ATIK | Confederation of Workers from Turkey in Europe | AHM-ATIK News Center
THE HAGUE | 06- 09- 2013 | The Dutch state has been found responsible by a court in The Hague for the deaths of three Muslim men after the fall of Srebrenica during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war.
“The court ruled that the Dutch state is responsible for the death of these men because Dutchbat (Dutch UN troops) should not have handed them over,” a spokeswoman for the court said on Tuesday.
Dutch UN peacekeeping troops were in charge of the UN-declared Srebrenica ‘safe area’ in July 1995 when Bosnian Serb forces overran the enclave and later killed 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys.
Relatives of a local electrician who assisted the Dutch but was killed at Srebrenica, and the troops’ local interpreter, whose father and brother are also believed to have died, lodged legal action against the Dutch state seeking damages.
In its ruling, the court said the Dutch state was responsible for the death of these men because the Dutchbat should not have allowed the men to leave the safe area or fall into the hands of the Bosnian Serb forces.
“The Dutchbat had been witness to multiple incidents in which the Bosnian Serbs mistreated or killed male refugees outside the compound,” the court said in its ruling.
“The Dutch therefore knew that … the men were at great risk if they were to leave the compound.”
Several lawsuits
The Dutch government, which has faced several lawsuits in recent years over the massacre, has always insisted that its troops were abandoned by the United Nations, which provided them no air support.
Al Jazeera Andrew Simmons, reporting live from The Hague, said that the ruling was significant as it could open up the door for compensation claims.
“The last decision of the court was that the UN was responsible for the mandate, and therefore the state was not responsible,” our correspondent said.
“Hasan Nuhanovic, a translator with the UN, saw his family members being handed over. He was protected because he worked for the UN, but his family was taken by the Serb troops and killed.”
Government lawyer Karlijn Teuben said after the latest ruling she would have to study the decision before deciding whether to appeal.
The landmark ruling could open the path to other compensation claims by victims who claim they should have been protected by Dutch United Nations peacekeepers during the July 1995 mass killings by Bosnian Serb troops.
Specific ruling
A case launched by the group Mothers of Srebrenica against the Dutch state is now before the Dutch Supreme Court, where lawyers are seeking a referral of the case to the European Court of Justice to also challenge the immunity of the United Nations.
In its ruling on Tuesday, the appeals court said its decision only applied to the specific case of the three Muslim men and no ruling had been made over the situation of the other refugees at Srebrenica.
However, the court said that Dutch troops were initially operating under UN orders and that an “exceptional situation” developed after the fall of Srebrenica.
Since the Dutch government tried to intervene in the situation, it could be held responsible for the deaths of three men, the court said.
The Srebrenica massacre remains a sensitive issue in the Netherlands, where the government fell in 2002 after a damning report by the Dutch Institute for War Documentation into the events surroundings the killings. ( ilmeditareneo.it)
