Srebrenica

The Bosnian Missing Persons Institute said on Thursday evening that human remains exhumed in Pusmulici near Srebrenica are believed to be those of a Bosniak killed in the 1995 Srebrenica massacres.

Graves of Srebrenica victims. Archive photo: Wikimedia Commons/Michael Buker.

It said that the remains are believed to be those of victims of the massacres of some 8,000 Bosniak man and boys by Bosnian Serb forces in July 1995, which international courts have classified as genocide.

Former Territorial Defence fighter Milan Trisic went on trial at the Bosnian state court on Wednesday, accused of committing crimes against humanity in the village of Hranca and in the town of Bratunac in 1992.

He is accused of participating in the persecution of Bosniak civilians from the village and of involvement in murders, detentions, forcible disappearances and torture.

The Serbian Administrative Court has ruled that the Serbian Interior Ministry's disciplinary commission must reconsider the dismissal of policeman Mladen Trbovic, who has been accused of disclosing official secrets by talking to media about an undercover assignment at the anniversary commemoration of the Srebrenica massacres.

The Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague said on Thursday that it has postponed next month's appeals hearings in the Ratko Mladic case because of travel restrictions imposed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Slavko Milovanovic, who was acquitted of involvement in an attack on the village of Resagici, near Srebrenica, in May 1992, launched his case on Wednesday for compensation for the suffering caused by 15 months of restrictive measures that were imposed on him during his trial.

Former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic's defence lawyers have requested that appeals hearings scheduled for June 16 and 17 at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague be postponed because of restrictions on cross-border movement imposed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

The Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals announced on Monday that Ratko Mladic is recovering well from surgery and that defence and prosecution appeals against the verdict in his trial will be heard on June 16-17 in The Hague.

The appeals were originally set for March 17-18, but were postponed because the former Bosnian Serb military chief needed a colon operation.

To understand how important this was, one has to know that the Srebrenica Memorial Centre operates in a very hostile environment in Bosnia's Serb-dominated entity Republika Srpska, where denial of the Srebrenica genocide is widespread, alleged war criminals live freely, and there is little state support for truth-seeking and research of wartime crimes.

Yet asked about Srebrenica, the Bosnian enclave where some 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed by Serb forces in 1995, Nebojsa is equally adamant in rejecting UN-court findings that it constituted genocide. "I don't think it was genocide," he said.