The sums that don’t add up

By the end of the first week in August 1995 35,632 people had been registered by the World Health Organisation and Bosnian Government as displaced persons from the Srebrenica safe area - in other words, survivors of Srebrenica.  The Red Cross had also seen and noted that ‘several thousand’ armed Muslim men from Srebrenica had passed safely behind Muslim lines to an area called Sapna Finger and had then been redeployed to fight elsewhere ‘without their families being informed’.  As noted above, some 700 soldiers from Srebrenica had made their way to Zepa, emerging safely from that town when it fell to the Serbs during the last week of July 1995.  So  there were in total at least 38,000 / 39,000 survivors of Srebrenica – a figure that precisely coincides with the total pre-fall population estimates of the major aid agencies.   

 

Making the sums add up becomes even more difficult because the figures above take no account of casualties from the fighting between the Bosnian Serb Army (BSA) and the armed column that left Srebrenica for Muslim-held territory.  It is common ground in accounts of what happened that there were significant casualties on both sides from these clashes.  A report published in September 2002 by Republika Srpska estimated an overall figure of approximately 2,000 Bosnian Muslim Army (ABiH) combat deaths, in addition to some 500 BSA fatalities.  Whilst some of these casualties were from the ABiH Tuzla brigade, which had come out in support, the vast majority were from the armed column which had left Srebrenica. 

 

It doesn’t end there.  Both the Dutch peacekeeping force (Dutchbat) contingent in Srebrenica and undercover British SAS intelligence officers who were in the town when it fell said they had witnessed bitter fighting between Muslims in Srebrenica shortly before the Serbs entered the town.  Descriptions suggest that around 100 may have died and that their bodies were left where they had fallen. There are also reports that considerable numbers of Muslims died when they crossed a minefield which had been laid by their own side.

 

Taking all these factors together, in order for 7,300 people from Srebrenica to have been massacred, the population of the safe area before it fell to the Serbs would have had to be well over 46,000 – a figure far in excess of any credible estimate put forward at the time. 

 

It is immensely significant that one of the judges in the Krstic case, Judge Patricia Wald, estimated the total pre-fall population of Srebrenica at 37,000 when writing an account of the Krstic case for the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics. (The Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics Spring 2003, SECTION: Vol. 16, No. 3; Pg. 445; ISSN: 10415548, HEADLINE: General Radislav Krstic: A war crimes case study, BYLINE: PATRICIA M. WALD)


“Prior to the attack, Srebrenica was a village of some 37,000 inhabitants.”

Judge Wald was apparently supremely unaware that her own figure made it impossible for the crimes for which Krstic was convicted to have taken place.

Žao mi je srebreničkih žrtava ali mi je još vise žao srpih koji su zbog naduvavanja ovog srebreničkog balona nestale. Zašto muslimani ne odaju tamo počaste i sećanja na srpske žrtve.. Danas mi u BLICU nisu odobrili komentar ovog tipa, znači kad srbi pomenu srpske žrtve to je sramotno i nije za javnost.. 

Poznat identitet 6.186 Srebreničana

^{10. jul 2009. | 00:44 -> 10:34 | Izvor: Beta, Tanjug}

Sarajevo, Podgorica -- Međunarodna komisija za nestala lica utvrdila je DNK analizom identitet 6.186 osoba nestalih tokom pada Srebrenice, u julu 1995. godine.

^{Ekshumacija tela žrtava Srebrenice (FoNet, arhiva)}

Testiranje koje je sporovela ICMP, koristeći DNK profile iz uzoraka krvi živih srodnika i posmrtnih ostataka koji su ekshumirani iz masovnih grobnica širom zemlje, pokazalo je postojanje podudarnosti.

Kada je u pitanju Bosna i Hercegovina, u ICMP-ovoj bazi podataka nalaze se DNK profili 69.051 krvnih uzoraka koje su donirali srodnici nestalih osoba i 25.033 koštana uzorka ljudskih ostataka.

Prema procenama ICMP, obajvljenim na internet sajtu te organizacije, oko 8.100 osoba je nestalo tokom pada Srebrenice u julu 1995. godine, kada su snage bosanskih Srba zauzele taj grad.

ICMP je od 2001. godine, od kada koristi DNK analizu, do danas pomogla u identifikaciji ukupno 12.520 osoba iz BiH.