Roundup: Former Dutchbat commander Karremans not prosecuted

Former Dutchbat commander Thom Karremans should not be prosecuted as accomplice of genocide and war crimes during the fall of Srebrenica in 1995, the Dutch court in Arnhem decided on Wednesday.

In March 2013, the public prosecutor had already decided that Karremans, his deputy Rob Franken and his adjutant Berend Oosterveen should not be prosecuted for complicity in war crimes and genocide in Srebrenica.

According to the public prosecutor in 2013, the three Dutch soldiers could not be held criminally responsible for the Bosnian Serb army crimes. The prosecutor concluded that Karremans contributed to the deportation of Muslim men, but that he could not know that the men would then be killed by the Bosnian Serbs.

However, relatives of three victims objected the 2013 ruling and through a special complains procedure they once again requested the prosecution of the three Dutch soldiers. Therefore Karremans and his former colleagues had to report in Arnhem for a closed court session in November last year.

The court in Arnhem on Wednesday decided to reject the complaint. With this decision a possible criminal case against Karremans is not completely out of the question. Lawyer Liesbeth Zegveld of the relatives of the victims announced that she will go to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg, France.

During the Bosnian War in the 1990s Karremans led the United Nations peacekeeping battalion Dutchbat, which was supposed to protect the UN designated "safe area" of Srebrenica in 1995. Despite the presence of the Dutchbat Srebrenica fell to the Bosnian Serb forces of commander Ratko Mladic and in the following massacre, 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed.

In 2010, relatives of victims of the massacre sued Karremans, Franken and Oosterveen. The accusation: genocide and war crimes. The relatives claimed that the victims were wrongly forced to leave the Dutchbat compound in Potocari, in the municipality of Srebrenica, by the Dutch and therefore they hold the Dutch military co-responsible for the death of their loved ones.

Recent verdicts had given the relatives hope. In July last year the court in The Hague decided that the Dutch state was responsible for the deportation of more than 300 Muslim men after the fall of Srebrenica. According to the verdict the state was also liable for the damage suffered by relatives.

The Hague court ruled that Dutchbat should have known that the deported men were in danger. In September 2013 the Dutch Supreme Court had also already decided that the Dutch State was liable for the death of three Muslim men in Srebrenica.

"Regarding the knowledge of what awaited the victims the court came to the same findings as the Hague court in civil proceedings by the complainants against the State, but it draws different conclusions," the court in Arnhem stated. "For the determination of the liability of the State may all elements indeed be taken together, but to establish the criminal liability of the accused must be determined what each of them knew."

The knowledge and acts of the Dutch soldiers were according to the court not enough for prosecution. Immediately after the verdict of the court in Arnhem former Dutchbat commander Karremans reacted by telephone from Spain to national broadcaster NOS.

"For the battalion and their families it finally puts an end to a long period of uncertainty, and above all, of misunderstanding," said Karremans.

Although he is not prosecuted, Karremans was not very happy.

"I actually hoped for prosecution," he said. "Because I do not want the political and military responsible persons of the time, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense for example, to escape from their responsibility. I want to demonstrate that twenty years ago the world, and I mention specifically the world, from the United Nations to the Netherlands, has done nothing, absolutely nothing, to help the population and to help Dutchbat, with all the terrible consequences we all know now." Endit