The “Srebrenica massacre” is the greatest triumph of propaganda to emerge from the Balkan wars…..It is the symbol of Serb ‘evil’ and Bosnian Muslim ‘victimhood’, and the justice of the Western dismantling of Yugoslavia and intervention there at many levels, including a bombing war and colonial occupations of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo.— Edward S. Herman, (R.I.P.)…
“Srebrenica genocide” narrative bites the dust
The phoney “genocide” in Srebrenica marks its twenty-seventh anniversary on 11 July this year. As politically convenient fabrications go, it must be admitted that it has been extraordinarily effective in serving the purposes for which it was created, but this year’s rather low key observances suggest that it is at the end of its cycle.…
ICTY Srebrenica Autopsy reports
For twenty-five years autopsy reports have been the only tangible evidence in existence of what passes as the “Srebrenica narrative”. Between 1996 and 2001 those reports were prepared by the forensic experts of the Office of the Prosecutor of the Hague Tribunal. Technically, the task of those experts was to conduct exhumations of mass graves…
Geoffroy Lorin de la Grandmaison: International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the forensic pathologist and ethics
French forensic medicine specialist Geoffroy de la Grandmaison points out numerous issues with the Srebrenica forensic picture. From the summary of the academic article that follows: “Forensic pathologists involved in the ICTY missions could be subjected to ethical tensions. In order to study the nature of such tensions, review of the literature and analysis of forensic material available…
Jonathan Rooper on the Srebrenica cover-up
The “Srebrenica cover-up” story was improvised to explain the embarrassing dearth of bodies of execution victims that became manifest shortly after exhumations began. As late as the Krstić trial judgment in 2001, even the Prosecution friendly Chamber was forced to admit that no satisfactory evidence of a Srebrenica cover-up, involving the massive reburial of bodies…
ICTY intercept evidence mindgames
The public are largely unaware of it, but “intercept evidence” is a major component of prosecution’s Srebrenica case. It is also a major locus of fabricated or, at any rate, grossly unreliable evidence. Besides “satellite photos” (which turned out not to be that at all and are unavailable for expert scrutiny anyway), autopsy reports prepared…
ICTY investigations. Interview with Jean-René Ruez (Cultures & Conflits, Spring 2007)
The little noted and barely commented interview that the ICTY Prosecution’s Chief Investigator Jean Rene-Ruez gave to the journal Cultures & Conflits is very conducive to a better understanding of how Srebrenica evidence was collected and used, as well as the criteria that guided the process. The interview was published in the spring issue of…
ICTY Chamber decision on DNA samples
The attached March 19, 2010, Chamber decision in the Karadzic case on defense access to DNA data illustrates perfectly the Hague Tribunal’s skewed concept of “equality of arms” between the parties. Out of about 6,600 alleged DNA matches, in this ruling the Chamber is contemplating the disclosure of at most 300, or about 5%. The…
Basic Srebrenica forensic data
The appended graphs reflect the basic forensic picture of Srebrenica. They depict the situation in Srebrenica-related mass graves that between 1996 and 2001 were exhumed and studied by forensic teams dispatched for that purpose by the Prosecution of the Hague Tribunal. The first graph, “Summary analysis of Srebrenica autopsy reports,” is a breakdown of the…
Blast injuries at the alleged execution mass burial site of Ravnice
Ravnice is one of the Srebrenica mass burial sites associated with the Kravica Agricultural Warehouse prisoner shooting incident which occurred on July 13, 1995. The other site associated with the victims of that shooting is Glogova. It would be a logical assumption that execution victims would generally show a similar pattern of injury and that…