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'The Major just ordered everyone in the camp to leave, without any option. The Serbs, carrying long dirty knives and full combat equipment, stood at the gate. Their dogs barked at the refugees who were leaving. The Dutch soldiers just stood by and watched them take all the boys and men away from their wives, sisters and daughters. For some reason at such moments you have no brain, you are so obedient that you just do what they tell you. Nobody even complained when they walked towards the gate, knowing they were probably going to die. The last time I saw my family was when they walked through that gate. That evening the Dutch received a convoy with food and beer. There was the sound of music at the back of the camp. They were drinking beer and playing loud music as if nothing had happened. The Dutch, like the French, British and US governments, are trying to forget the Srebrenica massacre.'
'She is half Croat, half Bosniak, and she is only 17. Her father had been killed. She said very little after arriving at the hospital. Later, though, she spoke of being imprisoned with her mother and two dozen other women in the basement of a municipal hall in her home town. Her jailers, Bosnian Serbs, raped her and the others and forced them to have sex with Bosnian Serb troops in the area. They had to watch each other being gang-raped each day for four months. When she became visibly pregnant, she was released. Her jailers said "Go bear our Serbian children". In Bosnia, rape was a weapon of combat. After she give birth, she refused to see the baby. The next day she was nowhere to be found; she hasn't contacted the hospital since. Nor does her name appear on the roll of witnesses to be called at the Hague tribunal.'
'In the British-controlled sector of Bosnia, the former commander of Omarska's notorious concentration camp was employed as deputy police chief in Omarska. In the American sector, an indictee gave an interview in the office where he worked as his town's top official. Reporters in the French zone spotted Bosnian Serbs indicted for systematic rape making the rounds of cafés and bars. Other reporters visiting a Dutch-controlled area sighted Bosnian Croats indicted for massacres of civilians.
All four of the 1949 Geneva Conventions [link to Geneva Conventions] oblige States to search for and try those suspected of grave breaches, regardless of the suspect's home country or the site of the crime. The United States, Britain and France signed and ratified the Conventions, as did every other participant in the US-led 'Implementation Force' and later 'Stabilisation Force'. NATO, however, devised, and later reinterpreted at its convenience, its own rule for troops: they will detain war criminals "only when they confront them in the normal course of their assigned mission". When challenged, top NATO authorities said States' obligations under the Geneva Conventions were not their responsibility. NATO is not party to the Conventions. The legal adviser to the Allied commander in Europe told Amnesty International that NATO's reluctance to arrest war criminals "reflected the political realities in the region". A United Nations Peacekeeping Operations representative (a general) said, "We are not authorised to enforce law and order. The real responsibility for the apprehension of indicted war criminals lies with the local authorities". By such logic, the deputy chief of police in Omarska should arrest himself.'
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