Serb leader slams Srebrenica crime
The Bosnian Serb president has condemned the killing of Bosnian Muslims captured on video in 1995 and aired last week.
The video showed Serb paramilitary troops killing Bosnian Muslim prisoners from Srebrenica.
Dragan Cavic said in a statement issued on Friday in Banja Luka: “The perpetrators of that crime cannot justify their act with nothing and to nobody.”
The footage was first shown on Wednesday at the UN war crimes court at The Hague in the Netherlands.
The prosecution introduced the film in the trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, indicted for his alleged role in atrocities during the Balkan wars.
It was also aired by TV stations in Serbia and Bosnia.
The video sent shockwaves throughout the world especially Serbia, but forced politicians and Serbs to acknowledge that Serb troops committed war crimes against civilians during the Balkan wars of the 1990s, described as ethnic cleansing.
The footage shows Serbian armed troops – members of a unit from Serbia, called Scorpions – murdering six Muslim boys.
Truth
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The footage showed Serb troops |
The slain men were among 7800 Muslim men and boys slaughtered in Srebrenica after Bosnian Serb troops overran the UN protected zone in July 1995.
“Whoever committed such a crime while perhaps claiming he is doing it in the name of his nation … committed a crime also against his own nation,” Cavic said.
More than 20,000 Serbs lost their lives in the recent war fighting for their nation, but those who have committed crimes have lost their face and cannot expect the whole Serb nation to suffer because of them, Cavic said.
He said the Serbs themselves have to find out the truth about what happened during the recent war, “no matter how ugly that truth might be”.
List compiled
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“Comparing data from a number of reliable sources we came up with a list of 8,106 names of the people killed in Srebrenica in July 1995” Amor Masovic, |
Meanwhile, a foundation established to preserve the memory of Bosnian Muslims killed in Srebrenica has compiled for the first time a list with the names of over 8,000 victims of the 1995 massacre.
“Comparing data from a number of reliable sources we came up with a list of 8,106 names of the people killed in Srebrenica in July 1995,” said member of the foundation’s executive board Amor Masovic on Friday.
Masovic explained that the International Committee of Red Cross, Bosnian and International commissions for missing and associations gathering the massacre survivors were among those who provided the information.
He said that the list was not yet to be considered final, but that it was “99.9% accurate.”