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WORLD NEWS Wednesday 28 June 2017
Appeals court:
Dutch government partially liable in 300 Srebrenica deaths

fense Ministry said the gov- lishes that peacekeepers sacre and whether the
ernment would carefully can be held responsible for country’s soldiers could or
study the latest ruling. a failure to protect civilians should have done more to
“The starting point is that and that their governments prevent the mass killings.
the Bosnian Serbs were re- can and will be held to ac- The ruling came the morn-
sponsible,” the statement count for their conduct,” ing after a lawyer told a
said. said John Dalhuisen, Am- late-night television show
Rights group Amnesty Inter- nesty International’s Eu- that he was filing a claim for
national welcomed the rul- rope Director. 206 veterans of the Dutch
ing as drawing a line in the The appeals judgment is Srebrenica mission seeking
sand for peacekeepers. the latest in a string of legal compensation and recog-
“More than two decades cases in the Netherlands nition for the suffering they
after the Srebrenica mas- concerning the country’s have endured since the fall
sacre, this decision estab- role in the Srebrenica mas- of the enclave.q

In this photo taken on Mon-
day, June 29, 2015, Dutch UN
veteran Rob Zomer sits in front
of UN sign at the gate of for-
mer UN Dutch bat base near
Srebrenica, 150 kms northeast
of Sarajevo, Bosnia. Zomer
was a member of Dutch
battalion of United Nations
peacekeepers who failed to
halt the slaughter by Bosnian
Serb forces of some 8,000.
(AP Photo/Amel Emric)

By MIKE CORDER
Associated Press
THE HAGUE, Netherlands
(AP) — A Dutch appeals
court ruled Tuesday that
the government was par-
tially liable in the deaths
of more than 300 Mus-
lim men killed by Bosnian
Serb forces in the 1995 Sre-
brenica massacre. The rul-
ing formally struck down
a civil court’s landmark
2014 judgment that said
the state was liable in the
deaths of the Bosnian Mus-
lim men and boys who
were turned over by Dutch
U.N. peacekeepers to Bos-
nian Serb forces in July 1995
and subsequently killed.
But the appeals panel
largely upheld the earlier
case’s findings while signifi-
cantly cutting the amount
of damages relatives of
the dead could receive
by assessing the victims’
chances of survival had
they remained in the care
of the Dutch troops.
The court estimated the
chances of Muslim males’
survival if they had stayed
in the Dutch compound at
around 30 percent.
“The state is therefore li-
able for 30 percent of the
losses suffered by the rela-
tives,” the court said in a
statement. The 2014 judg-
ment didn’t include that
qualification. In a written
reaction, the Dutch De-