Writ of summons - Van Diepen Van der Kroef

23 July 1995 (see H. Praamsma, J. Peekel, T. Boumans, Herinneringen aan Srebrenica,171 Soldatengesprekken, page 214):‘I am totally disillusioned with the army command. A man such as Couzy still has toexplain a few things to me. I spoke to him in Zagreb on 23 July for a quarter of anhour. He said then:‘Adjutant (…) note my words: the world press will soon be here andthey will want to hear from you that you have seen all manner of things. But you sawnothing, because nothing happened’.’334. It was concluded in the Report of the French Parliament that the reason for the nonreportingof the observed war crimes lay in the fact that during the entire crisis thepriority of the Dutch government lay in the protection of the Dutchbat soldiers heldcaptive by the Bosnian Serbs (VRS) (see the Report of the French Parliament, Part I,page 102). The State of the Netherlands allowed by that balancing of interests a possibledanger for some tens of soldiers to weigh more heavily than the lives of many tens ofthousands of refugees. That is unlawful towards Plaintiff. Plaintiff and Foundation recallwhat was stated under the facts, namely, that the Dutchbat soldiers concerned voluntarilyallowed themselves to be taken hostage by the VRS, while the Deputy BattalionCommander of Dutchbat, Major Franken, had dismissed the danger posed to thosesoldiers as he was certain that the VRS had every interest in not killing any UN soldiers(see page 2241 of the NIOD Report). Finally, Plaintiff and Foundation note in thisconnection that not a single Dutchbat soldier was killed by the VRS.335. The facts and circumstances set out above lead to the conclusion that the UN and theState of the Netherlands unlawfully failed to fulfill their obligations or at least madeinsufficient efforts to do so.Unlawful acting by the UN and State of the Netherlands336. Should the obligation to provide the population with protection, or at least the obligationto make sufficient efforts thereto, not arise from agreement, then the failure ofprotection, or at least the failure to make sufficient efforts to ensure protection, is to becharacterized as unlawful conduct towards the population of the Safe Area, which© Van Diepen Van der Kroef Advocaten 2007www.vandiepen.com145