Responsibility for compensation to families of 350 victims reduced from 30% to 10%

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The Dutch supreme court has reduced the state’s liability for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre during the Bosnian war, saying peacekeepers had only a “slim” chance of preventing the deaths of hundreds of Muslim men.

Judges reduced to 10% from 30% the Dutch state’s responsibility for compensation to the families of 350 victims killed by Bosnian Serb forces who overran the safe haven.

Lightly armed Dutch UN peacekeepers were overrun by the Bosnian Serbs during the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, triggering the worst atrocity in Europe since the second world war.

Almost 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed in the genocide at Srebrenica.

“The Dutch state bears very limited liability,” the supreme court said. “That liability is limited to 10% of the damages suffered by the surviving relatives of approximately 350 victims.”

The relatives are represented by the Mothers of Srebrenica victims’ organisation which sued for compensation, sparking a years-long legal battle.

Munira Subašić, the president of the Mothers, said she was disappointed with the judgment. “Today we experienced humiliation upon humiliation. We could not even hear the judgment in our own language because we were not given a translator,” she said.

At Srebrenica “every life was taken away 100%. There is little we can do with 10%, but yes, the responsibility still lies where it does.”

Subašić’s son Nermin was killed in the massacre and she has spent years fighting for justice for victims’ families. “I only have two bones. I have found less than 10% of his body,” she said.

A Dutch court originally held the state liable for compensation in 2014. In 2017 the appeals court upheld that decision before it was referred to the supreme court.

The lower court had said in 2017 that the Dutch actions meant the Muslims were “denied a 30% chance of avoiding abuse and execution”, and thus the Dutch state was liable for 30% of damages owed to families.

The supreme court agreed that “the state did act wrongfully in relation to the evacuation of the 5,000 refugees” in the compound, including 350 Muslim men the Bosnian Serbs were unaware of.

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It said the Dutch peacekeepers had “failed to offer these 350 male refugees the choice to stay where they were, even though that would have been possible”.

But explaining the decision to reduce the liability, the supreme court said: “The chance that the male refugees would have escaped the Bosnian Serbs had they been given the choice to stay was slim, but not negligible.”

In a swipe at the failure of other foreign powers to act, the top court added that the “chance of Dutchbat [the Dutch UN mission] receiving effective support from the international community was slim”.

Former Dutchbat soldiers attending the case said they were disappointed on behalf of the victims’ families. “I think the final judgment is a bit disappointing, especially when you see the court ruling of 30% and now it’s downgraded to 10%,” said Remko de Bruijne, a former Dutch blue helmet who served at Srebrenica.

Srebrenica has cast a long shadow over the Netherlands, forcing the government to resign in 2002 after a scathing report on the role of politicians in the failure of the peacekeepers.

The former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić is serving a life sentence in prison in The Hague after being convicted of genocide over Srebrenica and war crimes throughout the 1990s.