Bosnian Serbs Own Up to Srebrenica Massacre

Bosnian Serb officials have acknowledged for the first time that their security forces carried out the massacre of thousands of Muslims at Srebrenica, said an investigative report released Friday.

An official commission looking into Europe’s worst massacre since World War II “established participation” of Bosnian Serb military and police units, including special police units, in the deaths, said Vedran Persic, a spokesman for Paddy Ashdown, Bosnia’s international administrator.

During the height of the Bosnian war, Serb troops overran a U.N.-declared safe zone in Srebrenica and slaughtered as many as 8,000 Muslim men and boys.

The Bosnian Serbs have long been blamed for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, which the United Nations war crimes tribunal at The Hague has called an act of genocide. But until now, no Serb official had clearly acknowledged that Bosnian Serbs were the perpetrators.

Quoting from the report, Persic said the commission discovered “that in July 1995, several thousand Muslims were liquidated in a way that represents grave violations of international humanitarian law.”

So far, U.N. and Muslim experts have found the remains of about 5,000 of the victims.

Ashdown formed the Srebrenica Commission last year to determine who was involved in the massacre and where bodies were buried. The commissioners are Bosnian Serb judges and lawyers, a victims representative and international experts.

The report said the perpetrators of the massacre “undertook measures to cover up the crime by moving the bodies” to other locations, Persic said.

Under the 1995 peace accord that ended the war, Ashdown has the power to impose laws and fire officials who fail to comply with the peace process. The agreement also divided postwar Bosnia into two mini-states: a Serb republic and a Muslim-Croat federation.

Persic said Ashdown welcomed the report, saying that “a dynamic of obstructionism on war crimes issues is being replaced by a dynamic of greater cooperation” on the part of Bosnia’s Serbs.

Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb wartime leader, has been indicted by the war crimes tribunal for genocide in connection with the Srebrenica massacre, along with his top wartime general, Ratko Mladic. Both remain at large.