Srebrenica commander Naser Oric released

The Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) termed as "sensible” today’s decision of the UN War Crimes Tribunal to release Naser Oric, the former commander of the Bosnian defenders of the East Bosnian town of Srebrenica which was encircled for four years by Serb troops. "If Oric knowingly did not prevent individual murders and violations of human rights to Serb prisoners, then the United Nations, the European governments and the international community must ask why their peace-keeping troops did not even protect the few Serb prisoners in this starved and impoverished protected zone”, said the President of the GfbV International, Tilman Zülch, in Göttingen. "Particularly relevant is the question of the portion of the blame which is to be shared by the international units in the murder of 8,106 men and youths from Srebrenica, who are known by name. The Tribunal must find an answer here in a case against the military of the international force which was responsible for the protection of Srebrenica.”

In this connection Zülch criticised that it is unbelievable that there have still been no serious measures taken to arrest and bring to court the Serb leaders, Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, who were the main ones responsible for the crimes. There is now no longer any mention of Radovan Karadzic being one of those responsible for the genocide in Srebrenica and Bosnia Herzegovina. This is unbelievable.

"We ask the German and international media to point out that among the encircled residents of Srebrenica there were also many thousand Muslim refugees from the town of Bratunac. In the Bratunac Stadium and in the Vuk Karadzic School 3,500 Muslim Bosniaks were murdered in 1992 by the troops of Mladic and Karadzic", said Zülch. "This bloody background to the events is all too often left out in the reporting.”

Naser Oric was sentenced today by the UN War Crimes Tribunal to a two-year prison sentence, which he has served while on remand.