Justice Denied in Bosnia

Abstract

Srebrenica Fell on July 11, 1996. Requests by the Dutch battalion for air support made it all the way to UN Commander General Bernard Janvier, and four hours later two bombs landed on Serb positions, but strikes were suspended when the Bosnian Serb Army threatened to kill Dutch hostages. The executions at Srebrenica took days. Bosnian Muslim men and boys were shot beside pits and buried in mass graves. They were caught as they tried to flee through mine-infested fields and mountains. They were taken to warehouses and factories where they were executed, or gunned down in the wilderness over a period of weeks. In all, up to eight thousand were killed. Today, One of the enduring questions about the 1991–1995 wars is the extent to which Serbia and Montenegro (the successor states to "Yugoslavia" or "rump Yugoslavia") were responsible for planning and facilitating the genocide in Bosnia. In February, the International Court of Justice attempted to answer this question by ruling that Serbia failed to prevent genocide in Srebrenica but had not been directly responsible for it.