The European Court of Human Rights on Thursday dismissed a claim that Dutch commanders should be prosecuted for failing to prevent the deaths of three victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.
The pan-Europe court “unanimously declared the application inadmissible,” in what it called a “final” decision.
The families of the three Bosnian Muslims, who were killed along with some 8,000 others after leaving the protection of Dutch UN peacekeepers, had asked the ECHR in October 2015 to prosecute three ex-UN commanders for their deaths.
The plaintiffs say the men were forced to flee into the hands of the Bosnian Serb forces commanded by Ratko Mladic — himself now on trial for genocide and war crimes at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) based in The Hague. The move came after a Dutch appeals court ruled that Dutch Battalion (“Dutchbat“) commander Thom Karremans, his deputy Rob Franken and personnel officer Berend Oosterveen should not be prosecuted.
The ECHR concluded that Dutch authorities had already “sufficiently investigated” the peacekeepers’ role in the massacre, the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.
The finding by the Dutch appeals court that the soldiers “had been unaware of the extent of the imminent massacre was consistent with the findings of the ICTY,” the ECHR said. “There was no lingering uncertainty as regards the nature and degree of involvement of the three servicemen and it was therefore impossible to conclude that the (previous) investigations had been ineffective or inadequate,” the statement said.

Source: Arab News