NYT: Video of Serbs in Srebrenica Massacre Leads to Arrests - Scenes of 1995 atrocity refute denials

New York Times ^ | June 3, 2005 | NICHOLAS WOOD

[OESY]

Almost 10 years after the massacre of more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys by Serbian security forces in Srebrenica, a video has surfaced that presents graphic details of their fate. Several people in the video were arrested as a result, the Serbian prime minister said Thursday.

The tape - shown at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague on Wednesday and rebroadcast on Serbian television on Thursday - shows the killing of six Muslim men by members of a Serbian paramilitary police unit.

While the number of those killed represents a tiny proportion of those who died in July 1995, the video is being seen as irrefutable evidence that Serbia's police forces, and not just Bosnian Serb forces, took part in the massacre, evidence that challenges the commonly held view among Serbs that the atrocity never took place.

The killings, which began July 11, 1995, in a designated United Nations safe haven overrun by Serbs, are widely acknowledged to be the worst atrocities committed in Europe since World War II.

The massacre represented the final push by Bosnian Serb forces to forge an "ethnically pure" state within Bosnia and end the war on their own terms. The atrocities ultimately prompted Western military intervention to end the conflict.

A decade later many Serbs say they are either unaware of war crimes or refuse to accept that their police or security forces could have committed them.

Serbia's prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, announced the arrest of several of those caught on the video....

"I think it is important for our public that we reacted immediately and that based on this shocking and horrible footage several of those who are involved in this crime are arrested and will answer to justice," he said....

[OESY]

The video shows a group of paramilitary police, called the Scorpions, being blessed by a Serbian Orthodox priest before they start their mission. The video, shot by a member of the group, shows six emaciated men being removed from a canvas covered military truck driven from Srebrenica to Treskavica, a mountain in Serbian-held territory south of Sarajevo.



Serbian television ran video on Thursday of killings by a Serbian security force in 1995. The video showed men taken from Srebrenica to Treskavica, in Serbian-held territory, where six were shot, their hands tied.



The graphic film was shot near the town whose name now recalls the worst massacre in Europe since World War Two, in which 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed over several days and their bodies bulldozed into mass graves.

The tape was shown on Radio Television Serbia, as well as B92, a privately run station. The torture scenes were not broadcast, but the killings were.

[twigs]

Are you over there right now? I'm trying to get information on Croats living in Kosovo. How many and their status...

[Americanexpat]

I have no problem killing terrorists on the battlefield or to prevent them from killing innocent people. But you got to draw a line somewhere or your just as bad as the terrorists.

[OESY]

Hi twigs!

I'm not, but here are some websites to check out:


http://www.unpo.org/member.php?arg=32

http://www.kosovo.com/news/archive/ticker/2004/December_30/35.html

http://www.aneki.com/facts/serbia.html

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Croatia

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1394707/posts

[Luigi Vasellini]

I doubt if they are innocents. The ever so tolerant muzzies have burned down 80-100 orthodox churches in kosovo. Ive seen a link posted here numerous times. How do we know they arent playing the palestinian way and posing for these pics, after all that is the islamic way!!!

[Destro]

Bosnia: Muslim Commander Charged In Pre-Srebrenica Atrocities (Muslims caused brutal Serb response)

SREBRENICA, Bosnia: Nasir Oric's war trophies don't line the wall of his comfortable apartment-- one of the few with electricity in this besieged Muslim enclave stuck in the forbidding mountains of eastern Bosnia. They're on a videocassette tape: burned Serb houses and headless Serb men, their bodies crumpled in a pathetic heap.

"We had to use cold weapons that night," Oric explains as scenes of dead men sliced by knives roll over his 21-inch Sony. "This is the house of a Serb named Ratso," he offers as the camera cuts to a burned-out ruin. "He killed two of my men, so we torched it. Tough luck."

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Not our idea of justice but maybe the headhunter jihadis had it coming?

From the so called Serb video tape: Perhaps in response to a plea to wait, a voice could be heard telling the bound men that "when you were killing Serbs you didn't wait."

[BroncosFan]

Would still like to see a "mainstream" news org. look into the Sarajevo market massacre and the "mass grave" in that vill in Kosovo where 30+ "innocent Muslims" were "assassinated." I've read enough to conclude both were staged for media relations purposes.

[steve8714]

I thought it was 100,000.

[adam_az]

I'm usually skeptical of this kind of video.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

To kill a Muslim in a crusade is a sacramental according to St. Bernard of Clairvaux.

[adam_az]

"Since the Serb soldiers in the video who are shooting the prisoners have been positively identified and arrested in Serbia, there does not seem to be much room for skepticism."

I mean - was this a summary battlefield execution of combatants? Or were they civillians?

I remember Clintons SecDef Cohen got front page headlines that 100,000 Kosovars had been murdered - the number of bodies found came to a tiny % of that, and most were combatants. Sadly civillians die in war too, so that's not evidence of mass atrocity.

My point is that I'm skeptical of this kind of video because it completely lacks context.

[Destro]

Try half that for all sides like 20-30K killed.

[Destro]

http://www.11thcavnam.com/main/shedding_some_light_on_another_p.htm

Photographer Adams later said that he talked to Loan and Loan said "They killed many of my men and many of your people."22 Adams continued referring to the executed Vietcong: "They found out that he was the same guy who killed one of his ---uh---Loan’s officers and wiped out his whole family.23 Adams also expressed regret for what the photograph had done to Loan’s life.

[Destro]

THE BOSNIA CALCULATION: How many have died?
Not nearly as many as some would have you think.

George Kenney

The NY Times Magazine, April 23, 1995, pp.42-43

By my count, the number of fatalities in Bosnia's war isn't 200,000 but 25,000 to 60,000 -- total from all sides. What surprises me is not that the popular figure is so inflated -- informed people can and will argue about it for some time to come -- but that it has been so widely and uncritically accepted.

[Destro]

See above.