Srebrenica victims remembered, 14 years on

Fourteen years after the Srebrenica massacre, victims are still being buried and tears are still being shed. Marking today’s anniversary, tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslims prayed for the dead.

Many were looking for loved one’s coffins as the newly-identified remains of 534 people, recovered from mass graves, were laid to rest.

Some 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed in Europe’s worst massacre since the Second World War. Bodies are discovered regularly and more than 3,000 victims had already been given a proper burial at the Srebrenica-Potocari Memorial Centre.

The events of July 11th 1995 are fresh in many minds. That is when forces led by Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic seized the UN so-called “safe-area” of Srebrenica. Women and children were taken out of the town in eastern Bosnia. Men and teenage boys were slaughtered.

An indicted war criminal, Mladic remains on the run. But the past has caught up with then-Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic who was arrested a year ago. He has just lost a bid to have war crimes charges against him at the Hague Tribunal, including genocide, dropped. The motion was based on claims he had struck an immunity deal with former US peace envoy Richard Holbrooke, something the American denies.

Copyright © 2009 euronews

tags: Anniversary, Bosnian war