Dutch Ministry To Announce Site Containing Remains of Srebrenica victims

The Ministry of Defence of the Kingdom of the Netherlands has announced that in the coming days it will contact the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina to provide relevant authorities with the “geographic coordinates” of a burial site containing the bodies of victims who perished while they were confined in an abandoned warehouse in the Eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica in July 1995.
 
“This is not a about a mass grave, but about a military emergency grave, dug by the Dutch troops to properly, according to UN regulations, bury less than ten people that took refuge in the Dutch compound in Srebrenica and died there, for various reasons,” a spokesperson for the Ministry told BIRN-Justice Report.
 
The Ministry confirmed that the bodies belonged to people who died during their confinement in an abandoned factory that was in the perimeter of the area controlled by the Third Dutch Battalion, or Dutchbat 3.
 
The announcement that the gravesite’s location would be made public came due to the prompting of Dave Maat, a former member of the Dutch battalion, which was stationed in Srebrenica in 1995. He recently visited the Srebrenica, a former U.N. “safe area,” and discovered that the family members of the deceased are still searching for the bodies of their loved ones.
 
According to Dutch media, upon his return, Maat, who was eighteen years old during his service in Srebrenica, sought information from the Ministry of Defence, who he maintains have information on the coordinates of the site. After the Ministry did not answer his initial inquiries, Maat began making claims that the Ministry was suppressing information.
 
Maat, now 35 and chairman of the Vereniging Dutchbat 3, an association for Dutch veterans who served in Srebrenica, told the Dutch television programme Niewsuur that the Defence Ministry have concrete data on the grave site, including photographs and a map with the geographic coordinates of the site where the bodies lie.
 
Maat took the Ministry to Court, which ruled in favour of the Defence Ministry that the information provided in de-briefs by former soldiers after their return from Srebrenica will always be classified.
 
But now, the Ministry is willing to release the location of the grave, without the debriefing statements given by Dutchbat soldiers. The Ministry of Defense says they did not release the information earlier because Maat sought all information related to the graves, including the confidential debriefing statements.
 
“Since Mr. Maat didn’t ask the right questions, we couldn’t give him the right answer,” the Dutch Ministry spokesperson told BIRN-Justice Report.
 
Civilian Victims
 
Amor Masovic, President of the Governing Board of the Institute for Missing Persons in Bosnia, said that according to statements from Maat, the missing are civilians.
 
“According to the statements of the Dutch soldier, the grave contains a baby, an old man, a girl who allegedly suffered from diabetes, and some people who allegedly died in a camp of the Dutch Battalion in Potocari,” Masovic told BIRN-Justice Report.  
 
Masovic said the ultimate cause of death has not been confirmed.  “Forensic experts will provide their expert opinion when they examine the mortal remains as to what is the cause of death in these individuals,” he said.
 
Masovic said that according to the available information, these people were not murdered but died in captivity.
 
The Dutch Ministry of Defence declined to reveal exactly when it plans to disclose information about the grave but added that, “this information, since it is unclassified, is available to anyone who is looking for it.”
 
The Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which coordinates the process of excavating mass graves, told Justice Report that Dutch officials have not yet been contacted about this grave.
 
Masovic also confirmed that no one from the Dutch government has contacted him, but that he heard about the location of potential gravesites three days ago from people who had spoken to the group of former Dutch soldiers lobbying the government to release the information.
 
 “Recently, we received information about two micro-locations that had not been worked before. Unfortunately, three days ago we dealt with them and there are no indications of burial sites in any of them,” he said.   
 
Teams began excavating two sites, Masovic told BIRN-Justice Report.  One is across from the Blue Hotel in Srebrenica, and one is close to another site that had already been explored.
 
Masovic says he is looking forward to receiving specifics from the Dutch government. “We are eagerly awaiting this information from the Dutch ministries and the president, who will reportedly soon disclose all information they have,” he said.

V.H. and S.U.