“Every moment of every day I think about the victims of the Srebrenica genocide, I cry for them and I pray for their souls. » The words are written in blue on school paper, in shaky handwriting. The author is a Bosnian Serb general. He resides in Scheveningen prison, in The Hague (Netherlands). Radislav Krstic was the first official convicted of the genocide of the Muslims of Srebrenica committed in the summer of 1995. The judges of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) sentenced him definitively in April 2004 to thirty-five years in prison.
Your letter is dated June 18. It is attached to his request for early release, addressed to the president of the UN mechanism responsible for the latest files of the Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, closed in 2017. The judges’ decision is not yet known. ” I know, he writes, May the mothers and sisters of innocent victims not believe these words to be true. » The convicted man wrote them almost a month after the adoption by the UN General Assembly of a resolution that makes July 11 the international day of reflection and commemoration of the genocide perpetrated in Srebrenica in 1995. “Although I did not have the right to vote, “I would have voted in favor of this resolution,” writes General Krstic. “In this resolution, he continues, my name is mentioned because I aided and abetted the genocide (…), because I committed an unimaginable and unforgivable crime.”
It was in the summer of 1995, just before Operation Krivaja 95, which sought to retake the enclaves of Zepa and Srebrenica. Promoted, Radislav Krstic became commander of the Drina Corps. From 11 to 21 July, Bosnian Serb forces under General Ratko Mladic captured Srebrenica. At the Potocari site, near the Housing the Dutch peacekeepers who were supposed to protect the enclave, the inhabitants were sorted: women and children on one side, men on the other. The first were deported by bus to the free territories of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The men were taken to other places: schools, hangars, farms. There, blindfolded and with their wrists tied with wire, nearly 8,000 of them, all Muslims, were murdered one by one.
“The genocide was committed by individuals”
“I do not ask for forgiveness, I do not seek justification, writes the prisoner, who is now 76 years old. I don’t seek understanding because I know I can’t receive it. » But, he adds, “I would like my words to be read and understood by young people who today live in the regions where a country called Yugoslavia once existed. (…) I would also like everyone to understand that genocide cannot be committed by a single nation, that there are no genocidal nations, but that the Srebrenica genocide was committed by individuals. (…) Unfortunately, I am one of them. »
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