BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: Hopes of justice as Srebrenica buries more victims of 1995 massacre

Families of victims of the Srebrenica massacre buried 465 more victims on Wednesday (July 11), at an annual ceremony that has become the main event of their lives since the 1995 atrocity by Bosnian Serb forces. For the first time, the anniversary commemoration took place in an atmosphere of raised hopes that justice will be done and those responsible for the slaughter of some 8,000 Muslims 12 years ago this month will finally be prosecuted. The Bosnian Serb Army of General Ratko Mladic seized the former U.N. "safe zone" of Srebrenica in July 1995 and in the following days carried out what is considered Europe's worst war crime since World War Two. Hasiba Huremovic came to the ceremony, clutching a photo of her husband, five sons and one daughter -- all killed in the massacre. "But I feel most sorry for my children, I gave birth to them, they came from my flesh, I lost them all when Srebrenica fell, I saw it all happen in front of my eyes as evildoers chased this one (points at photo of one of her children). On Tuesday, the new Bosnian peace overseer Miroslav Lajcak moved to sack a senior Bosnian Serb police official and suspend 35 policemen believed to have taken part. Several senior Bosnian Serb army officers have been sentenced by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague for the Srebrenica massacre, and others are being tried in Bosnia. But top genocide suspects Mladic and his political boss Radovan Karadzic are still at large. "I'm working to get Karadzic and Mladic. I still hope that I'll get them by the end of my mandate in December," U.N. Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte told a group of Srebrenica mothers, who accused her of not doing enough to apprehend the two men. "It is not a promise, it is an obligation, and Serbia finally, finally takes its obligations and they will arrest the fugitives," said del Ponte. She has consistently accused Serbia of harbouring Mladic, and Belgrade admitted last year that he was indeed hiding in the capital until early 2006. The Dayton peace accords which ended Bosnia's 1992-95 war split the former Yugoslav republic into two parts, a Muslim-Croat federation and a Serb Republic. Srebrenica, 70 percent Muslim before the war, went to the Serbs. Muslims want self-rule for the town but the Serbs are opposed. No senior Bosnian Serb officials attended Wednesday's commemoration ceremony. "These innocent victims died because of a concept not worthy of a human," Bosnian presidency member Haris Silajdzic, a Muslim, told the gathering of thousands. In his last ruling before handing over to Lajcak this month, former peace envoy Christian Schwarz-Schilling put the memorial complex in Potocari near Srebrenica under Bosnian state protection. Srebrenica families said that was fine as far as it went, but complained that the same people who killed their relatives were still wearing the uniforms of the Bosnian Serb police and guarding the tombs of the victims.

ITN Source | July 11, 2007

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