The truth about Srebrenica finally?

With the recent postponement of the trial of Ratko Mladic in the Hague I have been looking around the Internet to see if any new interesting documents about the so-called "Srebrenica genocide" had come out and I came across a most remarkable documentary which has been online since 2011 but which I only noticed today.  It is a truly remarkable piece of investigation which I urge everybody to watch and download (just in case it it pulled by YouTube).

As some of you know, during the war in Bosnia I had daily access to confidential UNPROFOR information about what was really going on in Bosnia and I would like to say the following about this documentary:

I can confirm many, though not all, of the facts presented here and all those which I cannot confirm are fully consistent with what I know.  In fact, this report is, by far, the best I have ever seen on this topic.

The parts which I cannot confirm are the negotiations and discussions happening inside the Muslim Bosnian military and political leadership.  The part which I can fully confirm is the chronology and details of the Bosnian-Serb entry into Srebrenica and the nature and circumstances of the killing of Bosnian-Muslims by Bosnian-Serb forces.  The figures given in the movie are exactly the ones I am aware of.

I would like to add three elements which are not mentioned in the movie:

a) The Dutch UNPROFOR battalion commander and the UN Secretary-General's Personal Representative Yasushi Akashi made *numerous* request for NATO airpower to stop the Bosnian-Serb forces from entering Srebrenica and all those request were denied by the NATO political leadership.

b) Not all the 5'000+ Bosnian-Muslim solider of the Oric Infantry Brigade (aka " ABiH 2nd Corps 28th Mountain Division") was killed by Bosnian-Serb forces.  Many made it through the mountains and arrived in refugee camps in Tuzla and other cities.

c) Some Bosnian-Muslim civilians who were fleeing with the Oric forces also made it to Tuzla and other areas.  Many disappeared later in the war and their names were added to the list of "victims of the Srebrenica genocide".

The truth is finally coming out, but so many years later does anybody care?

You tell me.

The Saker

Srebrenica: requiem for a propaganda fiction

(Note by the Saker: at a time when the Empire is clearly re-playing the Bosnian scenario in Libya, it is extremely important to look back and understand what exactly happened during the war in Bosnia.  I am therefore very grateful to F for drawing my attention to the publication of this book and I urge you all to read it with attention and make up your own mind based on facts and logic, not ideology.  The Saker)

The Srebrenica Historical Project reports:

The controversy of Srebrenica enters a new phase. There is now a definitive new study in English incorporating the most up to date evidence and presenting a thorough critique of the evidence (or what passed for evidence) that was available previously. It is  the monograph prepared by a group of authors and published by Srebrenica Historical Project entitled “Deconstruction of a virtual genocide: An intelligent person’s guide to Srebrenica.”

The guiding concept behind the monograph was to address all the key points in this controversy within the confines of a single readable and well-documented volume. As we have always done since the beginning of our work, we have strived here also to achieve maximum balance and fairness with a minimum of emotion. The banishment of emotion from the discussion of such a highly charged topic as Srebrenica may appear to be a difficult and nearly impossible task. But it is not so daunting after all when it is approached in the right way. The now familiar descent into emotionalism whenever Srebrenica is debated occurs only when the subject is approached by those who have a set agenda. They usually take extreme positions and since their claims are not supported by facts they must resort to emotion, and on occasion even vituperation and ad hominem diatribes, to make up for the shortcomings of their “arguments.”

We are not in that position because we have no agenda, so we also have no need for emotional shortcuts. We are only interested in the truth, whatever in the end it may turn out to be, and that is a goal that we will continue to pursue dispassionately.

Since we are not finished with our task, we cannot draw any final conclusions. But we can suggest some preliminary findings which the evidence that we have seen so far supports strongly. What happened in the region of Srebrenica between 1992 and 1995 was a human tragedy of enormous proportions. Two neighbouring communities virtually annihilated each other. There are no winners in the Srebrenica story.

Chronologically, the first community in Srebrenica to be devastated was the Serbs. They were first expelled from the town itself in 1992, then their villages surrounding it were systematically attacked and torched while with medieval barbarity a part of the inhabitants were “put to the sword” and the rest were driven out. When predictably the boomerang returned in 1993 and with even greater ferocity in July of 1995, regrettably it was the turn of the local Bosnian Muslims to suffer. And, indeed, they paid a heavy price for the insane policies of their venal and incompetent leadership.

The controversy which has surrounded the subject of Srebrenica ever since defies rational understanding. There are established core facts about Srebrenica (focusing on July 1995) that all reasonable people can readily agree on: [1] After the fall of Srebrenica to Serbian forces on 11 July, 1995, a substantial number of Muslim prisoners of war were executed, and [2] That massacre was a war crime the perpetrators of which must be identified and punished. The incomprehensible, characteristically Balkan, overkill aspect of the debate is that the Muslim political leadership in Sarajevo insists on imposing its own, politically-driven and dogmatic interpretation of those facts. Notwithstanding the glaring lack of physical evidence after 15 years of assiduous searching, it requires everyone to believe, or at least to hypocritically pretend in public that they believe, that the number of executed prisoners was 8,000. They have also proclaimed it a dogma that the execution of the prisoners was an act of genocide, although – based on the evidence discovered so far – there is nothing to support such a radical interpretation of the massacre. It is for that politically twisted version of Srebrenica that our monograph is meant to serve as a Requiem.

The lunacy of this position should be apparent to everyone whose mind functions on non-Balkan principles. If you want to discredit someone, imputing the killing of a couple of hundred unarmed prisoners is bad enough; you are not going make him look substantially worse by exaggerating the figure tenfold. Likewise, it would seem ultimately futile (not to say ridiculous) to claim “genocide” on the basis of an 8,000 figure, whether it has a factual foundation or not, in a century of real genocides where figures range from 1,5 million (Armenian) to six million (Jewish). Certainly, no court would ever manage to convict the Sarajevo Muslim political leadership on the charge of subtlety.

We have earnestly sought to avoid as many minefields as possible (no pun intended, but readers are kindly requested to turn to Chapter VII of our monograph to understand the reasons for this notice). It was our goal also to sort out as many dilemmas as possible given the current state of Srebrenica evidence. As they always say on such occasions, we now commend the fruit of our labours to our gentle readers and, naturally, we are fully prepared to abide by their judgment.

Finally, we consider it appropriate to offer to our readers the “Introduction” written by former BBC journalist and political analyst, Jonathan Rooper, who has retained a lively interest in the affairs of the former Yugoslavia and in particular the controversy of Srebrenica ever since the Balkan conflicts of the nineties. The monograph “Deconstruction of a virtual genocide: An intelligent person’s guide to Srebrenica” can be downloaded in its entirety from the link which is at the end of Mr. Rooper’s piece.

INTRODUCTION

One question that anybody who takes up the critical study of the regnant narrative of the "Srebrenica massacre" always faces is ‘why?’ 

As a field of research and inquiry, hasn't the basic outline of the events that befell the Srebrenica ‘safe-area’ population after the enclave was captured by the Bosnian Serb army on 11 July 1995 been well-established since the second-half of that year, when Western reporters such as the Christian Science Monitor's David Rohde allegedly stumbled upon a ‘decomposing human leg protruding from the freshly turned dirt’ in a landscape that, Rohde claimed, he recognized from ‘spy-satellite photos’ that had been faxed to him just days before by ‘American officials’? 

Why then would it occur to someone to challenge what appears to be well-known about the ‘Srebrenica massacre’?  And why should this task be of interest and importance to anyone outside survivors and a relatively small coterie of fanatics? 

The critical study of the ‘Srebrenica massacre’ that Stephen Karganović collects in this volume is important because, taken as a whole, they show that within a very brief period of time – no longer than a handful of weeks -  what had originated in self-serving wartime propaganda and whispers about an atrocity that symbolized Serb evil, became institutionalized as The Truth, effectively removing the actual event from inquiry, and placing it under seal in a sacrosanct realm of myth where it has flourished ever since. 

Initially generated by a nexus between the NATO-bloc powers that had intervened on behalf of the Bosnian Muslim and Croat sides in the civil wars that destroyed the unitary Yugoslavia, and Western news media and human rights organizations committed to proving the veracity of this wartime propaganda, the myth of the ‘Srebrenica massacre’ has been re-institutionalized with every Srebrenica-related judgment at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (e.g., Krstic in August 2001) as well as the International Court of Justice (February 2007). 

As this book reminds us, it serves also as a "mass mobilisation vehicle" every year during the 11 July internment ceremony at the Srebrenica-Potocari Memorial and Cemetery for the Victims of the 1995 Genocide, where yet new layers of propaganda are laid upon the propaganda of the earlier years. 

It is of course also one of the two most frequently cited symbolic bloodbaths in the Western canon (the other being Rwanda 1994) whenever someone invokes the ‘Never again’ imperative of the Nazi holocaust to urge the great powers towards ‘humanitarian intervention’, the ‘responsibility to protect’, and most recently ‘mass atrocity response operations’.      

Because this ‘Srebrenica massacre’, with its alleged 8,000 victims, conformed so well to framework of what could be expected from the monster Serbs held responsible for the wars, very few inquiries into the real, if far smaller, massacres and executions carried out against the males of the fleeing ‘safe area’ population have ever been undertaken. 

This is why the critical study of the ‘Srebrenica massacre’ undertaken here is vital and stands as a far more honest tribute to these real victims than does the vast literature which it challenges and helps to overturn.

There is a further pertinent question to answer: why has it taken so long for the core facts about Srebrenica, so clearly expressed in this book, to be collected in this way?

The answer comes in two parts.  First, the process of international investigation and prosecution was very slow and much of the ‘evidence’ supporting the judgements handed down by the ICTY was not revealed in any form until years after the events. 

Second, few people have tried to make an independent assessment of what happened.  For example, of all the journalists who have ever written or broadcast about Srebrenica, only a handful appear to have made any real efforts to investigate the official account.  It has, as a result, been solely through the efforts of a loose collaboration of individuals around the world that we now have a thorough analysis of what happened in July 1995.

Predictably, many attacks have been made on these people.  They have been repeatedly accused of genocide denial.  Serious attempts have been made, in Europe and elsewhere, to criminalise their investigative efforts.  

The collaborations which have finally led to the publication of this book have developed almost entirely by chance. In the UK a number of us began to collect reports and broadcasts, building a chronology of events and a background database.  We did this separately at first, but by 1995, thanks to the former “Observer” journalist Nora Beloff, a group of us were in touch with one another, exchanging information and ideas. 

We had become quite an efficient monitoring machine by the time the Bosnian Serb Army took control of Srebrenica in July 1995.  We archived hundreds of reports.  As we went along, we noted many pieces of information which conflicted with the consensus narrative in the media in the UK, the USA and Europe.

We were conscious of Srebrenica’s short-term political importance in drawing attention away from the US-backed invasion of Krajina and the final abandonment of the international ‘neutrality’, which led to the ending of the civil wars and the terms imposed at Dayton in November.  But we did not yet foresee the full extent to which the ‘Srebrenica massacre’ would become the most complete symbol of Serbian evil in the Balkan conflicts.  Our work was therefore much more widely focused until at least 1997, and was further diverted by the Kosovo war in 1999.

Our network was gradually expanding. Through the internet, people researching aspects of the Balkan conflicts eventually became aware of each other and often made contacts that would lead to new partnerships.

One such development was the Srebrenica Research Group[1]  an international collective brought together by Professor Edward Herman in the summer of 2003.  This was not only a platform for the free exchange of knowledge, information and ideas, but a determined attempt to investigate exactly what had happened on the basis of academic rigour.

The work of the group was exciting and, I think, highly productive.  The outcome was in my opinion about the best analysis that could be made on the basis of available information.  Our constraint was that we had no resources beyond the limited amounts of our own time we could devote to Srebrenica research.  And we certainly had no means of carrying out our own fundamental investigations. 

In September 2008 I was contacted by Stephen Karganović, who had recently set up the Srebrenica Historical Project.  Based in Holland, this organisation had secured funding to mount conferences and to commission its own investigations and expert analysis of key questions about Srebrenica. 

The extent and quality of the work done by the SHP since that time has been remarkable.  In a little over two years they have taken on a range of challenges that would daunt the most skilled data crunchers. I believe this work has rewritten the Srebrenica narrative decisively.

The purpose of this Introduction is not to summarise the many revelations published on the pages that follow.  It is, rather, to commend this book in the strongest terms. This collection demonstrates that the stories about ‘the worst war crime in Europe since the 2nd World War’ are fictions, unrelated to what took place.

It is vital that the unadorned truth about the Balkan conflicts should be freed from the lies and misrepresentations that have characterised the first draft of this history.  Only then can there be some kind of genuine process of truth and reconciliation in the aftermath of the Balkan wars.  This work provides a platform from which such a process can begin.

==>>Book can be downloaded from this location: CLICK<<==

Jonathan Rooper

Jonathan Rooper was a BBC TV News & Current Affairs journalist from 1983 – 1999.  After several years as a desk producer on daily programmes, he became a field producer making short investigative films on social and political affairs issues.  He was head of the BBC News Features department for four years.   Since leaving the BBC he has worked in corporate communications and now earns his living as a freelance, specialising in corporate video production and editing, media and presentation training and corporate journalism.

The Genocide Myth: Uses and Abuses of “Srebrenica”

By Srdja Trifkovic

On July 11, the constituent nations of Bosnia-Herzegovina — no longer warring, but far from reconciled — will mark the 15th anniversary of “Srebrenica.” The name of the eastern Bosnian town will evoke different responses from different communities, however. The difference goes beyond semantics. The complexities of the issue remain reduced to a simple morality play devoid of nuance and context.

That is exactly how the sponsors of the “Srebrenica Remembrance Day” — currently before the Canadian House of Commons — want it to be:

Whereas the Srebrenica Massacre, also known as the Srebrenica Genocide, was the killing in July of 1995 of an estimated 8,000 Bosniak men and boys in the region of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina by Bosnian Serb forces;

Whereas the Srebrenica Massacre is the largest mass murder in Europe since World War II and the largest massacre carried out by Serb forces during the Bosnian war;

Whereas the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, located in The Hague, unanimously decided in the case of Prosecutor v. Krstić that the Srebrenica Massacre was genocide…

The trouble is that the event known to the bill’s sponsors as the “Srebernica genocide” was no such thing. The contention that as many as 8,000 Muslims were killed has no basis in available evidence; it is not an “estimate” but a political construct. The magnitude of casualties at Srebrenica and the context of events have been routinely misrepresented in official reports by the pro-Muslim governments, quasi-non-governmental institutions, and the media.

As for The Hague Tribunal, an Orwellian institution with which I am well acquainted, its “unanimous decisions” are as drearily predictable as those in Moscow in 1936. It is not known to the public, however, that those “decisions” are now disputed by a host of senior Western military and civilian officials, NATO intelligence officers and independent intelligence analysts who dispute the official portrayal of the capture of Srebrenica as a unique atrocity in the Bosnian conflict.

The Facts — During the Bosnian war between May 1992 and July 1995, several thousand Muslim men lost their lives in Srebrenica and its surroundings. Most of them died in July of 1995 when the enclave fell unexpectedly to the Bosnian Serb Army and the Muslim garrison attempted a breakthrough. Some escaped to the Muslim-held town of Tuzla, 38 miles to the north. Many were killed while fighting their way through; and many others were taken prisoner and executed by the Bosnian Serb army.

The exact numbers remain unknown, disputed, and misrepresented. With 8,000 executed and thousands killed in the fighting, there should have been huge gravesites and satellite evidence of both executions, burials, and any body removals. The UN searches in the Srebrenica vicinity, breathlessly frantic at times, produced two thousand bodies. They included those of soldiers killed in action — both Muslim and Serb — both before and during July 1995.

The Numbers Game — In the documents of the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague (ICTY) there is no conclusive breakdown of casualties. That a war crime did take place, that hundreds of Muslim prisoners were killed, is undeniable. The number of its victims remains forensically and demographically unverified, however. According to the former BBC reporter Jonathan Rooper, “from the outset the numbers were used and abused” for political purposes:

Over the years it has been held to be highly significant that original ballpark estimates for the number who might have been massacred at Srebrenica corresponded closely to the ‘missing’ list of 7,300 compiled by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). But the early estimates were based on nothing more than the simple combination of an estimated 3,000 men last seen at the UN base at Potocari and an estimated 5,000 people reported ‘to have left the enclave before it fell.’ [ ... ] Perhaps the most startling aspect of the 7-8,000 figure is that it has always been represented as synonymous with the number of people executed. This was never a possibility: numerous contemporary accounts noted that UN and other independent observers had witnessed fierce fighting with significant casualties on both sides. It was also known that others had fled to Muslim-held territory around Tuzla and Zepa, that some had made their way westwards and northwards, and that some had fled into Serbia. It is therefore certain that nowhere near all the missing could have been executed.

The key problem of all is that the arithmetic does not add up. The International Committee of the Red Cross reported at the time that some 3,000 Bosnian Army soldiers managed to reach Muslim lines near Tuzla and were redeployed by the Bosnian Army “without their families being informed.” The number of military survivors was also confirmed by Muslim General Enver Hadzihasanovic in his testimony at The Hague.

The last census results for Srebrenica, from 1991, counted 37,211 inhabitants in Srebrenica and the surrounding villages, of which 27,118 were Muslims (72.8 percent) and 9,381 Serbs (25.2 percent). Displaced persons from Srebrenica registered with the World Health Organization and Bosnian government in early August 1995 totaled 35,632. With 3,000 Muslim men who reached Tuzla “without their families being informed” we come to the figure of over 38,000 survivors. The Hague Tribunal’s own estimates of the total population of the Srebrenica enclave before July 1995 — notably that made by Judge Patricia Wald — give 40,000 as the maximum figure. The numbers don’t add up.

Furthermore, despite spending five days interviewing over 20,000 Srebrenica survivors at Tuzla a week after the fall of the enclave, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Henry Wieland declared, “we have not found anyone who saw with their own eyes an atrocity taking place.” A decade later Dr Dick Schoonoord of the Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogsdoumentatie (NIOD) confirmed Wieland’s verdict: “It has been impossible during our investigations in Bosnia to find any people who witnessed the mass murder or would talk about the fate of the missing men.”

A UN-Protected Jihadist Camp – It is often pointed out that Srebrenica was an UN “protected zone,” but it is seldom noted that the enclave was simultaneously an armed camp used for attacks against Serb villages in the surrounding areas. Muslim General Sefer Halilovic confirmed in his testimony at the Hague Tribunal that there were at least 5,500 Bosnian Army soldiers in Srebrenica after it had obtained the “safe haven” status, and that he had personally arranged numerous deliveries of sophisticated weapons by helicopter.

French General Philippe Morillon, the UNPROFOR commander who first called international attention to the Srebrenica enclave, is adamant that the crimes committed by those Muslim soldiers made the Serbs’ desire for revenge inevitable. He testified at The Hague Tribunal on February 12, 2004, that the Muslim commander in Srebrenica, 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.”

Asked by the ICTY prosecutor how Oric treated his Serb prisoners, General Morillon, who knew him well, replied that “Naser Oric was a warlord who reigned by terror in his area and over the population itself”: “According to my recollection, he didn’t even look for an excuse. It was simply a statement: One can’t be bothered with prisoners.”

Professor Cees Wiebes, who wrote the intelligence section of the Dutch Government report on Srebrenica, notes that despite signing the demilitarization agreement, Bosnian Muslim forces in Srebrenica were heavily armed and engaged in provocations (“sabotage operations”) against Serbian forces. Professor Wiebes, a senior lecturer in the Department of International Relations at Amsterdam University, caused a storm with his book Intelligence and the War in Bosnia 1992-1995, detailing the role of the Clinton administration in allowing Iran to arm the Bosnian Muslims. Wiebes catalogues how, from 1992 to January 1996, there was an influx of Iranian weapons and advisers into Bosnia. By facilitating the illegal transfer of weapons to Bosnian Muslim forces and turning a blind eye toward the entry of foreign Mujahadeen fighters, the US turned supposed safe zones for civilians into staging areas for conflict and a tripwire for NATO intervention. Dr Wiebes notes that the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency facilitated the transfer of illegal arms from Muslim countries to the Tuzla airport using Hercules C-130 transport planes. It arranged for gaps in air surveillance by AWACs, which were supposed to guard against such illegal arms traffic. Along with these weapons came Mujahadeen fighters from both Iranian training camps and al-Qaeda, including two of the hijackers involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and Khaled Sheik Mohammed who helped plan the attack.

Cui bono? — On 11 July, 1995, the Muslim garrison was ordered to evacuate the town which the Serbs entered unopposed. Local Deputy Director of UN Monitors, Carlos Martins Branco, wrote in 2004 (“Was Srebrenica a Hoax?”) that Muslim forces did not even try to take advantage of their heavy artillery because “military resistance would jeopardize the image of ‘victim,’ which had been so carefully constructed, and which the Muslims considered vital to maintain.”

Two prominent Muslim allies of the late Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, his Srebrenica party chairman Ibran Mustafic and police commander Hakija Meholjic, have subsequently accused Izetbegovic of deliberately sacrificing the enclave in order to trigger NATO intervention. Meholjic is explicit: in his presence, Izetbegovic quoted Bill Clinton as saying that 5,000 dead Muslims would be sufficient to provide the political basis for an American-led intervention on the side of the Muslims, which both of them wanted.

In their testimony before The Hague Tribunal, Bosnian Muslim Generals Halilovic and Hadzihasanovic confirmed that 18 top officers of the Srebrenica garrison were abruptly removed in May 1995. This was done even as the high command was ordering sabotage operations against Bosnian Serbs. One of these was a militarily meaningless attack on a strategically unimportant nearby Serb village of Visnica, which triggered off the Serb counter-attack which captured the undefended town. Ibran Mustafic, the former head of the Muslim SDA party in Srebrenica, is adamant that the scenario for the sacrifice of Srebrenica was carefully prepared:

Unfortunately, the Bosnian presidency and the Army command were involved in this business … Had I received orders to attack the Serb army from the demilitarized zone, I would have rejected to carry out that order. I would have asked the person who had issued that order to bring his family to Srebrenica, so that I can give him a gun let him stage attacks from the demilitarized zone. I knew that such shameful, calculated moves were leading my people to catastrophe. The order came from Sarajevo.

British military analyst Tim Ripley, who has written for Jane’s, agrees with the assessment that Srebrenica was deliberately sacrificed by the Muslim political leaders. He noted that Dutch UN soldiers “saw Bosnian troops escaping from Srebrenica past their observation points, carrying brand new anti-tank weapons [which] made many UN officers and international journalists suspicious.”

The G-Word — The term “genocide” is even more contentious than the exact circumstances of Srebrenica’s fall. Local chief of UN Monitors, Carlos Martins Branco, noted that if there had been a premeditated plan of genocide,

instead of attacking in only one direction, from the south to the north — which left the hypothesis to escape to the north and west, the Serbs would have established a siege in order to ensure that no one escaped. The UN observation posts to the north of the enclave were never disturbed and remained in activity after the end of the military operations. There are obviously mass graves in the outskirts of Srebrenica as in the rest of ex-Yugoslavia where combat has occurred, but there are no grounds for the campaign which was mounted, nor the numbers advanced by CNN. The mass graves are filled by a limited number of corpses from both sides, the consequence of heated battle and combat and not the result of a premeditated plan of genocide, as occurred against the Serbian populations in Krajina, in the Summer of 1995, when the Croatian army implemented the mass murder of all Serbians found there.

The fact that The Hague Tribunal’s presiding judge, Theodor Meron, called the massacre in Srebrenica “genocide” does not make it so. What plan for genocide includes offering safe passage to women and children? And if this was all part of a Serb plot to eliminate Muslims, what about hundreds of thousands of Muslims living peacefully in Serbia itself, including thousands of refugees who fled there from Bosnia? Or the Muslims in the neighboring enclave of Žepa, who were unharmed when the Serbs captured that town a few days after capturing Srebrenica? To get around these common sense obstacles, the ICTY prosecution came up with a sociologist who provided an “expert” opinion: the Srebrenica Muslims lived in a patriarchal society, therefore killing the men was enough to ensure that there would be no more Muslims in Srebrenica. Such psychobabble turns the term “genocide” into a gruesome joke.

Yet it was on the basis of this definition that in August 2001, the Tribunal found Bosnian Serb General Radislav Krstic guilty of “complicity in genocide.” Even if the unproven figure of “8,000” is assumed, it affected less than one-half of one percent of Bosnia’s Muslim population in a locality covering one percent of its territory. On such form, the term “genocide” loses all meaning and becomes a propaganda tool rather than a legal and historical concept. On that form, America’s NATO ally Turkey — a major regional player in today’s Balkans — certainly committed genocide in northern Cyprus in 1974. On that form, no military conflict ever can be genocide-free.

Because of the manner in which international criminal law is currently formulated, the threshold of proof required to secure a conviction for genocide is actually lower than it is for crimes against humanity. To secure a conviction for crimes against humanity the ICTY prosecution must prove that the acts were “widespread or systematic.” No such condition applies for genocide. Moreover, as British analyst John Laughland points out, crimes against humanity can be committed only against civilians, whereas genocide — as redefined in the case of Srebrenica — can include the killing of military personnel as well. In other words, spontaneous or disparate acts involving the killing of military personnel can be classified as “genocide.” This creates ample room for propagandistic abuse of the term.

Srebrenica as a Postmodernist Totem — Laughland contends that the myth of the “Srebrenica Genocide” is essential to a program of international interventionism, based on weak legal reasoning and disregard for due process, of which the Serbs happen to be the guinea-pigs. In his view, Srebrenica has been raised to the status it now enjoys because its fall represented a defeat not only for the Bosnian Muslims but also for the “international community” and its policy of global interventionism:

Srebrenica was important — at least for the supporters of interventionism — because the UN was there, not just because it was a Muslim enclave. The United Nations as an institution, it must be remembered, had embarked in the 1990s on an aggressive policy of military, political and judicial interventionism in both Iraq and Yugoslavia. It continued to apply the highly intrusive sanctions regime against Iraq throughout the decade and into the 21st century, and of course was happy to become the administrator of Kosovo after 1999. Its own credibility, and that of the states which dictated its policies, was destroyed when the enclave fell.

The activists of judicial and military supra-nationalism, Laughland points out, were therefore determined to make the genocide charge stick somewhere. “Genocide” offers them two key legal advantages in pursuit of the goal of creating a new international system no longer based on state sovereignty. The first is the low threshold of proof mentioned above. The second legal advantage of genocide — from the point of view of the project of creating a system of supranational coercive criminal law — is that genocide, unlike crimes against humanity, is the subject of a binding international treaty, the 1948 Genocide Convention.

The importance of the existence of a treaty, as opposed to the existence of a norm in mere “customary international law” — i.e. whatever judges or even academics say they think the law is — was illustrated with the landmark ruling in the British House of Lords against General Pinochet, issued on 24 March, 1999, (the day the bombs started raining down on Yugoslavia). Activists for universal jurisdiction ratione materiae were very excited by this ruling because it seemed to confirm that even heads of state could be put on trial when certain kinds of crimes were alleged against them. … Srebrenica, then, is an existential issue, not as much for Republika Srpska as for those activists who seek to consolidate once and for all that outcome which the former ICTY Prosecutor, Louise Arbour, said she had achieved in 1999: ‘We have passed from an era of cooperation between states to an era in which states can be constrained.’

Dr. Diana Johnstone, an American expert on the Balkans, has summed up the Arbour mindset neatly in a seminal “Counterpunch” article:

The ‘Srebrenica massacre’ is part of a dominant culture discourse that goes like this: We people in the advanced democracies have reached a new moral plateau, from which we are both able and have a duty both to judge others and to impose our ‘values’ when necessary. The others, on a lower moral plateau, must be watched carefully, because unlike us, they may commit ‘genocide.’ It is remarkable how ‘genocide’ has become fashionable, with more and more ‘genocide experts’ in universities, as if studying genocide made sense as a separate academic discipline… The subliminal message in the official Srebrenica discourse is that because ‘we’ let that happen, ‘we’ mustn’t let ‘it’ happen again, ergo, the United States should preventively bomb potential perpetrators of ‘genocide’.

But Why? — Questioning the received elite class narrative on “Srebrenica” is a good and necessary endeavor. The accepted Srebrenica story, influenced by war propaganda and uncritical media reports, is neither historically correct nor morally satisfying. The relentless Western campaign against the Serbs and in favor of their Muslim foes — which is what “Srebrenica” is really all about — is detrimental to the survival of our culture and civilization. It seeks to give further credence to the myth of Muslim blameless victimhood, Serb viciousness, and Western indifference, and therefore weaken our resolve in the global struggle euphemistically known as “war on terrorism.” The former is a crime; the latter, a mistake.

The involvement of the Clinton administration in the wars of Yugoslav succession was a good example of the failed expectation that pandering to Muslim ambitions in a secondary theater will improve the U.S. standing in the Muslim world as a whole. The notion germinated in the final months of George H.W. Bush’s presidency, when his Acting Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger said that a goal in Bosnia was to mollify the Muslim world and to counter any perception of an anti-Muslim bias regarding American policies in Iraq in the period leading up to Gulf War I. The result of years of policies thus inspired is a terrorist base the heart of Europe, a moral debacle, and the absence of any positive payoff to the United States.

Former U.S. Under-Secretary of State Nicholas Burns declared on February 18, 2008, a day after Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence: “Kosovo is going to be a vastly majority Muslim state… and we think it is a very positive step that this Muslim state, Muslim majority state, has been created today.” If it is intrinsically “a very positive step” that a “vastly Muslim state” is created on European soil that had been cleansed of non-Muslims, it is only a matter of time before similar blessings are bestowed on Americans.

If Western and especially U.S. policy in the Balkans was not meant to facilitate Jihad, the issue is not why, but how its effects paradoxically coincided with the regional objectives of those same Islamists who confront America in other parts of the world. “Srebrenica” provides some of the answers. The immediate bill is being paid by the people of the Balkans, but “Srebrenica’s” long-term costs will come to haunt the West for decades to come.

Srdja (Serge) Trifkovic, historian and foreign affairs analyst, is the author of seven books — including a best-seller, “The Sword of the Prophet” — and former foreign affairs editor of Chronicles (1998-2009). He is a regular contributor to print and broadcast media outlets in Europe and all over the English-speaking world.

The politically hypercorrect President's crocodile tears

Today, President Obama described the "Srebrenica massacre as "a stain on our collective conscience". Saying that "there can be no lasting peace without justice" Obama added that he urged "the prosecution and arrest of those that carried out the genocide".

Noble feelings, for sure. There is only one problem. There never was a genocide in Srebrenica. You can read all about it here, but I can't re-print this article here because of the greed of the founder and webmaster of the antiwar.com website, Eric Garris. Too bad, really, the article by Nebojsa Malic is very good.

Hezbollah never bombed any Jewish center(s) in Buenos-Aires, 9/11 was an inside job, and no massacre of civilians ever took place in Srebrenica. These are a few of the themes which I refuse to shy away from and which will irritate some of you. My blog is not about making you feel good, its about saying the truth. I don't apologize for that.

The Saker

What Happened at Srebrenica? Examination of the Forensic Evidence

by Stephen Karganovic for Global Research

The judgment delivered by the ICTY Trial Chamber in Popović et al. on June 10, 1995, is of some interest in the ongoing Srebrenica controversy. While it affirms all the principal positions of ICTY jurisprudence in this important area of the Tribunal’s judicial practice, it does so in some ways that do not follow mechanically the pattern set by its predecessor cases.

In two areas, in fact, the Popović judgment marks noteworthy departures from previous ICTY Srebrenica cases which suggests that the Tribunal has taken some account of criticisms that have been raised of its handling of key evidence used to buttress the official Srebrenica narrative. These are the method of arriving at Srebrenica death toll figures and definition of the character of the retreating 28th Division column in terms of criminal liability for the Srebrenica massacre, including the impact of its extraordinarily high casualty rate on the overall calculation of culpable deaths. But in another, equally contested area, the evidence of the so-called „crown witness“ Dražen Erdemović, the Chamber has apparently chosen to ignore compelling criticisms of his credibility and to continue the practice of its predecesors by continuing to draw important conclusions from his questionable testimony.

First, about departures from the established pattern.

(1) The death figures. The major departure, the full significance of which will become fully apparent only with the passage of time and as the remaining Srebrenica related trials (Karadžić and Mladić) are completed, is the fundamental shift in the methodology of demonstrating the number of Srebrenica victims. It should be recalled that right up to the last Srebrenica trial (Blagojević and Jokić) the Tribunal relied on the standard forensic procedure of conducting autopsies on human remains that were found in exhumed mass graves believed to be linked to Srebrenica. Official exhumations began soon after the event, in 1996, and they continued until 2002. They were conducted by international forensic specialists under the auspices of the ICTY Office of the Prosecutor. In relation to the genocide victim figure of 8,000 that was announced at the start, and which sounded rather like a target for the forensic specialists should use to measure their field performance, the actual results of the exhumations were quite meager. By the end of the process, when prosecution forensic teams ceased operating, all they had to show for their labor were 3,568 autopsy reports (which turned out to not necessarily be as many bodies), clearly not even half of the „target“ figure.

Significantly, in the important Krstić case, the first in which an ICTY chamber made intimations of genocide with reference to Srebrenica, the court had only about 1,800 autopsy „cases“ to work with.[1] That, of course, was not an impediment to the finding of the Krstić chamber that “7,000 to 8,000” Bosnian Moslem males were executed in Srebrenica,[2] but considerable subterfuges were required to cover the striking numerical difference. One of them was simply forecasting future forensic developments. The Krstić chamber nonchalantly expressed its opinion that once the contents of an additional 18 unopened mass graves were disinterred “it is expected that the total number of bodies found and linked with Srebrenica will significantly increase as these sites are exhumed”.[3]

The source of this extraordinary conviction is not referenced, but in the footnote the Chamber quotes approvingly the Prosecution’s estimate that “the total number of bodies detected in mass graves is 4,805”.[4] Clearly, if the Prosecution’s “estimate” were validated, that figure plus the approximately 1,800 cases available to the Chamber at that time would make the claimed 7,000 to 8,000 death toll look like a credible analysis.

These speculations may well have gone unchallenged if Dr. Ljubiša Simić, a member of the Beara defence team[5], had not bothered in 2008 and 2009 to take a very close look at the prosecution’s—by then—3,568 autopsy reports, all 30,000 pages of them. What he discovered was startling. One report, or “case”, did not equal one body. In 44,4% of the “cases” it consisted of only a few bones or fragments from which no forensically significant conclusions could be drawn. In fact, in 92,4% of those the prosecution’s own forensic specialists admitted in their reports that they could not determine the cause and manner of death.

If parameters crucial to criminal liability, such as cause and manner of death, were indeterminable, how could the conclusion be reached that the victims were executed as opposed, for instance, to being killed in the course of legitimate military action? And how could such unsatisfactory evidence serve further to support a grave conclusion, such as genocide?

In contrast to the bulk of human remains offered by the prosecution in support of its Srebrenica case, and which the chamber accepted as ultimately probative of genocide, but which seemed to be devoid of any forensic significance, there were only 442 human remains in the mass graves with ligatures and/or blindfolds. This was the only category in a condition that strongly suggested execution.

Dr. Simić meticulously categorized mass grave remains by degree of completeness and pattern of injury. The picture which emerged from his investigation was most contrary to the prosecution’s case, yet it was the prosecution’s own evidence that he was dissecting. In the end, he canvassed the number of paired femur bones[6] in the autopsy reports in an effort to determine how many individuals were buried in Srebrenica mass graves, having died of all causes. He found a total of 1,919 right and 1,923 left femur bones. Thus, with a very high degree of reliability it was established that in total there were under 2,000 individuals in all the Srebrenica mass graves exhumed by the prosecution. The patterns of injury were in some cases consistent with combat death, and in others with possible execution.

Plainly, on closer examination the forensic evidence was more unhelpful than helpful to the prosecution thesis (and, by obvious extension, the very thesis that the Tribunal was hard pressed to document) that in Srebrenica there were about 8,000 execution victims. Ten years later, there is no trace of the 4,805 bodies the Krstić court gullibly agreed had been “detected” in the unexhumed Srebrenica mass graves. Body counting in the classical sense had reached an embarrassing dead end.

In the Popović case, the Chamber therefore decided to make an end run around the issue and to shift its emphasis to a new technique—DNA:

“Based on the evidence, the Trial Chamber has found that at least 5.336 identified individuals were killed in the executions following the fall of Srebrenica. However, noting that the evidence before it is not all encompassing, the Trial Chamber is satisfied that the number of identified individuals will rise. The Trial Chamber therefore considers that the number of individuals killed in the executions following the fall of Srebrenica could well be as high as 7.826.”[7]

The reference to “identified individuals” indicates the source of the Chamber’s data: the International Committee for Missing Persons (ICMP), an NGO with US ties with local headquarters in Tuzla.[8] ICMP claims to have so far identified 6,414 Srebrenica victims.[9] Superficially, that sounds like genuine progress in the critical area of victim identification. The problem, however, is that during the Popović, where it was officially unveiled, ICMP data was presented in closed session and under severely limiting conditions that gave neither time nor adequate resources to the defence to subject this evidence to a thorough scientific analysis. ICMP strenuously opposes outside inspection and verification of its results on the grounds that it might cause additional pain to the survivors and it requires sample donors’ written permission before it will show its raw data to anyone. Needless to say, in the tense and hostile Balkan context, that is virtually the same as denying access.

ICMP’s penchant for secrecy in fact seems to go quite far. After Radovan Karadžić’s open court complaint that his defence was subjected to discriminatory treatment as a result of ICMP’s refusal to show their data, to everyone’s surprise it was prosecutor Hildegard Uertz-Retzlaff who revealed that ICMP was no more forthcoming to the prosecution:

“The ICMP did also not provide the DNA to us. It is not that give it to us and not to others.”[10]

It strikes one as amazing that even the proponent of this evidence—in this case ICTY Prosecution—should have been denied the privilege of properly reviewing it.

While the Chamber did hear ICMP Director of forensic science Thomas Parsons’ presentation of the DNA data[11] it is not clear whether it, any more than the Prosecution, had actually seen it, and even if it had a glimpse, the record does not show that the Chamber bothered to enlist any expert help to understand it.

To summarise, acceptance and reliance[12] upon ICMP’s critically unexamined evidence seems first and foremost to be an act of faith.

Even if protestations of privacy on behalf of the survivors who donated blood samples are to be accepted at face value, now that the 5,336 identified victim figure has been enshrined in the official Judgment, it would seem simple and convenient to allay doubts by publishing the first and last names of all the 5,336 individuals involved. That should offend no one’s sensibilities as thousands of names of alleged Srebrenica victims have already been carved into a huge slab of stone at the Potočari Memorial Centre to be seen by everyone. The publication of these names of victims supposedly identified by DNA would not only be quite sensational, it would also make further forms of verification possible. No such list, however, is appended to the Judgment.

But the Chamber’s biggest problem in this segment is not its failure to name the identified individuals (identification, it should be recalled, means assigning a first and last name rather than a number to each individual.) Nor is it even its cavalier prediction that “the number of individuals killed in the executions following the fall of Srebrenica could well be as high as 7.826”, a prognosis for which there is no apparent basis and which is distressingly reminiscent of the Krstić Chamber’s failed forecast that almost 5,000 unexhumed but “detected” bodies were on the verge of being discovered. It is, rather, that the Chamber is apparently ignorant of how DNA works and of what it can and cannot do.

That ignorance is reflected in the Chamber’s finding that “at least 5,336 identified individuals were killed in the executions following the fall of Srebrenica”, which is scientifically impossible. By matching samples taken from the deceased person to biological material donated by the potential blood relative, DNA procedure can establish, with various degrees of certainty, the deceased’s probable identity. But in terms that are relevant to criminal liability it can do nothing more than that. It cannot help determine the time and manner of death. The deceased, whose first and last name as a result of successful matching may have been established, could have been killed in combat, in an accident, or could have died of natural causes. The casual suggestion made by the Chamber, that the 5,336 identified individuals “were killed in the executions following the fall of Srebrenica” is scientifically unwarranted and, as any biology student could inform the Chamber, it is absurd on its face. No one can make such a determination based on DNA data without exposing themselves to enormous ridicule.

But this is a determination which the Chamber simply had to make, because without the time and manner of death claim to go with it, the pompously announced DNA identification evidence is quite useless for conviction purposes.

It can be argued that the Chamber acted most unwisely by embracing the DNA approach without at least consulting a biology student about its usefulness before doing so. Once this segment of the Judgment is subjected to thorough critical analysis, ICTY will discover that it will get even less in terms of genuine conviction evidence than was the case with the apparently jettisoned standard forensic approach. The standard approach at least had yielded 947 potential execution victims (442 with blindfolds and ligatures, plus 505 with bullet injuries). The methodology shift to DNA is incapable of demonstrating a single death in terms of legally relevant characteristics. It seeks to impress with the aura of high tech, but like any bluff it can last only as long as it remains unchallenged or, in this case, unexamined.

(2) The 28th Division column. The status of the 12,000 to 15,000 strong mixed military/civilian mostly male column which left Srebrenica enclave on foot late on July 11, 1995, headed for Moslem-controlled territory in Tuzla is a key factor in the controversy of Srebrenica. Prosecution military expert Richard Butler conceded the mixed character of the column, which under international law made it a legitimate military target.[13] Testifying in the Popović case, Butler reiterated this position.[14]

The legal character of the column and the extent of its casualties are of the utmost importance because in an effort to reach the magic figure of 8,000 column losses are commonly conflated with execution victims. That approach is quite improper because the column’s casualties are legally legitimate and give rise to no criminal liability whatsoever. Referring to the column, Jean-Rene Ruez, chief ICTY prosecution investigator, stated that,

“A significant number [of Moslems] were killed in combat. The Zvornik Brigade of the VRS Drina Corps had organized ambushes and that is when it had the most casualties during the entire war. Many were killed while trying to make it through minefields. An unknown number probably committed suicide in fear of being tortured before being put to death. It cannot be excluded that some had shot those who may have wanted to surrender.”[15]

In fact, based on statements given by surviving column members who reached Tuzla,[16] and which are also in the ICTY electronic data base,[17] many of the engagement sites have been identified and eyewitness estimates of casualties are available.[18]

These casualties were estimated by prosecution military expert Richard Butler, when testifying in the Popović trial, to have been 1,000 to 2,000 for the period of July 12 to 18, 1995.[19] In a July 17, 1995, UN internal report it is estimated regarding the column that “up to three thousand were killed on the way, mostly by mines and BSA [Bosnian Serb Army] engagements.”[20] In the “UNMO HQ Daily Sitrep” for July 18, 1995, speaking of the column it is estimated that 3,000 were “believed to have been killed by minefields, snipers, and ambush conflict with BSA”.[21] So all these estimates and reports, while lacking absolute precision, nevertheless converge on the conclusion that the retreating 28th Division column did suffer significant casualties along the way.

The technical problem which the column presents is two-fold. First, it demands separate analysis and categorization for Srebrenica-related events which suggest legitimate combat and cannot be fitted into the Procrustean bed of genocide, as the neat and simple Srebrenica narrative requires. So, in the first place, politically and psychologically it greatly alters the simplistic picture that has been relentlessly emitted over the years. Secondly, it apparently involves casualties in the thousands that cannot easily be brought within the ambit of war crimes. Given the severe dearth of bona fide execution victims, the presence of thousands of legitimate casualties is at worst an embarrassment and, at best, an opportunity. The opportunity is to simply blend them in with execution victims, thus eliminating the problem and at the same time helpfully raising the victims’ total, even if it still remains short of the target figure of 8,000.

It seems that the Popović Chamber has opted to seize the opportunity. It admits that the column was shelled with artillery and hand grenades, presumably causing widespread casualties, and that some members of the column committed suicide. [22] But then it goes on to argue that the column was in its composition (and presumably its legal character as well, though that is never stated explicitly) indistinguishable from the women, children, and elderly Srebrenica enclave inhabitants who had gathered at the UN base in Potočari. Having practically erased the legal distinction, the Chamber then draws the natural conclusion: the column (and by implication its casualties) was part of the “widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population.”[23]

There is, of course, no subtle or refined legal analysis here, but the conclusion does serve the Chamber’s practical purpose. By erasing the legal distinction between the two groups, it also did away with the necessity for bothersome account-keeping in terms of which victim was unlawfully executed and which was a legitimate casualty. Given the severe shortage of execution victims, the Chamber’s practical solution is understandable. But it is certainly not to its credit professionally any more than the misrepresentation of what can be expected from DNA results.

(3) The Erdemović evidence. While the introduction of DNA evidence and its elevation to the status of primary analytical tool for estimating Moslem losses, and the simultaneous downgrading of the 28th Division column to virtually an extension of the civilian population, appear to be departures from the way in which these topics were being approached in previous Srebrenica trials, the Popović Chamber’s wholehearted embrace of Dražen Erdemović’s evidence can safely be filed in the “more of the same” category. In this particular case, the Tribunal was oblivious to the intense and cogent questioning of Erdemović’s credibility coming from various sources. The most prominent of them was Germinal Čivikov’s devastating critique, “Crown Witness,”[24] published initially in German, then in Serbian in the Fall of 2009, and now waiting to appear in English translation.

In fact, the Chamber’s use of Erdemović’s evidence startles with its boldness. The following example, bearing on the identification of defendant Vujadin Popović at a key crime scene, will do.

Here is how the Chamber approaches the issue of identification of one of the principal accused:

”There is no evidence before the Trial Chamber of any other Lieutenant Colonel in Pilica at this time. In light of this, the Trial Chamber is satisfied that there is no other reasonable conclusion available on the evidence but that the Lieutenant Colonel whom Erdemović saw at Branjevo Military Farm and in Pilica town on 16 July was Popović.”[25]

The way in which the Chamber handled the identification of the mysterious “lieutenant-colonel” is curious indeed. His presence in Pilica is assumed, not for some objective reason, but because it was Erdemović who said so. The picture drawn by Erdemović by hook or by crook must be rounded off with an identified lieutenant-colonel on the crime scene, and it seems to matter little who that individual might turn out to be. By happenstance, in the courtroom, in the dock, there was indeed a real life lieutenant-colonel, the defendant Vujadin Popović. The possibility that Erdemović may have invented the lieutenant-colonel as he did a number of other things in his evidence, does not disconcert the Chamber in the slightest. It goes on to render its conclusion:

“The Trial Chamber has carefully considered the fact that Erdemović was unable to identify Popović in a photo line up … However, the Trial Chamber considers that given the traumatic circumstances in which Erdemović met Popović and the significant passage of time since then, Erdemović’s failure to identify Popović in a photo line up does not raise a reasonable doubt as to the Trial Chamber’s conclusion that the man whom Erdemović saw at Pilica on 16 July was, in fact, Popović”.[26]

The impression that the Popović trial chamber is incapable of functioning without reliance on the discredited “crown witness”, Dražen Erdemović, is overwhelming. The Hague Tribunal’s toxic dependence on the evidence of the notoriously false witness Erdemović is reflected in the way the Chamber approached the issue of placing the accused VRS Lt. Colonel Vujadin Popović on the crime scene in Branjevo and Pilica. There was no other evidence but Erdemović’s that could possibly put him there. But the Chamber simply had to engineer a way to make sure Popović was there, and so it did. Otherwise, it would lack a plausible rationale for connecting him to the crime and sentencing him to life imprisonment. If it had to resort to the feeble excuse that the photo line-up crashed because Erdemović was too traumatised to give the proper response, so be it.

The Popović judgment fails as a serious act of juurisprudence on many levels. It reflects institutional arrogance and corruption in the highest degree. Since Srebrenica is the core factual and legal issue that the Tribunal has assigned to itself to deal with and „resolve“, not just in judicial but indeed in moral and historical terms, these and other features of the Popović judgment portend the techniques that the Tribunal will most likely use as it prepares to strike its farewell blows in the Karadžić and, potentially, Mladić trials.

If this is a preview, it fails to impress with the sophistication of its approach. But the Tribunal probably sees no reason to even try to be sophisticated in the fabrication of its evidence or in the formulation of its bogus legal doctrines. It apparently feels invulnerable under the protection of its mighty “hyperpower” sponsors. The issue its willing tools and enablers are not addressing is precisely for how long that protective shield can last. It is, in fact, crumbling before our eyes and they may well be called to account professionally long before they are able to settle comfortably to enjoy the ill-deserved pensions, perquisites, and sundry munificent rewards that have undoubtedly been set aside for them by their masters.

Stephen Karganovic is President of the Dutch-based NGO “Srebrenica Historical Project.”

Notes:

[1] The number stabilised at 3,568 by 2002 when further ICTY exhumations were discontinued.

[2] Prosecutor v. Krstić, trial judgment, par. 84.

[3] Prosecutor v. Krstić, trial judgment, par. 80..

[4] Prosecutor v. Krstić, trial judgment, par. 80, footnote 166.

[5] Ljubiša Beara: one of the Popović et al. co-defendants.

[6] The femur is one of the sturdiest skeletal components and therefore least likely to be degraded as a result of exposure to unfavorable external conditions.

[7] Prosecutor v. Popović et al., Judgment summary, http://www.icty.org/x/cases/popovic/tjug/en/100610summary.pdf

[8] Popović Trial Judgment, par. 638 and passim.

[9] ICMP, “ICMP makes 13,000 DNA-led identifications of missing persons from Bosnia-Herzegovina”, 26 March 2010, http://www.ic-mp.org/press-releases/icmp-makes-13000-dna-led-identifications-of-missing-persons-from-bosnia-herzegovinaicmp-ostvario-13000-dnk-identifikacija-osoba-nestalih-u-bosni-i-hercegovini/.

[10] Prosecutor v. Karadžić, Status conference, T. July 23, 2009, p. 364, lines 21-23.

[11] Popović Trial Judgment, par. 639.

[12] Popović Trial Judgment, par. 624.

[13] Richard Butler, Expert report, par. 3.21, November 1, 2002, EDS (Tribunal data base) number 03072366.

[14] Prosecutor v. Popović, T. P.20244, lines 19-25, p. 20245, line 1.

[15] Monitor newspaper [Montenegro], April 19, 2001. EDS number 06038344.

[16] For a sustained analysis and discussion of witness statements on column casualties, see: Stephen Karganovic and Ljubisa Simic, “Srebrenica: Deconstruction of a Virtual Genocide” (Belgrade 2010), available on the internet at: http://www.srebrenica-project.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=90:any-lieutenant-colonel-will-do&catid=12:2009-01-25-02-01-02

[17] See Stephen Karganovic: “Analysis of Moslem Column Losses Due to Minefields and Combat Activity,” Proceedings of the International Symposium on ICTY and Srebrenica, p. 376-391 {Belgrade-Moscow 2010). Available on the internet at: http://www.srebrenica-project.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=21&Itemid=19

[18] In the Krstić judgment, it is conceded that the column was subjected to “heavy shooting and shelling,” par. 65.The Chamber did not dispute the conclusion, stipulated by prosecution and defence experts, that “the column qualified as a legitimate military target”, par. 163.

[19] Prosecutor v. Popović, T. P.20251, lines 6-8, and 12-14.

[20] ICTY electronic data base number R043-3424.

[21] ICTY electronic data base number R003-8723.

[22] Popović Trial Judgment, par. 381.

[23] Popović Trial Judgment, par. 782.

[24] Germinal Civikov: Crown Witness [Belgrade 2009].

[25] Popović Trial Judgment, par. 1134.

[26] Popović et al., trial judgment, par. 1135.