Srebrenica

A ruling by the court in The Hague that held the Dutch State partly accountable for the death of around 300 Muslim men after the fall of Bosnian Muslim enclave Srebrenica in 1995, is unjust, the Advocate General said in advice to the Supreme Court.

The Yugoslavia Tribunal in The Hague found former Bosnian-Serb army leader Ratko Mladic guilty of committing genocide in Srebrenica. He was sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday, NU.nl reports

The tribunal held Mladic responsible for the mass slaughter of over 7 thousand Muslim boys and men around the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in 1995. He was also held responsible for the systematic shooting of civilians in Sarajevo and the failure to stop subordinates committing war crimes. 

The Dutch state is responsible for the death of at least 300 Muslim men at the fall of Srebrenica in July 1995, the court in The Hague ruled on Tuesday. The court ordered the State to pay 30 percent of damages claimed by the relatives of the killed men, ANP reports.

The court previously ruled tha the Dutch state can be held responsible, but both the state and the victims' relatives appealed.

In a new verbal attack, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan holds the Netherlands responsible for the mass murder of thousands of Muslim men in Srebrenica in 1995. "We know the Dutch from the Srebrenica massacre", he said in a speech that was televised live in Turkey, according to the Volkskrant. "We know how rotten their character is due to their murder of 8 thousand Bosnians there."

More than 100 Dutchbat III veterans reported to claim compensation from the Dutch government. According to them, they were sent on an "already impossible mission" when they were ordered to protect the inhabitants of Bosnian enclave Srebrenica in 1995

Minister Bert Koenders of Foreign Affairs is calling on the international community to increase pressure on Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. This is the only way that a genocide, like what happened in Rwanda and Srebrenica, can be avoided in the Syrian city of Aleppo, he wrote in an opinion piece published in British newspaper The Independent.

Flags are hanging at half-mast at the Ministry of Defense buildings in The Hague on Monday to commemorate the 21st anniversary of the fall of the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica. Today in 1995 Dutchbat III soldiers could not prevent the enclave falling and nearly 8,400 Muslim men and boys being killed by Serbs.

French journalist Florence Hartmann was arrested by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague last week. The conditions under which she is being detained, are being met with international disbelief. According to her lawyer, Hartmann is being kept in solitary confinement, with a light burning 24 hours per day and checked on every 15 minutes.

The Dutch Institute for War Documentation will be reexamining the fall of Srebrenica. The new investigation follows the Argos documentary on Srebrenica earlier this year, in which former Defense Minister Joris Voorhoeve stated that the Dutch UN soldiers did not get air support when the Bosnian Muslim enclave fell in 1995 because of a secret agreement between France, Britain and the United States.

Minister Bert Koenders of Foreign Affairs will attend and speak at the memorial for the 20th anniversary of Srebrenica in Potocari, Bosnia-Herzegovina on Saturday. This is the first time that a member of the Cabinet will actually give a speech at a Srebrenica memorial, though members of the Dutch government have attended these memorials before.

In the summer of 1995 Britain, France and the United States secretly decided to no longer carry out air strikes on Serb targets. If this had not happened, the fall of Srebrenica and the subsequent massacre may have been prevented.