the enclave from the south, had yet to encounter any serious resistance from Muslim forces, which were already moving north from Srebrenica to redeploy in Susnjari.

To justify the indictments of Karadzic and Mladic, it has been a singular goal of the ICTY to support and prop up the original estimate of 7,000–8,000 despite the lack of hard evidence and some breathtaking inconsistencies in official documents and indictments. There is unmistakable evidence that the Bosnian government and the ICTY conflated casualties from across Bosnia with those from Srebrenica to arrive at the inflated official figure. For example, an internal memo written by the ICTY demographer Ewa Tabeau in 2008 states that of the total of 7661 Muslim men allegedly missing from Srebrenica, 5371 were soldiers of the Bosnian Army and that 3481 of these were identified from excavated remains as of the date of her memo. But Tabeau’s statistics come from the same official Bosnian Army sources, including the government sponsored “International Commission on Missing Persons” (ICMP), that have repeatedly invoked the inflated number of Srebrenica deaths.

The ICTY’s problem is that the top commanders of the Bosnian Army — Generals Halilovic and Hadzihasanovic — had already testified under oath in 2001 that the total number of Bosnian Army members in Srebrenica was around 5500, and that 3175 Muslim soldiers of the 28th Division had survived the bloody flight across Bosnian Serb territory.

Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, in an unguarded moment on Sarajevo television a month after the capture of Srebrenica, acknowledged that “3400 soldiers” managed to reach “free,” ie. Muslim-held territory near Tuzla, a slightly higher, rounded- off figure than his generals would use in their testimony. On another occasion he told Sarajevo radio that surviving troops were dispatched to join fighters around Bihac in Northwest Bosnia.

Given that at least 3,000 soldiers survived out of a unit of 5500, how could 5371 soldiers have been deemed missing by the ICTY? If the “missing” were in fact Bosnian soldiers, obviously, they could not have been from Srebrenica.

A contemporary, authoritative UN source provides further confirmation that there were many survivors from the Muslim military column and that most of those killed along the way were the victims of mines and battles with Bosnian Serb soldiers. A 17 July 1995 report to the UNPROFOR office in Tuzla, Edward Joseph, refers to the arrival of “Srebrenica men” in the Tuzla area and comments that “5 to 6 thousand crossed into BiH 2 Corps controlled- territory in the southern Sapna area last night (16 July)…Up to three thousand were killed on the way, mostly by mines and BSA [Bosnia Serb Army] engagements. Unknown others were captured. Some committed suicide. Unknown others went to Zepa.”

By August 4, a very large number of civilian men from Srebrenica registered as displaced persons with the UN at the Tuzla airport. The 1996 Amnesty International report states that “at least 13,000 men successfully made their way through the forest.”

In his November 1, 2002 report to the ICTY, Richard Butler, the American military expert for the prosecution stated that “depending on the source, 10,000 to 15,000 persons formed a mixed [military and civilian] column…” which sought escape following the Srebrenica-Tuzla route. Given that 13,000 Srebrenica men survived, this again rules out the inflated number of 8,000 killed. Butler’s reference to the mixed military and civilian nature of the column confirms that it was a legitimate military target.

Of the 2,000 plus Srebrenica men who died as part of the mixed column of soldiers and civilians, how many were killed in military encounters with the Bosnian Serbs, from deadly mines or from executions? The ICTY’s chief investigator Jean-Rene Ruez has stated: “A significant number [of Moslems] were killed in combat… Many were killed while trying to make it through minefields… As for those who perished in the woods, we are compelled to figure that they were killed in battle.” Ruez notes that the Bosnian Serbs also had significant losses in battle, particularly the Zvornik brigade, which had its largest casualties of the entire war during four days of engagements with Bosnian Muslim troops in the column breaking out of the Srebrenica enclave. Richard Butler testified that he had not made a location by location analysis of Bosnian Army losses in battles with Bosnian Serbs, but the figure of “1,000-2000 sounds reasonable.” In an interview with Sarajevo based Dani Magazine, Muslim commander Nesib Buric stressed that his soldiers had fought hard and sustained many casualties: “In my battalion, out of 320, 280 died…No one can deny that in the Srebrenica municipality there are 2,000 buried fighters”.

The well-documented accounts of military engagements the length of the trip from Srebrenica to Sapna by 37 surviving Muslim soldiers interviewed by the ICTY suggests the number of executions among these 2,000 casualties would have to be in the hundreds. Some 442 ligatures and blindfolds were found at several locations including Branjevo Farms where Erdemovic claimed to have carried out executions. It is also possible, though unproven to date, that some local Bosnian Serb soldiers may have disobeyed standing orders and taken revenge by executing soldiers of the 28th Division who had slaughtered their families during Naser Oric’s reign of terror in 1992-93.

The most comprehensive effort to analyze and categorize the method of death of those exhumed was performed by forensic physician Ljubisa Simic of the Dutch-based Srebrenica Historical Project, who produced graphs and tables of category of injuries sustained in the 13 primary burial sites excavated in 1996-2002 from 3600 reports accounting for the remains of some 2,000 bodies. While some researchers have raised questions whether blindfolds or ligatures may have been planted, Simic believes that these were victims of executions. At least 600 bodies showed evidence of injuries from projectiles, mostly in feet which are consistent with deaths from mines. Significantly, Simic notes that the same grave sites that were excavated in 1996-97 also contained bodies that showed advanced decomposition inconsistent with burials of two years or less following the capture of Srebrenica. These remains had to have been buried during the scorched earth attacks on Serbian villages in 1992-93 by Naser Oric’s 28th Division. (Oric was finally indicted in 1998 and convicted only on trivial charges despite massive evidence of his murderous activities including his own videotapes. He was later found innocent by ICTY judges after serving only two years, and released to a hero’s welcome.)

The Numbers Game

What are we to make of the claim by the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) claim that there are now DNA matches for the remains of 6200 persons from Srebrenica? First, we need to understand that despite its name, the ICMP is not an independent group but rather a successor organization of the Muslim dominated group which maintains control over the investigative and forensic work. The ICMP is allied with the same Bosnian government figures such as Haris Silajdzic, current President of Bosnia, who, as Foreign Minister in 1992, grabbed headlines with charges of mass rape.. It was Silajdzic, also, who told a press conference in 1994 that “70,000 people” had been killed in fighting around Bihac, though the UN monitors informed BBC reporter John Simpson that fewer than a thousand persons had been killed in the Bihac fighting that had been initiated by the Bosnian Government side.

As for 