A SECRET grave containing at least five bodies, including that of an infant, has been found after a five-year search at the former Dutch peacekeepers’ compound near the Bosnian town of Srebrenica – overrun by Bosnian Serb forces in 1995 in the worst massacre in Europe since the second World War.
The discovery ends a battle between former Dutch soldiers searching for the grave since 2007 and the department of defence in The Hague which first said its location was “confidential”. But last year the department was finally forced by public outrage to deliver the co-ordinates to Bosnian authorities.
Almost 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered when the UN “safe haven” fell at the height of the Bosnian war. But this grave at Potocari is believed to contain the bodies of refugees who died while still under the protection of the 400 Dutch troops who infamously stood aside while the town was taken.
Thousands of refugees were housed in an abandoned factory in the UN’s Dutch battalion area and those buried in the grave are believed to have died from illness, neglect, absence of basic medicines, exhaustion, starvation or lack of water.
Their bodies were buried by Dutch soldiers shortly after the fall of the enclave. The grave’s co-ordinates were noted by the officer in charge, but no attempt was made during the past 17 years to pass the information to relatives of the dead, despite well-publicised searches for graves around Srebrenica.
Two previous attempts to find the grave have failed due to lack of precise information. But based on the official Dutch co-ordinates, the exhumation of the bodies began late on Thursday.
So far the remains of an infant, two women and two men have been recovered.
The bodies were lying in a row, some wrapped in blankets, others in plastic.
Experts said the baby may have been stillborn and one of the women appeared to have died of diabetes, for which there was no medical treatment at the camp.
They believe there could still be as many as four more bodies in the same grave or in the immediate vicinity. Forensic pathologists and Bosnian police are continuing the search.
Dutch NGO Pax Christi, which works in Srebrenica with the families of those missing, said DNA tests would be done as soon as possible to try to establish the victims’ identities and cause of death, after which the remains would be handed over to relatives for burial.
The search for the grave began in 2007 when former Dutch battalion soldiers who had served at Potocari revisited Srebrenica and met relatives of those who died. They subsequently contacted former comrades who had been involved in or witnessed the burials, and started an embarrassing high-profile freedom of information and media campaign.
Former Bosnian Serb commander Gen Rakto Mladic is on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague charged with 11 counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 to 1995 – including masterminding the Srebrenica massacre.
He pleads not guilty.
