Dutch court rules state liable for 300 Srebenica massacre victims

A court in the Netherlands ruled today that the Dutch state was liable for the deaths of over 300 victims of the Srebrenica massacre, the worst atrocity on European soil since World War II.

Families of the victims had brought a case the Dutch government over the 1995 killings, accusing Dutch UN peacekeepers of failing to protect the 8,000 Muslim men and boys slaughtered by ethnic Serbian troops.

The massacre took place just a few months before the end of Bosnia's 1992-1995 war, which claimed some 100,000 lives in total.

"The state is liable for the loss suffered by relatives of the men who were deported by the Bosnian Serbs from the Dutchbat compound in Potocari in the afternoon of 13 July, 1995," the court said.

"Dutchbat should have taken into account the possibility that these men would be the victim of genocide and that it can be said with sufficient certainty that, had the Dutchbat allowed them to stay at the compound, these men would have remained alive," it ruled.

Dutchbat was the name for the Dutch force under the nominal control of the United Nations in the former Yugoslavia.

The Mothers of Srebrenica, representing some 6,000 widows and victims' relatives, have been seeking justice for years for the massacre, which the UN's highest International Court of Justice has ruled was genocide.

The tiny Muslim enclave was under UN protection until July 11, 1995 when it was overrun by ethnic Serb forces under the command of the “Butcher of Bosnia”, Ratko Mladic, who is currently on trial on genocide and war crimes charges over the war in Bosnia, including the Srebrenica slaughter.

Mladic's troops brushed aside the lightly-armed Dutch peacekeepers in a "safe area" where thousands of Muslims from surrounding villages had gathered for protection.

In the subsequent days, almost 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered and their bodies dumped in mass graves.

Wednesday's ruling comes just days after thousands of people gathered in Srebrenica to mark the 19th anniversary of the killings.

So far, the remains of 6,066 people have been exhumed from mass graves in the Srebrenica region for reburial.