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This is the epilogue of a long judicial soap opera in the Netherlands on the responsibility of the state in the Srebrenica massacre. After a judgment in first instance and on appeal, the Supreme Court said Friday, July 19 that the Dutch state bore 10% of the responsibility for the death of 350 Bosnians in July 1995.
From our regional correspondent , Pierre Bénazet
The Supreme Court ruling only concerns 350 victims who remained last in the perimeter that the Dutch soldiers were supposed to protect. The responsibility of the Dutch state is now definitively confirmed because, according to the court, the soldiers of the Dutchbat Battalion could not ignore the risk that the Bosnian Serb forces would put a spell on the Bosnians.
On the other hand, the Court considered it necessary to limit this responsibility to 10% because there is no proof that had the 350 Muslims remained in Srebrenica, they would have survived. The Supreme Court has in any event estimated that the victims would have had only a 10% chance of survival. The Dutch should have suggested that they not be evacuated by Bosnian Serb forces in the hope that they would not dare to attack a UN base.
This judgment opens the way to requests for financial compensation for the families of the victims. Present for twenty years in all judgments, be they Dutch or at the ICTY, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia the group of the mothers of Srebrenica did not hide its disappointment with this retreat of the justice since at first instance the liability was described as complete and had been maintained at 30% by the court of appeal.
In July 1995, Serb forces commanded by Ratko Mladić massacred 8,000 refugee men and adolescents in the Srebrenica enclave, an enclave protected by the Dutch battalion UNPROFOR, the UN protection force. The Srebrenica massacre remains a national trauma in the Netherlands.