Bosnia: Top European rights body urges arrest of Srebrenica massacre’s architects

Bosnia: Top European rights body urges arrest of Srebrenica massacre’s architects

Strasbourg, 10 July (AKI) – The head of Europe’s top rights body the Council of Europe on Thursday urged the capture and trial of top fugitive Bosnian Serb war crimes suspects – wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his general Ratko Mladic.

Mladic has been described as the architect of the notorious massacre of 8,000 Muslim civilians by Bosnian Serb forces in the eastern town of Srebrenica in July 1995 at the end of Bosnia’s civil war.

On Friday, families of 300 victims of Srebrenica – the worst atrocity since World War II – will finally bury their dead after the corpses were excavated from mass graves and identified.

“Tomorrow, the mothers, wives, daughters and sisters of Srebrenica will bury another three hundred of their loved ones, murdered in a genocide committed thirteen years ago,” said Council of Europe Secretary General Terry Davis.

“This premeditated mass murder of thousands of boys and men of all ages will remain forever engraved in the collective memory of Europe,” he continued.

“Today is an occasion to remember the victims and renew our sympathy to their families, but it is also an occasion to express our anger. “

Two indicted war criminals, accused of bearing the highest responsibility for the genocide, are still running free. This is an insult to the memory of the victims… Bring Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic to justice.”

The United Nations war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has indicted Karadzic and Mladic for war crimes and genocide allegedly committed during Bosnia’s bloody 1992-1995 civil war.

Both men have been at large for over a decade