AMSTERDAM, (Reuters) – The Netherlands is liable for some 300 of the more than 8,000 deaths in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, a Dutch court ruled today, pinning some of the blame for Europe’s worst massacre since World War Two on the state.
A lower court in The Hague said Dutch peacekeepers in Srebrenica, a Bosnian Muslim enclave in Bosnian Serb-held territory, could have known that the 300 men in their care would be murdered if deported from the Dutch compound.
“(The Dutch batallion) should have taken into account the possibility that these men would be the victim of genocide and that it can be said with sufficient certainty that, had Dutchbat allowed them to stay at the compound, these men would have remained alive,” the court said.
