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Graphic shows timeline of Srebrenica massacre.
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WAR CRIMES

Srebrenica massacre 25th anniversary

By Jordi Bou

July 11, 2020 - Commemorations take place to mark the 25th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, the worst atrocity on European soil since the Holocaust. More than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed over the course of three days after the town was overrun by Bosnian Serb forces in the closing months of the country's 1992-95 fratricidal war.

With the support of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's government in Belgrade, Bosnian Serb forces led by General Ratko Mladic attacked the eastern enclave of Srebrenica where about 40,000 Bosnian Muslims had found shelter under United Nations protection.

After Srebrenica fell into Serb hands on July 11, 1995, the women and children were separated from the men and bussed to territory controlled by the Bosnian army. Some 8,000 men and boys were then executed by Bosnian Serb forces.

A quarter of a century later, the bodies of more than 7,000 victims of the Srebrenica genocide have been exhumed, identified and buried, but more than 1,000 people are still missing, or their remains awaiting recovery and identification.

In 2017, Ratko Mladic was convicted of war crimes and sent to prison for life. Radovan Karadzic, former President of the Republika Srpska, was convicted of genocide in 2013 while Slobodan Milosevic, former president of Serbia, indicted on charges of genocide, and crimes against humanity, died before his sentencing.

But despite high-level prosecutions of some of the main perpetrators of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, there is still a huge backlog of cases where justice has yet to be served.

Sources
PUBLISHED: 10/07/2020; STORY: Graphic News; PICTURES: Associated Press, Getty Images
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