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Reuters General/ ­- Article, Sex, 13 de Abril de 2012
CLIPPING INTERNACIONAL (Supreme Court)
U.N. can't be tried for Srebrenica
massacre -Dutch court
(Reuters) ­- The Dutch Supreme Court ruled on Friday
that the United Nations cannot be prosecuted in the
Netherlands for failing to prevent genocide against
Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica near the end of
Bosnia's war in 1995. The final ruling was the last legal
option in the Netherlands for a group of survivors of
the July 1995 massacre, when as many as 8,000 boys
and men were killed by Serb forces in an area that the
United Nations had declared a "safe haven". Lawyers
representing a group of 6,000 survivors calling
themselves the Mothers of Srebrenica said they would
appeal against the decision at the European Court of
Human Rights. "The U.N., as the international human
rights champion, should not stand above the law but
should take responsibility for its role in the Srebrenica
genocide in 1995," a statement issued by the group
said. "This is a violation of fundamental human rights
and in contravention of the case law of the European
Court for Human Rights (ECHR) and the European
Court of Justice (ECJ)." In 2001 the International
Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY)
judged that the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre was an
act of genocide. The fall of Srebrenica to Serb forces
was the worst single atrocity during the 1992­-95 war
and the first act of genocide in Europe since the Nazi
Holocaust against Jews. The Muslim enclave in
eastern Bosnia near the border with Serbia was under
the protection of Dutch peacekeeping troops deployed
by the United Nations. "The Supreme Court upholds
the opinion of the (lower) court that the U.N. has the
most far­-reaching form of immunity and cannot be
prosecuted by any national court," a summary of the
ruling said. Axel Hagedorn, an attorney at the Van
Diepen Van der Kroef law firm representing families of
the victims, said an appeal would be filed at the
European Court of Human Rights in Strasburg within
six months. "We will argue that the Dutch soldiers and
the United nations violated human rights," he said.
"Granting legal immunity to a group claiming to defend
human rights is like turning things upside down."
Inexperienced and outgunned Dutch soldiers were
unable to prevent attacking Serb fighters from
capturing Srebrenica, separating Bosnian Muslim men
from women and busing them off to dozens of
execution sites. Last year, a Dutch appeals court found
the Dutch state responsible for the deaths of three
victims, opening the way for compensation claims over
the failed peacekeeping mission. Former Bosnian Serb
military commander Ratko Mladic, indicted by the ICTY
near the end of the war for genocide and war crimes
over the Srebrenica killings and the 43­-month siege of
Sarajevo, was arrested a year ago after 16 years on
the run. In December, the tribunal accepted a
prosecutor's request to speed up the trial amid fears
that Mladic, 69, who has suffered ill health, could die
without facing justice as happened with former
Yugoslav and Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic.
(Reporting By Anthony Deutsch; Editing by Mark
Heinrich)
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