Special Report: The Truth about Srebrenica 20 years later

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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 subsequence 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) manyhad 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 literallyeverybody, 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 reallyordered 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 Timisoara massacre: it never happened and the original figure of 4’630 “massacre victims” was later brought down to a much smaller but official 93. The real figure is probably even much lower (http://www.france24.com/en/20091220-twenty-years-later-timisoara-affair-exposes-media-credulity)

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:

• The truth about Srebrenica finally?
• Srebrenica: requiem for a propaganda fiction
• The Genocide Myth: Uses and Abuses of “Srebrenica”
• Saker interview with Nebojsa Malic aka “Grey Falcon”
• Response from a Bosnian Muslim
• Whose Bosnia is it anyways?
• Response to a Bosnian Muslim

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 aroundthe 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 nothappen – 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,” Politikadaily 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 origins. 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 knowof 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”[1] 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.”[2]

In her memoir[3] 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.”[4]

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.[5]

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”[6] 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.[7]

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.”[8] 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.”[9] 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.”[10] Despite his 28th Division’s responsibility for well-documented massacres of Serbian villagers,[11] 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.[12]

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.[13] 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.”[14] 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.”[15]

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.[16]

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.[17] 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.[18] 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.[19]

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”.[20]

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.[21]

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.”[22]

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.[23] We also know from testimony by Bosnian Army Commander Hadzihasanovic, that 3,175 soldiers[24] 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.[25]

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[26], who served as US Secretary of Defense during the Bosnian conflict, would observe to theNew 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.[27]

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.”[28]

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.”[29]

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.[30]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.”[31]

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.”[32]

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”[33]. 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[34] 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”[35] 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.”[36] 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[37] 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”[38] 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.”[39]

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.”[40]

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…”[41] 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.”[42] 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”.[43]

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[44] 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.[45]

As for DNA matches, there is no reliable basis for the ICMP number. We already know the ICMP used an inflated number (5,300) for missing soldiers from Srebrenica, because the 28th Division had only 5,500 members and according to both the High Command and Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, that more than 3,000 survived. News accounts of the ICMP identification process have raised questions about their methodology (particularly contamination) and skepticism about claimed breakthroughs in DNA technology.

Eight years after the end of the war, the ICMP began to greatly widen the search for bodies beyond the Srebrenica area to distant regions of Bosnia. They did so on the basis of a theory that the Bosnian Serbs had undertaken a vast cover-up exercise to hide massacres, reburying bodies in secondary and tertiary graves.  No compelling evidence to support this theory was ever made public – indeed, no mention of it had been made at all until several years after the wars ended. No suggestion that graves had been violated was made when Physicians for Human Rights carried out their investigations in the summer of 1996.

This drastic rewriting of the official chronology gained traction among ICTY officials, despite its implausibility. It would have been difficult, if not impossible for the Serbs to carry out such a major operation without it being noticed at the time (autumn 1995, when Bosnia was under satellite and drone surveillance, crawling with UN, OSCE, CIA, MI6 personnel).   And if the Serbs were desperate to cover up crimes and went to the trouble of excavating, moving and re-burying some 500 tonnes of human remains, why did they not remove the blindfolds and ligatures?

Most importantly, despite their claims, the ICMP has not shared the DNA evidence with the ICTY, much less the Karadzic defense. These results have never been subject to peer review. Yet, the Tribunal is expected to cite these claims in upcoming proceedings as justification for the inflated number of casualties used in the indictment of Karadzic, whose trial will take place this fall. While there is substantial evidence that Erdemovic repeatedly committed perjury in his testimony which sought to connect his small group of mercenaries on leave, with the Bosnian Serb High Command, there is little prospect that Karadzic will be found not guilty of charges, including genocide, in the ICTY indictments. The same judges who allowed Erdemovic’s incredible testimony to convict General Krstic to a forty five year sentence, are unlikely to reverse their course now.

Taking no chances, the ICTY transferred one of its most able senior prosecutors, Alan Tieger, from prosecuting the Croatian generals who carried out “Operation Storm,” to prosecuting the Srebrenica case against Radovan Karadzic. That move says a great deal about political priorities of the tribunal, because “Operation Storm” was a much larger attack that cleansed 200,000 ethnic Serbs in two large UN Protected Areas. Senior Canadian UN Commanders have testified that the Croatian Army, which was trained and supported by a private US military contractor MPRI, directly targeted civilians.

The Tribunal and its most important sponsor, the US government, are heavily invested in the outcome of the trial. The inflated numbers at Srebrenica, like the false stories of WMDs in Iraq, enabled the US and NATO to expand its military operations for the first time outside the original NATO mandate. In the early 90’s, there was palpable concern among US policy makers that, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO no longer had a mission as a defensive alliance. Senator Richard Lugar (R-In) used the slogan “Out of area, or out of business”[46] to trumpet his belief that a suitable cause for NATO intervention needed to found soon to validate a new mission for the military alliance. Srebrenica provided a pretext for a new role — out of area intervention, helping the US retain a dominant role in Europe and project its military power eastward.

There is no reason to dispute Richard Holbrooke’s description of the War Crimes Tribunal as “valuable tool” of big power politics. However, no close observer of the tribunal is likely to call it “independent” or “impartial.” Instead of functioning to promote truth and reconciliation, the blatant politics and institutional biases of the ICTY have heightened and prolonged the tensions between Serbs, Muslims, Croats and Albanians in what Balkan scholar Robert Hayden calls “war by other means.” Those seeking the truth about events at Srebrenica, will have to look elsewhere.

George Bogdanich: an independent American documentary producer, reporter, freelance journalist and editor, contributing member of Srebrenica Research Group.

Jonathan Rooper: formerly political editor at the BBC; now an independent journalist and video producer.

1. ANP English News Bulletin, July 27, 1995 ↑
2. Richard Holbrooke, “United Nations or Not?” BBC Radio 4, September 9, 2003,http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/un/transcripts/richard_holbrooke.shtml ↑
3. Madame Prosecutor: Confrontations With Humanity’s Worst Criminals and the Culture of Impunity by Carla Del Ponte with Chuck Sudetic, Random House
4. Martin Bell, “Karadzic Isn’t the Only One on Trial,” Guardian, October 26, 2009 ↑
5. Halilovic, Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic, April 5, 2001, p. 9471,http://www.un.ogr/icty/transe33/010405it.htm ↑
6. Bill Schiller, “Muslims’ hero vows he’ll fight to the last man,” Toronto Star, January 31, 1994. ↑
7. ibid. ↑
8. Philippe Morillon testimony from ICTY transcript Milosevic trial February 12, 2004 ↑
9. Milivoje Ivanisevic. “The Srebrenica ID Card” was first published in two installments on March 12 and 20,2007 in Glas Javnosti. ↑
10. Morillon testimony from ICTY transcript Milosevic trial February 12, 2004 ↑
11. Memorandum on War Crimes and Crimes and Genocide in Eastern Bosnia (Communes of Bratunac, Skelani and Srebrenica) Committed against the Serbian Population from April 1992 to April 1993 (A/48/177 – S/25835), May 24, 1993 submitted by Federal Republic Yugoslavia’sChargé d’affaires of at the United Nations ↑
12. James Risen and Doyle McManus, “Clinton Secretly OKed Iran’s Arms Shipments to Bosnia,” LosAngeles Times, April 5, 1996, Cees Wiebes, Intelligence and the War in Bosnia, 1992 – 1995(London: Lit Verlag, 2003), Chapter 4, Section 2, “Arms supplies to the ABiH: the Croatian Pipeline,” pp. 158-177 ↑
13. Halilovic, Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic, April 5, 2001, p. 9487,http://www.un.ogr/icty/transe33/010405it.htm ↑
14. Ripley, Operation Deliberate Force, p. 145. ↑
15. Dutch Government Report “Fall of Srebrenica” Part III, Chapter 6 (2002)http://srebrenica.brightside.nl/srebrenica/ ↑
16. Amnesty International July 1996 report on Srebrenica, “To Bury My Brother’s Bones” ↑
17. Germinal Civikov, Srebrenica: The Star Witness, p 40 of English translation from German by John Laughland, available from the Dutch based Srebrenica Historical Project ↑
18. Statement of ICTY available from the Dutch based Srebrenica Historical ProjectStatement of ICTY investigator Jean Rene Ruez, at November 19, 1996 hearing, provisional English translation, page 15 ↑
19. Germinal Civikov, Srebrenica: The Star Witness, p 9 of English translation from German by John Laughland, available from the Dutch based Srebrenica Historical Project ↑
20. Germinal Civikov, Srebrenica: The Star Witness, p 63 of English translation from German by John Laughland, available from the Dutch based Srebrenica Historical Project ↑
21. Ibid. p 67 ↑
22. Ibid p.73 ↑
23. Amnesty International July 1996 Report on Srebrenica, “To Bury My Brother’s Bones” ↑
24. Hadzihasanovic, Prosecutor vs. Krstic, April 6, p. 9532 ↑
25. Charles G. Boyd, “Making Peace with the Guilty,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 74, No. 50, September/October, 1995, pp. 22-23. ↑
26. William Perry , who was quoted in the New York Times February 27, 2008 was referring specifically to North Korea, though demonization of potential military adversaries is routinely used to gain public support for military intervention, as it was in the Bosnian Serbs.. ↑
27. Jonathan Rooper, Chapter 4 “The Numbers Game” http://www.srebrenica-report.com/numbers.htm ↑
28. Slobodna Bosna (Sarajevo), July 14, 1996, as posted to the Srpska Mreza website,http://www.srpska-mreza.com/Bosnia/Srebrenica/lamb.html ↑
29. Hajika Mehojlic, Interview, in Hasan Hadzic, “5,000 Muslim Lives for Military Intervention,” Dani ↑
30. Hakija Meholjic, Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic, April 5, 2001, p. 9480. Meholjic’s words, as recorded by the Dutch filmmaker, were translated to the Chamber while the videotape played.
31. Carlos Martins Branco, “Was Srebrenica a Hoax? Eye-Witness Account of a Former United Nations Military Observer in Bosnia,” 1998 ↑
32. Michael Evans, London Times, August 1, 1995 ↑
33. Bernard Kouchner in his Les Guerriers de la Paix, Paris, Grasset, 2004, pp.373-374 ↑
34. Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Annex II 1993 Report of Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on the situation of human rights in the territory of the former Yugoslavia ↑
35. BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, April 6, 1992 ↑
36. Ibid, July 9, 1995 ↑
37. Ewa Tabeau, ICTY demographer in July 24, 2008 memo to Peter McCloskey, Senior Trial Attorney↑
38. BBC Summary of World Broadcasts August 16, 1995 Izetbegovic says “Some 3,400 soldiers from the 28th Division which was stationed in Srebrenica managed to come out.” ↑
39. UN official Edward Joseph report to Tuzla UNPROFOR office, July 17, 1995 ↑
40. Amnesty International July 1996 Report on Srebrenica, “To Bury My Brother’s Bones” ↑
41. Richard Butler, par. 3.21 of his ICTY Report dated November 1, 2002, ERN number 03072366 ↑
42. Monitor, April 19, 2001; ERN number 06038344 ↑
43. Nesib Buric, statement to Sarajevo daily Dani, January 18, 1999 ↑
44. Lubisa Simic “Forensic Analysis of Srebrenica Post Mortem Reports” published by Dutch based Srebrenica Historial Project ↑
45. John Simpson, “Rose’s War,” Panorama, BBC1, January 23, 1995 ↑
46. 10 Richard G. Lugar, “NATO: Out of Area or Out of Business: A Call for U.S. Leadership to Revive and Redefine the Alliance,” remarks delivered to the Open Forum of the U.S. Department of State, August 2, 1993.

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Srebrenica Narrative Responsibly Challenged

by Stephen Karganovic

During the month leading up to the official observance of the 2oth anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, the prevailing atmosphere was one of heated controversy, not merely about the underlying facts of the event itself, but also the proposed (and ultimately vetoed by Russia) one-sided British UN Security Council resolution and the Swiss arrest, followed by “extradition” to Sarajevo, of Srebrenica warlord Naser Oric. In such political ambience, “Srebrenica Historical Project,” a Dutch-registered NGO dedicated to scholarly research of July 1995 events in Srebrenica and their contextual background, together with its partners, “Strategic Culture Foundation” from Moscow and “Genocide Museum” in Belgrade, conducted two important conferences focusing on various aspects of the Srebrenica issue.

The first conference took place on June 17 2015 at the Faculty of Political Science in Banja Luka, Republic of Srpska, and was sponsored by “Srebrenica Historical Project.” The second, on July 4 2015 in Belgrade, was held in cooperation with the two above named institutions.

The topic of the Banja Luka conference was “Can politically weaponized Srebrenica be turned into a peace-making tool?” Distinguished participants included Sheikh Imran Husein and Russian geopolitical scholar, Prof. Alexander Dugin. The thrust of the conference was to try to find ways to bridge the gap between the Muslim and Orthodox communities not just in Bosnia, but world-wide in the face of acute challenges to their common values.

Various participants shed light on issues such as the political abuse of the concept of “genocide” as a device for causing inter-communal rifts (Prof. Srdja Trifkovic), Drina River as a metaphorical dividing line between kindred communities in Bosnia and Serbia (Prof. Veljko Djuric), what evidence adduced at Hague Tribunal trials has demonstrated about what happened in Srebrenica (Mladic defense team attorney Miodrag Stojanovic), and whether a shared understanding of Srebrenica is possible for Bosnia’s Orthodox and Muslims (Dzevad Galijasevic).

The topic of the Belgrade conference was “Srebrenica 1995 – 2015: Facts, Dilemmas, Propaganda.” Topics covered were Srebrenica as a pretext for Western “humanitarian” interventions (Aleksandar Pavic), the crimes of the unprosecuted local warlord Naser Oric (Anna Filimonova), the questionable use of DNA evidence to buttress inflated execution figures (Jonathan Rooper), Bosnian Army column breakthrough from Srebrenica through Serb-held territory and its casualties (Milos Milojevic), Srebrenica “intelligence games” (Prof. Veljko Djuric), and evidence of special intent to commit genocide in July 1995 (Stephen Karganovic).

The general concept of both conferences was not to deny crimes, but to refer to available evidence in order to assess their true scope and to attempt to establish their proper legal characterization.

In the Final Document issued on July 4 2015 it was stated that, unfortunately, there exist two parallel versions of what occurred in Srebrenica in July 1995. One of them is promoted, and indeed often imposed, by interested geopolitical players as the “mainstream” account and has come to resemble a protected narrative, immune to empirical verification and rational criticism. The other approach is in the tradition of critical scholarship and proceeds from the premise that the right to open and good faith examination of historical facts and events is a paramount intellectual value.

After noting criticisms of the mainstream narrative, participants expressed their concern over the fact that the slogan of “preventing another Srebrenica” was little more than cover for rationalizing lethal and destructive wars of aggression waged mainly on uncooperative Muslim countries, resulting in over one million deaths (immensely more than the highest estimates for Srebrenica) and the destruction of entire societies. Participants severely reproached Great Britain’s failed resolution in the UN Security Council for inciting animosity between communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina and expressed their condolences to the survivors of all the victims of “humanitarian interventions” conducted since the turn of the century on the pretext of “preventing genocide”.

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Video of the address of Sheikh Imran Hussein to the Banja Luka Conference.

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Video of the address of Professor Alexander Dugin to the Banja Luka Conference:

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Video of an appeal to the Bosnian-Muslims by Sheikh Imran Hussein

Transcript:
Assalaamu ‘alaikum! In the same way that I have continuously denounced the Ottoman Gog and Magog Empire for their centuries-long oppression of the Orthodox Christians (on behalf of Dajjal the false Messiah), so too do I condemn the scandalous attack on the Serbian Prime Minister who courageously attended the ceremony in Srebrenica marking the 20th anniversary of the slaughter of thousands of Bosnian Muslim men and boys.   In the same way that I have apologized to our Orthodox Christian brothers and sisters for the disgraceful and manifestly sinful conversion of their premier Hagia Sophia Cathedral to a Masjid – to the eternal shame and disgrace of Muslims – so too do I apologize to the Serbian Prime Minister for what appears to have been a pre-planned attack on him. I hope that Serbian Orthodox Christians will not allow this disgraceful event to deter them from increasingly denouncing the unjust slaughter of thousands of Muslims in Srebrenica 20 years ago. Friendship and alliance between the worlds of Islam and Orthodox Christianity will take place Insha Allah, and none (NOT EVEN NATO) can prevent it. Hagia Sophia will be returned to you when the conquest of Constantinople prophesied by Nabi Muhammad (sallalahu ‘alaihi wa sallam) takes place, and none (NOT EVEN NATO) can prevent it..  with sadness, Imran N. Hosein

*******

Reconciliation – the Empire’s way

Lately on this blog, there were initiatives to encourage dialog between different factions, namely Muslim and Orthodox Christian population. A lot of history the two groups shared together, a lot of it tragic and very violent too. The first thing that comes to my mind are wars when the Ottoman Empire was expanding – with Byzantine, Bulgarian, Russian and Serbian Empires; all of them Orthodox Christian. That is my first association when someone mentions the topic of clash between the two. But there were some recent conflicts too. Not necessarily on purely religious basis, but it seems that this was one of the main ‘stumbling blocks’, a difference that helped in creating division. Or better said, a difference that was exploited the most when there were efforts on creating division. Those more recent conflicts were wars during the 90s in the Balkans, namely the Bosnian war. And this topic too, was lately popular on the blog, as a part of the reconciliation dialog between Islam and Orthodox Christianity. A noble and worthy effort, that is sure and if not one of the hardest!

Among other things, I often noticed statements similar to this: “It’s the West that pushed two sides toward the conflict” or “The war between Muslims and Orthodox Christians is exactly what the Anglo-Zionists want”.

I consider claims such as these to be absolutely true. There are countless examples of ‘third party’ involvement in these conflicts. Not only recently, but since the wars with Ottoman Empire that I mentioned in the beginning. When we analyze those historic events from centuries ago, and with all the information that is available now an ‘invisible guiding hand’ of the British Empire becomes obvious. Vatican had it’s role too in these conflicts. And fast forward to more recent history, we see involvement of US, British, Israeli and other secret services in sponsoring international terorrism. Again, the ‘invisible guiding hand’. Whether it’s the involvement of CIA in Chechen wars, Bosnia, or most recent ISIS, a mentor is always present. I will not go through history and analyze all these events, as that is not the topic I want to write in this. Anyone interested in these things should do his/her homework and try and find the invisible guiding hand.

Before getting to the main topic, I will make another small digression. About truth and how I see the truth as a concept and as a right.

Truth, together with freedom is perhaps the most expensive thing in the world. Priceless. And although I believe in universal truth, that is the one we will see most rarely, almost never. What is the truth we will most often see? It is the truth of the victor. For justice it is the same. In this imperfect world you will get justice if you have power and influence to back it. Those that are powerless rarely see justice. In the same manner they will get their share of truth too. Wether it’s the weapons of mass destruction that needed to be captured, a dictator brought to justice because of use of Sarin gas on his own people, or it is the global anti-terorr campaign to catch those that are responsible for the attack on World Trade Center – there are many truths. The universal truth is out of reach again. The truth of the powerful, however, is there for everyone to hear. But human beings (still) have their own free will and right to independent thinking, and therefore the truth of the powerful is not the last thing for them.

We are living in the time of a global Empire. The most powerful in the (known) history – a thing people should have in mind. And therefore, it is the Empire’s truth that is most readily available and we will hear it the most.

And finally, if you love truth and justice and hold them dear – never loose a war!

Now back to the track. As I said, there is initiative to bring Orthodox and Islamic world closer together, and a discussion on Balkans as a part of a larger, global initiative for dialog. Now, it is important to know that there also exists something opposite of that. An initiative to divide the two and pit them against each other. It would be very naive to think that the guiding hand that was present throughout such long history, is now asleep. Of course it isn’t, in fact, it is working overtime on creating new divisions among the two mentioned factions. It is easier to spot it when you look back on the past events, as you are looking through the lenses that contain all the information that was collected since then to this day. You are looking at past with the intellect of the present.

With the crisis in Greece taking the spotlight these days and Ukraine, Syria, USA – China/Russia relations following closely it is no wonder that this event is passing almost unnoticed.

Now I will try to deconstruct for you the work of the guiding hand as it is happening now. It touches upon both the Muslim – Orthodox relations and the war in Bosnia, and therefore I think it will be interesting to those that worked on these initiatives/projects.

I will not, like others, go in detail and give presentation of events as they were unfolding and a historical background to those events. I will leave it to others, as, if I understood right, we will see the conflict from the perspectives of the members of all ‘conflicting parties’, Croat, Bosniak and Serbian. And it is only right to do it that way.

These last few days the entire machinery of the Empire is working in full capacity to bring us, twenty years after the conflict, the Resolution on Bosnia in the Security Council of the United Nations. The main reasons, they say, is to bring people together, honour the victims and make reconciliation possible. The main initiator? Great Britain. After first hearing about this just a while back, I paid additional attention to this process. They are naming a noble goal, but with some knowledge of the past, I was little skeptical from the start.

The British Empire was one of the main architects of the conflicts between Islam and Orthodox Christianity in the past. So, it is not surprising to me at all that they have the leading role in this today. And when the Ottoman Empire started crumbling and it’s power and influence in the Balkans started to fade it was the British who tried the hardest to prevent the re-emergance of the independent Serbian state. Even Napoleon sent troops and resources to help squash the Serbian uprising. It was the little man rising up against a huge Empire – a concept they are still afraid of today.

But back to the Resolution – not only that the ‘reconciliation’ was not the goal, but the goal is the exact opposite. There are various reasons that the British (with close support of USA and EU) are pushing the Resolution and reconciliation is not among them. Reconciliation in this case is the only thing that is not allowed.

Like I said, the British have enormous experience it this, and they show their expertise today as they made such a Resolution that if it pass – it will create new division and conflict. And if it doesn’t pass – it will again create it regardless.

The Resolution

First, let’s look at some of the main points of the resolution and how it went in the Security Council.

(Some of these clauses were a subject to change several times as there were seven versions in total). It is also worth noting that they didn’t make all versions of the draft available for the public and therefore all that was available were the excerpts that the journalists were able to get from the spot and difference is notable between reports in the different media outlets.

Pieced together from various media reports on this ( 1 ) ( 2 ) ( 3 ), some of the main points of the Resolution are:

– in the strongest sense condemning the genocide in Srebrenica perpertraited by Serbs in which over 8000 bosnian man and boys were killed.

– assumes that accepting the tragic events in Srebrenica as genocide is a prerequisite for reconciliation

– condemning a denial of said genocide and pointing out that continous denial is hurting the victims

– calling for the member states (of the UN) to include the Srebrenica genocide and war crimes into education material to prevent the posibility of such things reoccuring

– the first version of resolution also contained condemnation of rape of tens of thousands women, men and boys, including in Srebrenica. British then took this out in Second version

– marking 11th of July as a day of remembrence of Srebrenica genocide

– and finally it says recognizing that there were innocent victims on all sides during the conflict

(There were supposedly 12 introductory points plus 16 main, and the text of Resolution was changed seven times, but these points in one formulation or other remained. They also didn’t make a draft public on the official site of the UN, leaving room for media speculation and conflicting reports.)

All in all it mentions word genocide 35 times, and reconciliation 3 times. This was in later versions reduced to 26 times.

There were also speculations about involvement of Sanela Jenkins in drafting a Resolution.

Now as soon as seeing this, Russian members in the Security Council evaluated that such one sided Resolution would only serve to make additional division in the region. They suggested changes in the Resolution to make it more neutral and acceptable to all the parties that were involved in the conflict. So, over the course of several days the Resolution has seen several incarnations. British, however still insisted that the points above stay in, and right before voting on June 7th they offered the version six that was actually more ‘severe’ than previous versions. This led to a delay of the vote as suggested by the Chinese and the whole process was moved for July 8th. Russians then in turn offered their own version of the Resolution, condemning war crimes on both sides and honouring all victims and challenging Srebrenica massacre classification as genocide.

 This version of Resolution was categorically refused by the original initiators. They pushed for voting on their version and Russia used the veto right, with 4 members abstaining from vote. 10 of the members voted for.

Russian diplomats again explained that they don’t see how having victims of one side in higher regard than the others would help in reconciliation. They also noted that some crimes perpertrated by Serbian side are named in detail and condemned, but no such thing was done for the other side. They said that the Resolution was politicaly motivated, unbalanced and ruinous for reconciliation efforts in the region. They noted that all the blame was put on the Serbian side, regardless of the fact that the Serbs too were victims in this conflict. Russian Foreign Ministry also gave a public notice pointing this out.

They also repeated that all those responsible for Srebrenica and all other war crimes must be brought to justice and offered condolences to the families, adding that the mutual understanding between people is the best guarantee of peace.

Now, something that was seen in almost every media that ran the story and the commentaries of those that presented the resolution in the UN, was that the genocide is ‘undeniable legal fact’. Why a phrase ‘legal fact’? Because the International Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia aka The Hague Tribunal convicted several memmbers of the Army of Republic of Srpska and some paramilitary as well, on the charges of genocide. Now, the Hague and the Resolution have a lot in common, for example, both were made by the same people. And both are political tools.

Taking a quick look at the work done there so far, we will see that:

– of the total number of verdicts in the Hague, over 90% of sentences were for Serbs,

– for crimes agains Serbs in Croatia, no Croat was convicted, however for crimes against the Croats, 26 Serbs were convicted on total of 429,5 years

– in Tribunal over 60 Serbs were convicted to total of 1.112,5 years

– out of all court sentences for crimes in Bosnia, 7,9% of sentences are for crimes against Serbian population

– Bosniaks got total of 123 years for crimes against Serbian population ( 1 ) ( 2 ) ( 3 ) ( 4 ) (5)

If I am to call the Serbs heretics to the ‘New World Order’, then the Hague would be the ‘Spanish Inquisition’. Now, not to get me wrong, there are war criminals who broke Geneva Conventions and did crimes on civilian population and prisoners of war and are fully deserving to be there. But the problem is the same bias as with all the justice that came from the NATO courts and Parliaments. By doing half of work, it is nothing but a cangaroo court. Many law expets around the world consider it just as a political tool and something that will put a legal stamp on Empire’s interventionism and imperialism.

Other then the mentioned ‘legal fact phrase’, every report on this Resolution in the media and in the Resolution contains these:

– they were in the UN safe area /UN protected zone. That in fact is true, but only up to a point. It fails, however, to explain how did the armed Bosniak forces use UN protected area as a base of operations, without repercussions form the UN? It is worth noting that several UN officers gave testimonies confirming this.

– there were 8000 people execute there – I will give a short info on this below in the article and how the number of victims was established.

*after the UN vote, both European Parliament and US Senate adopted their own versions of the Resolution.

The Genocide - or - Who denies what

Now let’s take a few moments to look back at the killings that took place in the area of Srebrenica. While no one is trying to deny the atrocities committed there, the stumbling block appears to be classification of that crime as a genocide. With some also disputing a number of people killed and the way they died.

*I will touch upon several topics that deserve to be a main theme for a separate writing, and I will thus advise a reader to do a fact checking on his or her own. This would turn into a book or several books if every event mentioned is to be analyzed as a part of this short essay. I will in most cases give some directions/hints as to where to look for it.

**another sort of ‘disclaimer’ is needed here before proceeding onward. I believe that every person, regardless of religious background (or if a person is religious at all) must condemn all and any killing of an innocent victim regardless of who that is. This is something far more basic than any religious principles, it is a principle of any moral person. Also, no innocent life weights more than some other innocent life. This is, I believe, obvious to majority, but still important to point out when there is talk on topics such as these.

***honoring the victims and at the same time using them for political games is worse than not giving any recognition to the dead. Politicizing the dead while claiming to fight for their families is probably even more insulting to those families.

****using double standards and hypocrisy and at the same time claiming that you are making an effort towards reconciliation is totally counterproductive. Especially among the so called ‘International community’.

It is important when using word genocide as a legal cathegory, to take these things into consideration too:

– Firstly, there must be a clear intention and plan of destroying an entire population belonging to (usually one) ethinc group. An extermination campaign supported by state and under clear directions. This, in the case of Bosnian war didn’t exist.

– Secondly, destruction of entire population must include women, especially young, pregnant and fertile women and children too. Looking back at Rwanda, Armenian genocide, Holocaust, as well as NDH, you can clearly notice an intention and planned massacre of all members of one or more ethnicities. Again, no such thing happened in Srebrenica. Women and children were evacuated to Muslim controlled Tuzla.

– The number of victims is not a cathegory in definig genocide. Meaning there is not a certain number of bodies after which the massacre is called genocide. Example, if somewhere lives a relatively small tribe (let’s say somewhere in Amazon) with two thousand members or less. And if someone kills 1500, can this be called a genocide? I certainly guess so. So the number itself is important to victims and to those who lost their loved ones but not in defining a genocide as a legal category.

I will here outline why I think that calling Srebrenica a genocide is dishonest at the least:

*again, a disclaimer – note the diference between disputing if there was a genocide and if there were killings. I won’t respond to claims such as: “Oh, so now you say that no one was killed there?!” That, of course is not the case. Dead bodies are real and the grievance of families is real.

– official narrative today is that around seven to eight thousand persons were executed, mostly by firing squads. The forensic reports that were part of the official evidence material presented during the processes in the Hague didn’t support this claims. Dr Lubisa Simic explains this in more detail here .

And analisys in the book “Deconstruction of a virtual Genocide” here: ( 1 ) (  2) ( 3 )

English version – here ,

– about the DNA method used in investigation, and shortcomings and manipulation of thereof – here .

– Many more info in this site here , also with publications in English.

– Srebrenica Massacre – Evidence, Context, Politics – here .

– in the number of victims that was presented in Resolution, they included those killed during the breakthrough of the armed column. Acording to various sources, the number of those killed during fire exchange in breaktrough is between 2000 and 4000. In the war that is still curently playing out in Ukraine, we’ve seen the consequences of such manouvers. However, Ukrainian MoD still didn’t confirm the official number of killed in Debalcevo (in fact the number of killed during the whole war is still a taboo), but it could be thousands from just that one encirclement. But whatever the case is – those were not casualties of the war crime, but a regular military operation.


 There were even witnesses on the Bosniak side that gave testimonies about clash between different groups of Army of BiH. As breakthrough and movements outside were done mostly during the nightime, they came under friendly fire on few occasions. It is claimed that 500 – 1000 lost their lives by Bosniak forces themselves. We’ve also seen that in the mentioned Ukr conflict. But in the case of Srebrenica, they were burried together at the cementary/memorial for genocide. Testimonies of Admir Jusufovic, Adil Mehmedovic, AdmirHasan, Vejz Hasanovic, Ragib Beganovic, Sabaduhin Gutic among others confirmed the deaths during a breakthrough.

– also, forming an independent international comission to do an investigation was not allowed. Serbian side asked for this to be done, as well as Russians on few occasions.

Here, I would like add to the subject of hypocrisy and one sided view of things. (as I mentioned in the passage with **** above). Since all this started about ten days ago I kept seeing stuff like this:

– an official notice about Srebrenica from “Foreign & Comonwelth Office”. There, below the notice you can see:

Now, following the link for a petition to free a ‘hero’, you will see a lot of praise for an innocent hero, persecuted by fascist Serbian government. I am not aware of how many of petitions and initiatives were made, but that is unimportant here – he was freed very shortly, so the petitions reached just a thousand and something. He would probably be freed regardless, as those same Swiss authorities by the order of NATO persecute those that publish info on Srebrenica that mentiones the work of Oric and men under his command.

This, as expected, is in full accordance with the Resolution and the MSM reports on the Srebrenica. And yet, those same men in the area that are constantly proclaimed as fully innocent massacred over 3200 Serbs in the area of Srebrenica, Zvornik, Bratunac, Vlasenica and area of Podrinje. Naser and his men chose their dates carefully while attacking villages and towns in the area, they made the worst masssacres on Christian holidays: Orthodox Christmas and New Year, Saint George’s Day, St. Vitus Day, Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul. ( 1 )

Here is link to some of the evidence material from those scenes.

**** WARNING – Extemely graphic images **** younger than 16 and those with sensitive health condition to skip this ! Some of the videos from the scenes GRAPHIC ( 1 ) ( 2 ) ( 3 )

Why did I post this? As to give you an example of the heroics that those hypocrites write about. And to remind that none of these massacres are mentioned anywhere in the Resolution or in the media reports. As if it never happened. Also, the owerwhelming majority of these were civilians found on their properties, during the sacking of some 50 vilages and small towns. Attackers didn’t ‘discriminate’ between the young and old, man and woman.

For the killings of 3.267 Serbs in the area of Podrinje, where most of the victims were women, old, and children, no one answered for nor there is currently any proces in the court up to this day.

* again, I point out, these victims don’t give any justification for the innocent Bosniak victims that were killed. So, I would ask in advance not to throw wild accusations like: “So, now you are telling that they were right to kill the civilians form the other side?” Of course not. And these kind of ‘manouvers’ in the discussion are called ‘straw man fallacy’ (giving counteragruments to things that were never said).

Those that made a Resolution know very well about these crimes, as most of them were present at the time when this happened, and some even worked as journalists, as you will see later.

It is also important to notice an enourmous pressure on people who published works on Srebrenica that were not in accordance with the official version of the events. Some of the cases below:

– an example of Alexander Dorin . He was kidnapped around June 20th this year from his apartmant in Switzerland. He published several books that challenge the official narrative on Srebrenica. His works gained international recognition, but that also lead to the threats on his life on a regular basis. His apartment was literary torn appart, with floor and wooden door frames also demolished. All materials were confiscated. Swiss authorities refused to comment on this. Only a couple days ago they finally said that he was arrested, on asumption of marihuana trade (!). However, his friends are still unsure of the whole situation, or even if he is alive, as they didn’t get a chance to get in direct contact with him or talk.

– Zoran Jovanovic, a co-author of Dorin’s last book published in 2012. “Srebrenica – how it hapened” claimed that he aquired video eveidence of some of the massacres that challenge the oficial narrative,died immediatley afterward on July 12th 2013. In one phoce call he said he’s going to meet with a contact he found that was willing to sell him video material from Srebrenica. Shortly afterward he phoned and said he made acquisition with possibility to get more and that he’s on his way back to Vlasenica. In less than 10 hours he was dead. It is said that the cause of death was heart attack, but no autopsy was done. No evidence or video material was found on him. An ironic thing is that he once said, ‘this thing about Srebrenica will cost me my head.’

– Ibran Mustafic one of the Bosniaks that survived the war in Srebrenica was also subject to threats and severe beating that led to him being hospitalised. He wrote the book on those events called: “The planned chaos”

- cases where Stephen Karganovic, col. Ratko Skrbic and others had their press conferences banned in various countries on insisting by warious NGOs that were behind most of publicizing of the genocide of Srebrenica.

The Peace makers - or - Hipocrisy as a way of life and double standards as a rule

The picture is incomplete until we look at who is the pusher behind this project. So, let’s have a look at the people involved in this.

– Although, the British diplomats presented this to UNSC, it was the USA’s Samantha Power who was the loudest one at the meeting. She already showed herself as a world class hypocrite during the Ukrainian crisis and fits perfectly with the rest of the US Dream team – Jen Psaky, Marie Harf, Condolisa Rice and others.

Just recently, RI had a piece featuring her performance in the US senate, and on Consortium News . And she’s the autor of this book , which “grew out of a paper she wrote while attending law school” (according to wiki page that quotes : J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project winners”. Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard)

She is one of the key figures to defend the official narrative of the Empire in regards to the interventionism and ‘humaniarian missions’. But there is more; this Resolution is almost like a crown to her lifetime project. She started her career in the Bosnian war as a journalist. Also read this:http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/05/books/mission-shine-spotlight-genocide-samantha-power-s-mind-leaps-bosnia-iraq.html

”Our view of American power was born” in Bosnia, said Ms. Power – need I say more?

I still wait for her book “Fake humanitarian missions as an excuse for American Interventionism and Global Domination”.

She also served as an advisor to President Obama during his campaign for presedency. Obama, who during his terms bombed 7 Muslim countries. She was also one of the loudest to push for intervention in Lybia, great job they did there.

After Resolution was vetoed she said: “In USA, we know that when someone denies the Holocaust that he is crazy, it is the same with this”. Although she failed to explain how is this same as holocaust?

Her husband is one of the hunters on ‘conspiracy theorists’, as they undermine the United States’ fight against global terorrism. From his book:

“We can readily imagine a series of possible responses. (1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing. (2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories. (3) Government might itself engage in counterspeech, marshaling arguments to discredit conspiracy theories. (4) Government might formally hire credible private parties to engage in counterspeech. (5) Government might engage in informal communication with such parties, encouraging them to help.” However, the authors advocate that each “instrument has a distinctive set of potential effects, or costs and benefits, and each will have a place under imaginable conditions. However, our main policy idea is that government should engage in cognitive infiltration of the groups that produce conspiracy theories, which involves a mix of (3), (4) and (5).”

– David Cameron – not much to say here, he is known far and wide as a promoter of world peace, right?

– Prince Zeid al-Hussein – Jordanian representative in the UN and also UN high commissioner for human rights, also expressed dissapointment over failure to pass a resolution.

He was also in Bosnia around ’95 as a political officer in UNPROFOR (a UN peacekeeping force in Bosnia). He once said that he saw a Bosnian Serb driving a car decorated with the heads of the children and pulled right next to him. His words were the only evidence of this. However, he failed to see some other things during his time in UMPROFOR, like these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5hk7zV3Yok

– Peter Wilson, an ambassador in the UN representing UK – said after the Russian veto: “Russia will have to justify its decision to the families of over 8,000 people murdered in the worst atrocity in Europe since the Second World War.”

Well, perhaps you should justify why there is not resolution for more than million dead Armenians, or resolutions on illegal agressions by NATO all over the world, in all of which Britain took part. He added that Russia “sided with those who are trying to prevent reconciliation”.

Now something about the people who pushed this in the media and who will be one of the main delegates in the 20th commemoration.

– Bill Clinton – self explanatory

– Madelene Albright – Another peace maker with a heart of gold. Spoken here like a true angel. I wonder if she will go to comemorate those Iraqi children too?

A few years back, she had a reality check during one of her book signing events in Czech Republic. A group Czechs came to the event to bring her pictures of dead Serbian children that were killed during the ’99 bombing by NATO. Asked her “What’s wrong, don’t you want to sign this too?” and calling her a “blood soaked war criminal”. Madelene was one of the biggest backers of the bombing campaign, which led to the name “Madelene’s War”. Thinking that those were the evil Serbs coming to haunt her, she yelled: “GET OUT! Disgusting Serbs!”

She together with Bill, presented US delegation. It is said that the murderers always come back to the crime scene.

– Angelina Jolie – another ‘poster child’ for American Interventionism.

– Hasim Thaci – also known as “Snake” from his days in the KLA terrorist organisation. On the left in this picture.

Served as a Prime Minister of Kosovo two terms and now and a Foreign Affairs Minister. It is very ironic that this man is coming to attend a comemoration of the victims of warcrimes, while at the same time using his influence and lobbying to prevent a formation of tribunal for the war crimes commited by KLA.

– Ahmet Davutoglu – represented Turkey and also insisted on calling it genocide. The same Davutoglu that just some two months ago slammed European Union and Pope and Russia for using a word genocide to describe massacre of over million Armenians. Belongs with the rest of the hypocrites.

The real WHY

And although the real goals of this move by British and other western political elites is now much more clear, let’s get into more detail on how they plan to use it.

- Genocide as an impregnable wall between the two peoples

Whenever someone starts the dialog between the Bosniak and Serbian people, they will choke on the word genocide. The British insisted on making such a Resolution that will be unacceptable to the Serbian people (as I listed those reasons above). This will now serve as a fuel to those that profit on creating inter ethnic tensions. Those that win elections on nationalistic demagogy. They will now insist that no peace can be with ‘genocide deniers’. For dialog, love and reconciliation it always takes two, for hate one is enough. And as hate breeds hate, you only need to start with one argument based on it. The snowball efect will assure, if you nurture it. This will inevitably bring into discussion all the past crimes and conflicts, from WW2, WW1, and all the way back to Middle Ages and Turks and back.

Now everyhting can be focused on that ‘line of separation’ created as a sum of all past conflicts. This served to bolden that line to never fade. Now people will show to Resolution and say ‘here, you refused to acknowledge the genocide you made on Muslim population’, but the other side will say ‘that Resolution doesn’t mention the slaugher of Christian population, while the creators of it will gloat over those that fight between themselves.

I heard one of the mothers of those that died say “Mothers on both sides reconciled a long time ago.”

- Radicalisation of muslims

Similar as with previous paragraph, Srebrenica and the war in Bosnia general, can serve to radicalize Muslims. Not just in the Balkans, but worldwide. When presented as the sole victims of the war, it will leave long lasting greviances. There are generations already that grew up on this, and they are now 100% convinced that no one on their side did anything bad. And they have a lot of proof to back it up. Like the stories that western media ran about it and still does so, and now this Resolution as de facto ‘proof’ that the sole culprit now even refuses to admit the deeds. I’ve heard people saying, I’m proud that we Muslims never killed a civilian during the war. Young people that weren’t even around during the war say these things. Victims of war are used as a fuel for radicalization. And those who do that, do it purposely, as they are eager for next conflict, for the profits and benefits that it will bring to them.

- As a tool for ending the Republic of Srpska

After declaring that genocide was made during the war, they will insist that the Republika Srpska was made on genocide. This kind of rethoric was heard before and will now just gain more traction. Bosnia and Hertzegovina as it is now, can not become a part of NATO and EU without consent of the Serbs in it. Croatian and Bosniak entities are for cooperation and integration into Alliance and EU, and the Serbian entity in BiH can ‘veto’ it with the authority given to it by Dayton Agreement. This is why the western politicians, especially British, US and German are working to reppel it. To null the previous deal on the claims that Serbs are leading a retrograde politics that doesn’t allow the region and BiH as a country to prosper. They also use this excuse for everything bad that happened in the country that they themselves wrecked.

- NATO’s alibi

This Resolution is the NATO’s alibi for all it has done in the area of former Yugoslavia. NATO conducted illegal bombing campaigns against Serbs and as a pretext they used the prevention of genocide and ethnic cleansing. They circumvented this same UN Security Council they now use to justify their actions. Several years later, when bombing of Serbia started on March 24th ’99 a phrase was repeated that they won’t allow ‘another Srebrenica’ to occur. This is how we got the first ‘humanitarian bombing campaign’ in history. That humanitarian campaign that left the country contaminated with over 15 tons of depleted uranium. This led to rapid increase in cancer cases, with the number of new cases every year increasing by 2,5%. It is approximated that 7000 – 9000 people die every year from the consequences of bombing. Monetary damage from destruction of infrastructure and industry is between 100 and 200 billion dollars. However, damage from human casulties can’t be measured, as contamination will keep killing people virtually forever. A question of repaying for the damage done still looms in the air when NATO is mentioned. However, if those that were bombed are genocidal nation, then you need not worry about it.

About a week after the Srebrenica massacre the Operation ‘Storm’ was carried out, in which some 250 000 Serbs were forced out of their homes, with around 2000 killed, many victims being women and children. However the reports of this were very obsure and biased and usually they mentioned them together with the news about the massacres in Srebrenica.

This can also serve as any future alibi for involvement in Serbia. With the current geopolitical situation in the world and Serbia’s stance on NATO unchanged they just wait for an excuse to ‘bring peace and order’ again.

- To ‘spill out’ the effects of division between religions that exists here

Knowing that Serbia will ask for help from Russia on the matter, and that Russia was the only country that can block such a Resolution, it can be exploited on a bigger scale.

The media already started work on this. A week before the talks of Resolution in a ‘mysterious’ way, pictures of president Putin appeared all over the Srebrenica . Now when seeing how western media portrays Russian veto, it becomes more clear. Headlines and statements like : Russia sides with genocide deniers, etc .

I have no doubt that they will continue to exploit this and present it as ‘Orthodox Christians supporting genocide of Muslims’. And serving stories like ‘look how Russia treats you and your victims’ etc.

- Appeasement of Muslims world wide

“Look how we care and fight for you and your rights” (while at the same time bomb several Muslim countries). Now when confronted with criticizm of their policy in the Middle East and towards Israel, they can just pull this out and say, ‘we were the only ones to fight for condemnation of genocide of Muslims, but Russia, China and others didn’t care’. The Empire needs every possible piece of evidence that they in fact support and care for Muslim population as their drones fly high above.

– western propagandists like to use a concept of ‘black and white’ when explaining to the sheeple the situation in the conflict zones they are involved (or plan to get involved). Then, of course, they will enter on the side of the ‘good guys’ against the ‘bad guys’ with the US as the ‘ultimate good guy’ being the patron and representative of those good guys. Just a while ago we’ve seen how they were trying to force that concept into the Syrian conflict too. And although they tried to represent the ‘moderate rebels’ as the purely good and oppressed peole that fight for their freedom against a killer dictator, they had a major trouble at it as now the cameras and mobile phones are present in every battlefield. And so we had an interesting attempt to try and ‘soften’ the image of a ‘moderate rebel’ cutting out the heart of dead enemy and eating it in front of the camera.

The Resolution is another attempt at stamping ‘bad guy’ on the forehead of every Serbian. That way, when they are killing Serbians, they aren’t killing people, but genocidal beasts. It also helps their concience (at least of those that watch the news, as their politicians have no concience)

Serbia, as seen by many westerners as ‘little Russia’ must at all cost remain a bad guy. You can notice the same treatment in the media now that Russia gets and the treatment that Serbia got during the Balkan conflicts. But thanks to the widely available Interned today, now they are having much worse results.

- Serves as a moral high ground

This is the foundation, the base of the projected image of the Empire. They love to act from the ‘position of moral high ground’. This toghether with phrases, ‘bringing democracy’, ‘peace, stability’ and others, forms the imperial exceptionalism. They can always brag to the world that they figh for justice, peace etc. Kills 500.000 children – it was to prevent a dictator from killing those children and more. Drops nuclear bombs on cities with notable civilian population – it was to end the war, and so on. Now they have another ‘certificate of kindness’ in the form of this Resolution.

- To take your attention away from all the real genocides they have commited

Now, it is not an accident that those were the British presenting such document. Just thinking for a few seconds about the history of their conflicts these came to mind: from North America, over Ireland and all the way to Middle East and India, Vietnam and Australia, and then to Africa. All those were places where those same hypocrites from western Europe massacred people in thousands and millions. The genocide is their child, born in the cultured Albion and matured all over the world where Albion went.

- in US military doctrine now stands that they can react to breaking of human rights and intervene wherever they decide it is necessary. We will certainly see more of these ‘humanitarian interventions’ in the future. This ‘Knight in shining armour’ doctrine is fully endorsed by the likes of Samantha Power. And if you point out the double standards in their approach as well as the hidden agenda behing it, her husband will probably call you a conspiracy theorist.

When the Russian delegation blocked this Resolution, after the meeting the French ambassador said that veto right should be taken away from Russia, at least when war crimes are involved. This of course would be perfect – the Inquisition will then declare ‘undesirable’ anyone they want and proceed to enforce the sentence. Unfortunately, they tricked Russia once like this and used the decision for a no-fly zone to bomb and desroy one of the most prosperous countries in all of Africa. Now it would be best to get rid of both Russia and China from Security Council, and then the work on ‘improving the world’ can finally start.

The Reconciliation

If we leave it to those people that I mentioned above and the main stream media to reconcile us, then God help us all. They had a good reason for keeping this area in the state of frozen conflict, and now they want to cash in on their frozen goods.

The victims of war crimes on both sides must not be used to breed hatred and future conflict, but to guide us to future peace and understanding. There is a lot of flammable rethoric going back and forth now when the old wounds have been oppened. Some would like us to remember only the bad things and conflicts from the history of the two peoples, to make everybody believe that that is the only way it can ever be. I’ve come to notice that the richer those politicians get, the sharper their rethoric becomes. The same goes with western paid propagandists and NGOs that work under the banner of peace. People like Samantha Power and Peter Wilson hold the words ‘reconciliation’ and ‘peace’ in front of themselves like a shield while they charge forward. But we must not allow them to do all the discussion – the dialog must be between the people, and not between some Soros paid representatives in the NGOs or foreign embassies or anyone else that comes from outside to teach peoples of Balkan how to get along. They are first and foremost acting in the interests of their own countries and will push the agenda that fits those that fund them.

Various incidents and provocations will be created and exploited by the politicians on both sides, they will spew flammable rethoric and be the first ones to leave the country when the war starts. Common people will be left afterwards to live with all the concequences of conflict and the western ‘moral giants’ will once again gloat over the sight and come to act as the mediators and call for civilised dialog and reconciliation (until they need more cannon fodder for the next opportunity).

So, look to your first neighbours, with whom you share the land you live on. Those are the people with whom you should have the dialog about reconciliation.