Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 18/07/2023; Author: Alena Beširević
On the 28th anniversary of the genocide in Srebrenica, the web portal Republika published an article in which several inaccuracies are presented with the aim of “proving” that the genocide was not committed in 1995.
On July 11, 2023, the web portal Republika published an article entitled:
DIED IN THE BREAKTHROUGH, BURIED AS CIVILIANS: Hague Court judge presents key evidence that there was no genocide in Srebrenica
In this article, which was published on the day of commemoration of the 28th anniversary of the genocide in Srebrenica, it was stated that the majority of the victims were the fighters of the 28th Division of the BiH Army who “died”.
About 3,000 fighters of the 28th Division of the Army of BiH died in an attempt to avoid punishment for crimes against Serbian civilians.
There was no genocide in Srebrenica, and the key argument that it was a crime committed by individuals without authority was presented by one of the judges of the Hague Court in the trial against General Zdravko Tolimir.
The narrative of 8,000 people shot in July 1995 was imposed by the verdicts of the Tribunal, but the facts say otherwise: the majority of the victims were members of the 28th Army Division, who perished in an attempt to break through to Tuzla and avoid punishment for crimes committed against thousands of Serbs in Podrinje.
The “Judge of the Hague Court” in the title is Hague Tribunal judge Prisce Nyambe, whose alleged statement from the trial of former general Zdravko Tolimir was quoted in the article.
About 3,000 men of military age died not as a result of shooting, but as a result of legitimate combat operations during the breakthrough of the convoy of the 28th division from Srebrenica towards Tuzla. The available evidence indicates that the execution of a certain number of prisoners of war was the work of a small group of individuals who acted without authorization and in secret, and not a decision of the military or political leadership of the RS – said Hague judge Prisce Nyambe from Zambia.
The interlocutors in the article are public figures who previously denied the facts of the genocide in Srebrenica, such as Mladen Grujicic, head of the Municipality of Srebrenica, and Branimir Kojic, president of the Organization of Families of Captured and Killed Fighters and Missing Civilians from Srebrenica. They also said that only or mostly soldiers were buried in Potocari.
This is the biggest hoax that Bosniaks, with the help of Western countries, that is, their representatives, are trying to impose for that narrative to remain in the history books. Where are the soldiers from Srebrenica who killed Serbs from 1992 to July 1995 in the territory of Srebrenica and neighbouring municipalities, where 3,267 Serbs died and were killed, half of them civilians – said Grujicic.
According to him, the testimonies of Bosniak war commanders prove that only soldiers and rare civilians were buried in Potocari who were in the military convoy that started to break through with the army. The commander of the 28th division, Naser Oric, escaped from Srebrenica two months earlier.
(…)
Many of them were not killed in July 1995, but much earlier, or they died later and were buried there. The members of the 28th division started a combat march towards Tuzla, killing everything alive that came their way. In that convoy, there were injuries, exhaustion, quarrels and confrontations, even self-destructive armed fights in order not to be captured – explains Kojic.
He adds that during the breakthrough, that convoy caused significant losses on the Serbian side and that the story about the burial of civilians in Potocari is pure falsification.
What are the facts?
The alleged statement of the judge of the Appeals Council of the International Mechanism for Criminal Courts, Prisce Matimba Nyamba, published by the web portal Republika, was taken from an article by the web portal Glas Srpske published on December 13, 2012, and is not a statement. It is the interpretation of part of her separate opinion in the Tolimir verdict, which was presented by the president of the Association 2Historical Project Srebrenica” Stefan Karganovic. Commenting on the first-instance verdict against Zdravko Tolimir, who, on December 12, 2012, was sentenced to life imprisonment for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Srebrenica and Zepa, Karganovic stated that “judge Nyamba’s dissenting opinion represents the only professionally serious part of the first-instance verdict in the Tolimir case”.
Who is Srdjan Karganovic?
The Government of the Republic of Srpska paid almost two million convertible marks (one million euros) to Karganovic’s association “Historical Project Srebrenica” for the production of numerous pseudo-scientific works aimed at denying the genocide in Srebrenica.
By avoiding paying taxes, it was stated in an article by the Radio Free Europe web portal from April 2016, Karganovic damaged the RS budget by more than 100,000 KM. He has been under investigation since 2014. After he was sentenced to one-month detention in 2019, a warrant was issued for him because the judicial authorities could not find him at any registered address. In the middle of 2020, he was located in the United States of America, when the District Public Prosecutor’s Office of Banja Luka requested help from the judicial authorities of the USA. However, Karganovic has not been detained to date.
The “statement” of Judge Nyamba, without mentioning that it is Karganovic’s retelling, was also found in the article published on July 24, 2015, on the web portal Novosti. This article was shared by the web portal Intermagazin on July 25, 2015.
On December 12, 2012, Zdravko Tolimir was sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes in Srebrenica and Zepa, according to a press release published on the website of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The majority of Trial Chamber II, with Judge Nyamba dissenting, found him guilty of genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, murder in violation of the laws or customs of war, as well as extermination, persecution, inhumane acts by means of forcible transfer, and murder as a crime against humanity.
In April 2015, the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia found Tolimir guilty of genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, extermination, persecution and inhumane acts/forcible transfer in the second-instance proceedings, confirming a life sentence.
Judge Nyamba’s dissenting opinion was published in its entirety in Chapter XIII of the verdict against Tolimiru, who was convicted on six of the eight counts of the indictment. In a separate opinion, Judge Nyambe explained that she was not convinced of the criminal responsibility of the accused and concluded that she would have acquitted him on all eight counts charged in the indictment.
Although it is clear that Nyambe did not agree with the decision of the other two members of the Trial Chamber, judges Christoph Flügge and Antoine Kesia-Mbe Mindu, she does not say in her explanation what Stefan Karganovic said.
In her separate opinion, Judge Nyambe does not question the number of victims but speaks of a certain number of those killed for which, in her opinion, there is no evidence to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that they were killed and not died in a battle. She does not even state that 3,000 people from the convoy that was moving towards Tuzla died in the battle, but says that the evidence, in that case, shows that many from the convoy died in the battle, “perhaps even up to 3,000 people”.
Furthermore, the number referring to people with blindfolds and ligatures increases when taking into account the number killed in the warehouse in Kravica, for whom, although there were no ligatures and blindfolds, like most of the members of the Council, I conclude that prisoners were killed there. However, without additional forensic evidence for a number for whom the evidence is not so clear, I am unable to satisfy myself beyond a reasonable doubt that their deaths have the characteristics of homicide. The evidence, in this case, shows that many from the convoy died in the battle – perhaps as many as 3,000 people.
In a separate opinion, it was not even stated that “military-capable men died in legitimate combat actions” during the breakthrough of the convoy of the 28th division from Srebrenica towards Tuzla, as stated in the article by Republika.
There is no doubt that Judge Nyambe disagreed with almost all the points on which, according to the majority of the Preliminary and later the Appeals Chamber, Tolimir was sentenced to life imprisonment. However, she did not present “key evidence” or “arguments” as to whether genocide was committed or not, but a separate opinion on Tolimir’s criminal responsibility. In addition, her separate opinion was not consistently conveyed in the article of the web portal Glas Srpske, where it was interpreted by Karganovc.
Genocide was committed in Srebrenica
The International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia concluded that the murders of between seven and eight thousand Bosniak men and boys in and around Srebrenica were committed by the Republic of Srpska Army in July 1995, and that most of them were killed in mass executions. The murders were the result of a planned and coordinated operation, which the Court characterized as genocide.
Disinformation that denies the genocide usually appears during the commemoration of the genocide in Srebrenica on July 11, which is also the case with the article by Republika. That’s why we published the facts about the genocide in the analysis from the “Rasvjetljavanje” series, whose goal is to point out the already confirmed disinformation about Srebrenica and the ways of its dissemination and help to recognize it before it is published again.
Verified information about the events concerning the mass murders in and around Srebrenica was published in the publication of the International Residual Mechanism for UN Criminal Courts entitled “Chronology of Genocide”. It is stated there that control over Srebrenica was taken on July 11, 1995, by the Army of Republic of Srpska, and thousands of residents sought refuge in the UN base in nearby Potocari. Already on July 12, the RS Army took control of Potocari and began separating men and boys, and forcibly transferring women and children to Kladanj.
After the fall of Srebrenica, between 10,000 and 15,000 men, including civilians and members of the ARBiH, formed a convoy about ten kilometers long and began moving on foot through the forest in the direction of Tuzla, fearing that they would be killed if they went to Potocari. Thousands of them were captured and executed with men and boys who were separated in Potocari. The mass executions began on July 13 and lasted until the beginning of August. In the following months, the Republic of Srpska Army, in cooperation with local authorities, began exhuming bodies from the original mass graves and moving them to secondary mass graves in an attempt to cover up evidence of mass executions.
Genocide victims rest in the cemetery at the Srebrenica-Potocari Memorial Center, which was founded in 2000 and officially opened in 2003.
The International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia issued eight verdicts for genocide out of 21 verdicts for crimes committed in Srebrenica. The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina issued 25 verdicts for crimes committed in Srebrenica, of which in 13 cases the verdict was for the crime of genocide.
Convoy to Tuzla
In Republika’s article, Mladen Grujicic, the mayor of the Municipality of Srebrenica, and Branimir Kojic, president of the Organization of Families of Captured and Killed Fighters and Missing Civilians from Srebrenica incorrectly talked about the convoy headed from Srebrenica to Tuzla. Both are previously known for denying the genocide in Srebrenica and belittling the Srebrenica victims (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).
In the report published on July 21, 2021, on the website of the Independent International Commission for Researching the Suffering of All Peoples in the Srebrenica Region from 1992 to 1995, which was formed by the Government of the Republic of Srpska, the character of the convoy that left Srebrenica for Tuzla was questioned. In the report, which was criticized by lawyers and transitional justice experts, the genocide was denied by downplaying the number of victims and by claiming that the victims were killed in combat or that they were soldiers.
In the article published on July 29, 2021, BIRN BiH compared the most important parts of the report with the conclusions of the council in the judgments pronounced before the Hague Tribunal. They found that a number of conclusions from the report contradicted the conclusions from several judgments of the Hague Tribunal.
The Hague judgments state that around one-third of the convoy consisted of soldiers from the 28th division, and two-thirds were civilians, although not all soldiers were armed, and that the presence of some armed members of the ABiH personnel in the column is not disputed.
The convoy represented a legitimate military objective, it was stated in the verdict against Radislav Krstic, the former commander of the Drina Corps of the VRS, who was sentenced to 35 years in prison for his responsibility in the genocide.
“The indictment, in this case, does not state that the military actions against the convoy were intentionally or indiscriminately directed against the civilians in the convoy. However, thousands of Bosnian Muslim men, most of them civilians, were arrested from the convoy, who were transferred to places for detention and then executed”, the verdict states.
In addition, in the judgment against Ratko Mladic, the former commander of the Main Staff of the Army of Republic of Srpska, who was sentenced to life imprisonment, among other things, for the genocide in Srebrenica, it is stated that during the execution of the captured men, nothing was done to separate the soldiers from the civilians, i.e. that in all these executions they systematically targeted men of military age, regardless of whether they were civilians or soldiers.
The evidence from the exhumations of the remains showed that most of the victims were killed in mass executions and they contradict the claims that the men who were killed in the vicinity of Srebrenica “died in a battle”. Raskrinkavanje wrote about this in the analysis from the series “Rasvjetljavanje” published on July 5, 2023.
In accordance with the stated facts, we evaluate the claim that no genocide was committed in Srebrenica, published in Republika’s article as fake news. We give the same assessment to the claims that most of the victims were soldiers who died in battle. We assess the quoted statement of Judge Nymaba as disinformation.
Claims that the shooting of a “certain number” of prisoners was the work of a group of individuals who committed it without “authorization” are considered fake news.
Remark:
August 8, 2023: Web portal Republika corrected the incorrect statements in the article, so we add the rating corrected.