UN opens Srebrenica trial 11 years after massacre
Judges at the UN Yugoslav tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, today began the latest – and largest – trial of military officers blamed for the summary execution of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica 11 years ago.
Charges of genocide make the case against the seven former Bosnian Serb officers one of the most important in the tribunal’s history.
This follows the death of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic four months ago before his own genocide trial could be completed.
The trial began in the week that the town in eastern Bosnia – which the UN had declared a safe haven – marked the anniversary of the week in 1995 when Bosnian Serb forces massacred some 8,000 Muslim men and boys there.
Tribunal chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte was to give an opening statement today before the court adjourns for its summer recess. The case is due to resume in late August.
Earlier this week, 505 bodies exhumed from mass graves were reburied in Srebrenica after painstaking efforts to formally identify them. Thousands remain missing.
