The Dutch court affirmed that Bosnian Serb paramilitary units bore the main responsibility for the massacre, but agreed with the plaintiffs that the Dutch peacekeeping battalion operating under the aegis of the United Nations, known as Dutchbat, could and should have done more to protect the 350 men.

“All arguments weighed against each other, the court puts the chance that the men would have escaped inhumane treatment and execution by the Bosnian Serbs if they could have stayed at the United Nations compound at 30 percent,” the ruling, by the Dutch Court of Appeal in The Hague, stated. By not giving the men the choice to stay, “the Dutch state deprived them of this possibility.”

The ruling, presented in court by the presiding judge, Gepke Dulek-Schermers, found that the Dutch soldiers “knew or should have known that the men were not only being screened” for their religion and ethnicity, “but were in real danger of being subjected to torture or execution.”

Simon van der Sluijs, a lawyer for the Mothers of Srebrenica, an advocacy group for the families of about 6,000 victims, which brought the lawsuit, said the plaintiffs were disappointed by the reasoning of the judges.

“It’s rather mysterious how they arrived at 30 percent,” he said. “That’s based on a number of uncertainties: Were the Bosnian Serbs prepared to use violence against the compound? If they had used violence, would the people in the compound have survived?”