Identifying the victims

The total number of men and boys who were slaughtered was initially a matter of some debate. Under heavy international pressure, the government of the Republika Srpska (which, after the conflict, formally became a constituent part of Bosnia and Herzegovina) issued an apology in 2004 for the “enormous crimes” in Srebrenica and acknowledged that an estimated 7,800 had perished. Although not all sources agreed with that figure, it was generally accepted that at least 7,000 people were killed, and the ICTY placed the toll at more than 8,000.

The process of locating the graves and identifying the victims was complicated by a well-organized effort undertaken by Bosnian Serb forces in September and October 1995 to hide traces of the Srebrenica crimes. Soldiers used heavy tractors and backhoes to dig up mass graves and moved the disinterred remains to distant sites, many of which were later located by U.S. intelligence experts using satellite photographs. It required years of analysis by Western scientists—using laborious comparisons of soil and tissue samples, shell casings, pollen, and clothing fragments—to piece together exactly where the killings had occurred and how the bodies had been moved among an estimated 80 mass grave sites. By 2023 the International Commission on Missing Persons, a nongovernmental organization established in 1996, had used DNA samples to identify more than 7,000 individual victims.

War crimes trials and the legacy of Srebrenica

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In an official report in 2005 the Bosnian Serb government stated that 19,473 Bosnian Serbs were implicated in the killings—hundreds of whom remained in official government posts. The UN criminal tribunal eventually indicted more than 20 people for their involvement. In 2001 it convicted Radislav Krstić, commander of the Bosnian Serb corps responsible for the Srebrenica area, of aiding and abetting genocide and murder. In 2003 Bosnian Serb intelligence officer Momir Nikolić pled guilty to committing crimes against humanity. Both Krstić and Nikolić received lengthy prison terms. In 2010 the tribunal convicted two chiefs of security for the Bosnian Serb military, Vujadin Popović and Ljubiša Beara, of genocide and sentenced them to life in prison; a third Bosnian Serb officer, Drago Nikolić, was given a 35-year sentence for abetting genocide. The trial of Karadžić, who was located and arrested in 2008, began in 2009. In March 2016 he was found guilty of genocide, as well as nine other war crimes and crimes against humanity, and he was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Mladić remained a fugitive until May 2011, when he was captured in Serbia to be extradited to The Hague for trial. In November 2017 he was found guilty of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity and was sentenced to life in prison. In April 2013 Serbian Pres. Tomislav Nikolić issued an apology for what he called the “crime” that had been committed at Srebrenica, but he stopped short of calling the event genocide.

In July 2011 a Dutch appeals court ruled that the Netherlands was responsible for the deaths of three Bosniak men who, in July 1995 after Dutch troops forced them out of the UN compound in Potočari, had been killed by Bosnian Serbs. The court’s decision marked the first time that a country had been held liable for the actions of its peacekeeping forces operating under a UN mandate. In July 2014 the Dutch government was found liable by a Dutch court for the deaths of more than 300 Bosniak men and boys at Srebrenica, and it ruled that surviving relatives were entitled to compensation. The decision cleared the Netherlands of responsibility for the remainder of those killed in the Srebrenica area. In June 2017 a Dutch appellate court largely upheld the 2014 decision, but it ruled that the Netherlands should only be held responsible for 30 percent of any financial damages awarded to the families of the slain. The court deemed that there was a 70 percent likelihood that Bosnian Serbs would have seized the refugees regardless of the actions of the Dutch peacekeepers.

In March 2015, Serbian authorities arrested eight men accused of direct involvement with the killing of some 1,000 Bosniak men and boys at a warehouse in Kravica. It marked the first time that the Serbian government—rather than Bosnian or international courts—had filed criminal charges in connection with the Srebrenica genocide. That trial began in February 2017, but the case was thrown out several months later over a procedural technicality. The charges were refiled, and the trial was reopened in November 2017, but the court ruled that prosecutors had to begin their case anew, rather than resume where they had left off. Delays such as these came to characterize the entire proceeding, and by 2024, nearly a decade after the original arrests, the trial showed few signs of progress.

Genocide denialism

Within the Republika Srpska the events at Srebrenica were routinely downplayed or dismissed. In July 2021 Bosnian Serb politicians unveiled a starkly revisionist report that recast the genocide as a military encounter and claimed that the majority of those killed were combat deaths. This narrative was wildly at odds with the facts of the genocide established by the ICTY and the International Court of Justice. The next day the Office of the High Representative—Bosnia and Herzegovina’s internationally appointed executive created under the auspices of the Dayton Accords—introduced jail terms for any individual who “publicly condones, denies, grossly trivializes or tries to justify” the Srebrenica genocide or other war crimes committed during the Bosnian conflict.

Nevertheless, Srebrenica denialism was part of the political mainstream in the Republika Srpska, and this became especially apparent when the international community attempted to recognize the events of July 1995. In 2024 Germany and Rwanda sponsored a UN resolution to observe July 11 as a day of commemoration of the Srebrenica genocide. The move was immediately opposed by Bosnian Serb politicians—some of whom threatened that the Republika Srpska would secede if the measure passed—as well as by the governments of Serbia and Russia. After the resolution was passed in May 2024, Russia’s UN ambassador characterized the observance as “a sad chapter” in the history of the UN and claimed that it would somehow undermine the Dayton agreement.