Jack Straw, today said it was to the shame of the international community that the massacre of more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica 10 years ago had happened “under our noses”.
Mr Straw, who is also representing the EU during Britain’s presidency, said it was “sickening” that those behind the worst act of genocide in Europe since the second world war were still free.
Speaking at the cemetery, he named the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his army commander, General Ratklo Mladic, as the two men behind the massacre.
Both are indicted by UN war crimes tribunal in the Hague, but it is believed they are being sheltered by sympathisers in the Serbian military or church.
When the enclave - which was under the protection of lightly armed Dutch peacekeepers - fell, Bosnian Serb troops sent women and children to Muslim-held territory and kept males aged between 16 and 70 - but sometimes younger or older - behind for “war crimes screening”.
They were crammed into warehouses, schools and barns in the area outside Srebrenica and shot before being buried in dozens of mass graves from July 11 to July 18 1995.
Bosnian Serb forces attempted to cover up the massacre, and the first news of what had happened did not emerge for more than a month.
The EU’s foreign policy representative, Javier Solana, today said the killings had seen a shameful failure by the international community.
“The victims had put their trust in international protection,” he said in a statement. “But we, the international community, let them down. This was a colossal, collective and shameful failure.”
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The world should be ashamed while the genocide was being committed in heart of Europe where was the so called civillised world, busy reaping the benefits of the oil money from Gulf War I it seems.**
