Dutch state is partially liable for ’95 massacre
THE HAGUE, Netherlands — A Dutch appeals court ruled Tuesday that the government was partially liable in the deaths of more than 300 Muslim men killed by Bosnian Serb forces in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.
The ruling formally struck down a civil court’s landmark 2014 judgment that said the state was liable in the deaths of the Bosnian Muslim men and boys who were turned over by Dutch U.N. peacekeepers to Bosnian Serb forces in July 1995 and subsequently killed.
But the appeals panel largely upheld the earlier case’s findings while significantly cutting the amount of damages relatives of the dead could receive by assessing the victims’ chances of survival had they remained in the care of the Dutch troops.
The court estimated the chances of Muslim males’ survival if they had stayed in the Dutch compound at around 30 percent.
“The state is therefore liable for 30 percent of the losses suffered by the relatives,” the court said in a statement. The 2014 judgment didn’t include that qualification.
In a written reaction, the Dutch Defense Ministry said the government would carefully study the latest ruling.
“The starting point is that the Bosnian Serbs were responsible,” the statement said.
Rights group Amnesty International welcomed the ruling as drawing a line in the sand for peacekeepers.
“More than two decades after the Srebrenica massacre, this decision establishes that peacekeepers can be held responsible for a failure to protect civilians and that their governments can and will be held to account for their conduct,” said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International’s Europe Director.
The appeals judgment is the latest in a string of legal cases in the Netherlands concerning the country’s role in the Srebrenica massacre and whether the country’s soldiers could or should have done more to prevent the mass killings. About 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed by Bosnian Serb forces in Europe’s worst massacre since World War II.
The ruling came the morning after a lawyer told a latenight television show that he was filing a claim for 206 veterans of the Dutch Srebrenica mission seeking compensation and recognition for the suffering they have endured since the fall of the enclave.
Lawyer Michael Ruperti told talk show host Eva Jinek he is claiming $25,000 per veteran, a symbolic amount of about $1,000 per year since the fall of Srebrenica.