SIXTEEN YEARS after the massacre of 8,000 men and boys in the Bosnian “safe haven” of Srebrenica, the worst atrocity in Europe since the second World War, the Dutch defence minister has agreed to reveal the whereabouts of a mass grave believed to contain at least seven bodies.
Hans Hillen promised to make public the location of the grave “in a few days” after a former member of Dutchbat, the UN battalion charged with protecting the enclave in July 1995, claimed the ministry of defence had been suppressing the information.
The claim was made by Dave Maat, a soldier who served with Dutchbat III at the time Srebrenica was overrun by Bosnian Serb forces under the command of Gen Ratko Mladic, supported by the infamous Serb paramilitary unit known as the Scorpions.
Gen Mladic was arrested in Serbia in May and was charged with genocide and crimes against humanity when he appeared before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia a few days later. He refused to enter a plea to the charges and is due to appear again on July 4th.
The charges against Gen Mladic and the former president of the breakaway Serb Republic, Dr Radovan Karadzic – who are held together at the UN detention unit outside The Hague – relate specifically to the Srebrenica massacre and the siege of Sarajevo from 1992 to 1996.
Mr Maat (35) – a former soldier with the air brigade who, like many other members of Dutchbat, suffered afterwards from post-traumatic stress disorder – made his claims on the high-profile Dutch TV current affairs programme, Nieuwsuur, on Monday evening. He said thousands of Muslim refugees were housed in 1995 in an abandoned factory within the perimeter of the Dutchbat area, and that at least seven had died there.
Despite careful excavation by forensic archaeologists and pathologists, Mr Maat said that when he visited the area again recently, he found relatives of those who died still searching for the bodies of their loved ones 16 years later. He said that on his return to the Netherlands, he asked the ministry of defence about the location of the grave, but was told the information was confidential.
However, Mr Maat told the programme he believed the defence ministry possessed photographs of the grave and a map showing its co-ordinates.
In response to the claims, Mr Hillen said there had been a misunderstanding within his department about the information requested. He said that when Dutchbat soldiers returned from Bosnia in 1995, they were debriefed about what had happened in Srebrenica – and defence officials had mistakenly believed this was the information sought.
The Minister told Nieuwsuur that information about the secret grave could now be released, and said he would ensure it was made available “in a few days.” Apart from any photographs by Dutchbat troops, it is widely accepted CIA U2 spy planes photographed mass graves being dug at Srebrenica and followed the operation in which Bosnian Serb soldiers separated the Muslim men and boys from the women.
Last July, relatives of some of the Srebrenica victims started legal proceedings against three Dutch officers – including the commanding officer, Col Thomas Karremans – claiming they had failed to protect the enclave despite allegedly being aware of previous mass executions.