"The Srebrenica Massacre": A Hoax?

The vanishing corpses:

Franklin Zimring, director of the Earl Warren Legal Institute at the University of California at Berkeley described statistics on murder as "important because homicide is by far the best measured crime, given the difficulty of hiding bodies", he added "also because homicide is the crime that most alarms the public."³¹ With this statement, Mr. Zimring touched the heart of the Srebrenica question. Wanting to secede from Yugoslavia like Slovenia and Croatia before it, the Muslim leadership in Bosnia was confronted with a very special set of circumstances. Having neither a majority of the population nor control of the greater part of the territory, and without having the military power to offset those disadvantages, President Alija Izetbegovic's Islamic party (the Party of Democratic Action, or SDA) in power in Sarajevo, set out to alarm international public opinion in order to pressure the US government and NATO to come to its aid. To do this the Sarajevo government had to cry "bloody murder" in every possible variation.... only to run up against the fact that for "bloody murder" there has to be a proof in the form of dead bodies. The Tribunal and the media, having generally - and uncritically - propagated the "bloody murder" line, found themselves obliged either to produce the bodies or come up with an excuse for being unable to do so.

In November 1995, the icy winter ruled out the possibility of digging in search of evidence. As the spring thaw approached, the Tribunal and its chief prosecutor at the time, Richard Goldstone, be gan to get nervous. The US government was still not forthcoming with more conclusive evidence of a massacre. At one point, Goldstone warned that "the exhumation of the graves may become neces sary in order to determine the identity of the corpses and the time and cause of death and to obtain the necessary evidence."³² What Goldstone formulated here should have been - if the tribunal were functioning as a normal court of law - the most logical first step in order to determine that the alleged crime had in fact been committed, in other words a prerequisite for an indictment, not a result. (See Sidebar 2: Erdemovic).

The fact that the Tribunal's investigators have found so little proof of a large-scale massacre ought to suggest that the story of a giant massacre is a fabrication. But Mike O'Connor prefers a different explanation. The New York Times journalist writes in the article quoted above, that:

"7,500 Muslim men were hidden to try to thwart the prosecution of Bosnian Serb leaders for genocide. (...) When the original sites were inspected in 1996, investigators suspected most of the bodies had been moved."³³

Despite the absence of proof, O'Connor never doubts that many thousands of men and boys were executed by Bosnian Serbs. It is apparently out of the question that an unexpectedly small number of bodies might mean that fewer people were killed. If fewer people were killed, then even if summary executions did take place, but not on the mass scale that the media and the government in Sarajevo allege, then that would indeed constitute a war crime, but not "genocide", and certainly not "the worst atrocity since World War II". Furthermore the discovery of hastily buried bodies in an area where civil war raged on and off for over three years is to be expected.

Another assumption deserves attention. There is a widespread but mistaken impression that finding a "mass grave" means having found victims of a mass execution. Both in wartime and in peace time, deaths in such large numbers making immediate burial impossible, may be dealt with by the interim mass grave burial solution, at least until orderly burial is possible. When in October 1998, an oil pipeline exploded in Nigeria, killing more than 600 people, the Nigerian government, to avoid widescale contamination, had the victims buried in mass graves until the fire could be extinguished and a proper burial could be arranged. The same is common practice in warfare, where battlefield victims of the opposing side may be disposed of in this way, until a transfer of the remains can be negotiated with the other side, to avoid the health problems that their decomposition on the surface might cause, particularly in summer.

Even before exhumation got underway, the media began to prepare public opinion for the disappointment that would come when the "mass graves" failed to produce the promised incriminating evidence.

Already while showing her pictures to the Security Council, Ms. Albright had an excuse prepared for the lack of evidence to support her charges. She warned:

"We will keep watching to see if the Bosnian Serbs try to erase the evidence of what they have done."³⁴

Explanations for the shortage of corpses were sought and found. O'Connor :

"Doubts were cast on American military's satellite surveillance, with some investigators charging at the time that slipshod monitoring had allowed Bosnian Serb authorities to move the bodies undetected. Now, however, tribunal officials say the bodies were moved in October 1995, before the pinpoint satellite surveillance was requested by the tribunal. Once the original sites were discovered to have been tampered with, American satellite photographs of the region were reviewed and were found to show trucks and earth-moving equipment at the original burial sites, according to tribunal officials."³⁵

But if the surveillance photos show what they claim to show, why have they not been made public? Why have they not been turned over to either the Tribunal or the press? He also explains that the US had provided surveillance satellites that can locate bodies decomposing underground to aid the search. If so why have they not found more corpses over the 3 years?

Several rumors have been put into circulation. One of the first rumors for the vanishing corpses was that "the Serbs" used a corrosive agent. Once again the anonymous "American officials" were behind the rumor:

"American officials said today that they suspect Bosnian Serb soldiers may have tried to destroy evidence that they killed thousands of Muslim men (...). The Serbs are suspected of pouring corrosive chemicals on the bodies and scattering corpses that had been buried in mass graves, the officials said. The suspicions first arose in early August, after Central Intelligence Agency experts analyzed pictures of the area taken in July by reconnaissance satellites and U-2 planes."³⁶

So instead of omnipresent sky spy "knowledge"/intelligence, Serbs are - merely - "suspected" of having destroyed evidence. As with the "possible" mass graves photo, rumor is enough to convict in a lynch-mob climate. This rumor circulated in October 1995, months before the first "mass grave" exhumations. It was forgotten in the climate of optimistic anticipation as the graves began to be opened in 1996, only to be revived when the graves' yield was disappointing. At the end of the first year's hunt for mass grave bodies and the exhumations, the Tribunal's investigators began asking: "Where have all the bodies gone?"

"Of the thousands of men and boys from the UN safe area who were executed by Bosnian Serbs in July 1995, only a few hundred - less than 10% of the 7,000 Muslims missing - have been dug up."³⁷

Still, this journalist is convinced that the crime had taken place.

"The empty graves speak volumes about the conspiracy by Bosnian Serbs to cover up the massacre at Srebrenica. Their leadership claims that few bodies have been found because the stories of atrocities there were exaggerated. The more plausible theory is that bodies have been made to "disappear". As long as a year ago, American spy satellites first revealed evidence of tampering at several grave sites which, when later exhumed, yielded fewer corpses than expected. [...] One explanation for the empty graves is that the bodies may have been dug up and taken to an aluminium factory at Zvornik to be chemically dissolved. American satellite images from between September 27 and October 2 last year show unusual activity both at the aluminium plant, which officially was shut down, and at the grave site itself. The aluminium factory had the capability to dissolve human flesh because it was using sodium hydroxide to convert bauxite ore into aluminium. Sodium hydroxide is highly toxic and, according to Abdulah Sacerbegovic, a Muslim and the plant's former manager, it easily dissolves human flesh, leaving virtually no trace except a sludge."³⁸

Before the crime can be proven to have taken place, the culprit has been identified. Throughout the summer's digging, there had been no mention of sludge. Even in the absence of sludge (how would "the Serbs" then dispose of that much sludge?), the journalist still finds CIA legends "more plausible." Another explanation was simultaneously being circulated: "the Serbs" had simply dug up and reburied bodies somewhere else.

This excuse has its advantages: no sludge to find, and Bosnia is large. With a "needle in the haystack" search for "mass graves", the public could be kept in anticipation - and at bay - year after year for quite a while. But also its disadvantages. How does one "plausibly" remove thousands of buried, decomposing bodies without being seen by Madeleine Albright's "sky-eyes" of aerial surveillance? Undismayed by such problems of factual detail, the Tribunal (and media) continued their course.

In November 1995, the Dutch Minister of Defense, Joris Voorhove, accused Serbs of "trying hastily to destroy the evidence of the massacre they committed against thousands of Bosniaks around Srebrenica. " Citing "intelligence services" as his source, he claimed in a TV interview, that "these days Serbs have been exhuming the corpses from the mass graves in order to remove the evidence of their crimes."³⁹

It should be remembered that "these days" the United States - according to Mike O'Connor - already had its satellite surveillance in place, a satellite surveillance able to find decomposing bodies under the earth's surface. Where was the proof furnished by "intelligence services" that incited Joris Voorhove to make such an allegation? Why in three years have they been unable to locate the corpses that they claim were in the area since July 1995? Also missing is any explanation as to how "the Serbs" were able - "plausibly" - to dispose of 7,500 decomposing corpses, in the time and space that this presumably would entail, without having been photographed by the super-hi-tech US aerial surveillance.

Washington Post journalist John Pomfret visited sites that "according to a Western investigator, could be two of several mass graves in the region believed to hold corpses of some of the estimated 12,000 Muslim fighters". Pomfret observes that: "while dirt obviously had been moved recently around the sites in Glogova, if Serbian gunmen had attempted to tamper with it or destroy evidence, they did not do a thorough job. Bones were readily visible on the clay dirt, as were bandages, shoes and other things that obviously once belonged to the men buried below."⁴⁰ Besides his inflationary figure of "12,000 Muslim fighters", pulled out of thin air, Mr. Pomfret readily attributes recently "moved dirt" to "Serbian gunmen". Had Serbs come back with guns rather than shovels to "tamper"? No wonder they didn't do a thorough job. Another explanation could be that dirt was moved to make it appear as though someone had "attempted" to tamper. Since the region was being watched by American IFOR forces, if they didn't catch the "would be tamperers" in the act, there is no way to know whether they were Serbs... or Americans. This is all very vague, but fortunately Mr. Pomfret has his "Western investigator" to put the right "spin" on it.

It is noteworthy how many correspondents have a privileged source: their anonymous "investigators" and "government officials" - may well be intelligence agents or some other partisan informants pursuing foreign policy objectives with the dissemination of disinformation, which is why the information should be taken with a critical "grain of salt". The civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina has produced many brutal encounters among Serbs, Muslims and Croats. The Srebrenica area was a site of such encounters throughout the war. Muslims had driven out Serb inhabitants early on. Contrary to the assumption that a "UN protected area" was a demilitarized zone for civilian refugees, Srebrenica was used for years by Muslim fighters as a protected military base from which to launch attacks on nearby Serbian villages.⁴¹ Serb forces that took the town in July 1995 were no doubt looking for Muslim soldiers who had taken part in those murderous raids. Knowing this would happen, most Muslim soldiers fled. Others remained. Although exactly what happened remains unclear - deliberately unclear, so long as all facts must be distorted to lend credence to the notion of a massive "genocide". Even the fact that the Serbs provided safe passage to women and children is interpreted as sinister, when it is proof that "genocide" was not happening.

The International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague has not sought to render justice in a non-partisan manner, which might have contributed to reconciliation among the peoples of the region. Instead, a biased approach only exacerbates the feeling among each ethnic group of being the victims: the Muslims, of being victims of Serbian "genocide", as their leaders claim; the Serbs, of being victims of unjust accusations. The Tribunal was set up on the assumption that one side in the Bosnian conflict, and one side only - the Bosnian Serbs - were guilty of "genocide". The Tribunal is a political instrument used by the United States to demonstrate support for the Muslim side and put pressure on the Serbs. The bias was built-in, and those media that were a contributing source of that bias have spared the Tribunal any serious critical scrutiny of its methods or results. Instead, it has been widely praised as an example of what is needed on a more global basis as an answer to the problems of "war crimes" and "genocide". Viewed as a tentative first step toward a brave new system of world justice, the Tribunal is not held to any normal judicial standards. Yet the fact is that neither the Tribunal (nor the press) have yet produced solid evidence that genocide was ever either planned, attempted or carried out in Bosnia or that a crime against humanity on the level of "genocide" ever took place in Srebrenica. And still the indictments stand.

Should the standards promoted by this Tribunal ever become international legal norms, humanity will be set back to a period predating the French and American Revolutions. Even the best national system of jurisprudence would be corrupted and undermined by the pressure of an overriding international jurisprudence that has abandoned such safeguards as the assumption of innocence until proven guilty, and the need to produce material proof that an alleged crime has actually been committed. Standing at the threshold of absolute domination, following the end of the world socialist system, deciding literally over the life and death of entire populations, the United States and its "western world" allies cloak themselves in a moralist fig leaf and call their dictate to the rest (the majority) of the world "law." The tribunal is designed merely to lend an aura of "justice" and permanence to the unabashed return to the realm of the mighty, "governed" by the arbitrary law of the jungle.

GP.

Sidebar 2: The Eyewitness, Erdemovic

Apparently not anxious to exhume suspected graves, but needing other material proof of mass executions, to make a plausible indictment of the Bosnian Serb leadership, the tribunal turned to "Eyewitness'" testimony as its fundamental form of "evidence". Eyewitness testimony though widely used is one of the most unreliable forms of evidence. Based on memory of the witness and open to interpretation, this form of evidence proves to be one of the easiest to be manipulated and tailored to fit desired circumstances or discredited. It is also the form of evidence that proves often difficult - when lacking other corroborating evidence - to prove false, and therefore which goes a long way toward reversing the basic rule-of-law maxim: "proof of a guilt lies with the prosecution".

The "eyewitness" to the mass execution in Srebrenica, Drazen Erdemovic, came forward, in March 1996, asking to go the the Hague as a witness. In a confession to the French daily, "Le Figaro", Erdemovic described himself, as having been a "soldier in the Bosnian Serb Army" and as such had participated in mass executions of Muslim civilians from Srebrenica. In vague details, spiced with bits of concrete information, he told how he participated in the execution of 1,200 people from Srebrenica on a farm in Pilica. According to him the executioners "used 7,62mm bullets,"¹ and that the bodies were disposed of in mass graves on the same farm.

With this concrete information, one would think that the Tribunal would finally have absolute proof, provided Erdemovic was telling the truth. They would simply have to go to the scene - with Erdemovic - let him show what happened, where the bodies were buried and exhume the bodies. A forensic examination could verify if they had, in fact, been killed with 7,62mm bullets from what angle and distance. That is of course, if the tribunal really wanted to learn if Erdemovic was a reliable witness or simply giving false testimony.

(In fact Reuters News Agency published the following information in the spring of 1998: during "the opening of a mass grave in Bosnia, according to the United Nations, experts found the remains of skulls, clothes and hundreds of spent rounds." Further down in the article, one learns that "more than 1,500 spent rounds have been discovered in this area over the past two years."² One sees that the tribunal is lacking both bodies and bullets. Or are we to believe that with each shot more than 5 people were killed?)

Erdemovic's story raises many questions. Born of Serbo-Croatian parents, he identifies himself as a Croat. In 1992, Erdemovic first served in the military police of the HVO (the ultra-nationalist, paramilitary Croatian Council of Defence) in his native Tuzla, before he crossed over to the Bosnian-Serbian side following punishment for allegedly having helped Serbs escape to Republika Srpska.³ According to his testimony he was then mustered into the Serbian military and was present at the takeover of Srebrenica. Erdemovic, who had been an ordinary soldier, said, that after a falling out with his commander in Bosnia, he decided to move to Serbia and tell his story, "apparently in revenge" writes the International Herald Tribune.⁴ In Serbia he first came in contact with correspondents of (US) ABC-TV station, and the (French daily) Le Figaro, to whom he offered his story, asking them to help him "escape to The Hague."⁵

Is Erdemovic a reliable witness? Is it plausible that a Croatian nationalist, an ex-HVO military policeman, would have joined - or even been accepted - in the Bosnian Serb army? Already as a military policeman of the HVO, he helps "the enemy". Runs into difficulty with his superiors and runs to the other side. Serves under arms with the Serbian forces, gets into difficulty again with his superiors, and again changes sides. Did he go straight to the correspondents, or did he first go to the Muslim government to offer his services? Being someone who seemingly touches all bases, this could be a plausible explanation for his asking to "escape to the Hague" - how many common soldiers seek out the Hague? The only ones to gain from his testimony, would be those in the government in Sarajevo, and apparently this is the only one of the 3 civil war contenders against whom he does not (yet) have a grudge. Would this not also help explain the "anonymous" witness (an alleged survivor of the execution) who testified before the tribunal that Erdemovic stopped other soldiers of the Serbian troops from killing him?

Likewise this could help explain why it was Le Figaro that is credited for breaking this story, even though it was the "scoop" worth a Pulitzer Prize. Why didn't ABC-TV take this "scoop" of a lifetime? This resounds of an often used CIA "black propaganda" method: Plant a hoax in a reputable foreign paper, to avoid suspicion of its American origin. The American press then carrys it as a reprint. In comparison to the German and American media at the time, the French press was far less fanatically anti-Serb. All speculations. But nevertheless questions that should have at least made experienced judges begin to doubt the credibility of a Drazan Erdemovic.

It has also been reported - and denied - that among the offers made Erdemovic by former chief prosecutor, Richard Goldstone were benefit of the "state's witness" regulation, freedom from prosecution for himself and a guarantee of a new life abroad in exchange for his valuable testimony⁶ against the Serbian leadership.

Erdemovic arrived in the Hague as a witness and became a defendant charged with crimes against humanity, for his role in the executions that he had described.

In her article in "The Nation", Diana Johnstone described the conviction as being:

"heralded as a great "first" in establishment of global justice. [The Erdemovic] case is considered of great importance to the Tribunal since his confession of taking part in executing over a thousand Muslims after the Serb capture of Srebrenica is considered prime evidence in the Tribunal's "main event", the future trial of Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic.⁷

Mirko Klarin, journalist for Nasa Borba discribed the trial as follows:

"To the prosecution, Erdemovic is above all a "valued collaborator". (...) The defendant further helped the investigators to identify about 10 persons who had perpetrated or ordered these crimes, whose identity, the prosecution admitted, would have remained a mystery without Erdemovic's cooperation. Also in his favour was the "voluntary, courageous and public testimony" in the Rule 61 hearings on the indictments of Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, where Erdemovic appeared as the leading witness for the prosecution."⁸

But as Johnstone further points out, there was a catch:

• "(...) inasmuch as he confessed to his crimes, there was no formal trial and no presentation of material evidence to corroborate his story. In any case, since he had turned "state's evidence", there would have been no rigorous cross-examination from either a contented prosecution or a complaisant defense regarding the discrepancy between the number of Muslims he testified having helped execute at a farm near Pilica -- 1,200 -- and the number of bodies actually found there by the Tribunal's forensic team: about 150 to 200.⁹

He was originally sentenced to ten years in prison. Upon appeal, the judges accepted his change of plea from "guilty to a crime against Humanity," to one of "guilt of a war crime." Citing his "honest disposition; [...] supported by his confession and consistent admission of guilt"¹⁰ among other things, his sentence was reduced from 10 to 5 years.

The question remains: does the "honest disposition" cited by the tribunal, signify that those who insist upon and defend their innocence will be examplarily punished, especially since the tribunal makes no effort at verifying the evidence in their defense?

GP.

Endnotes--Part 3:

31)Butterfield, Fox; Serious Crime Recedes Further in US, But 4-Year Downtrend Masks a Surge of Violence by Teenagers; IHT (NYT), May 6, 1996

32) god/cha, UN-Tribunal will Massengräber in Bosnien öffnen lassen; Goldstone: Exhumierung notwendig zur Beweissicherung, Agence France Presse (Deutschland - AFD) 19.01.1996 - 17:54

33) O'Connor, Mike; op cit

34) Weiner, Tim; U.S. Says Serbs May Have Tried To Destroy Massacre Evidence; NY Times, Oct. 30, 1995

35) O'Connor, Mike; op cit

36) ibid.

37) Swain, Jon; Empty Bosnian graves baffle UN; The Sunday Times, Nov. 3, 1996

38) ibid.

39) Serbs Try To Remove Evidence Of Massacre In Srebrenica, TWRA - Daily Bulletin, Nov 18, 1995

40) John Pomfret, Bosnia Killing Fields Reveal A Grisly Demise, Mass Graves near Srebrenica, IHT / WPS, 20.1.96

41) The UN Secretary General, Butros Butros-Ghali complained in his Report to the Security Council - 6 weeks before the "fall of Srebrenica" that Muslim government armed forces were intensifying their attacks against Serbian forces in the surrounding area with "unprovoked attacks" launched from the safe area jeopardizing UNPROFOR's defense of the civilian population. See Security Council document, S/1995/444 (May 30, 1995)

Sidebar 2: Erdemovic

1) Vanessa Vasic-Janekovic, A Man Who Knows Too Much (Covjek koji zna previse), quoted in the ARZIN index-60, 15.3.96

2) lae/gwa; Schädelreste und Kugeln in Massengrab in Bosnien; Reuters (Germany) Apr. 20, 1998 - 19:39

3) Klarin, Mirko; Defendant for the Prosecution: To the Prosecutors, Erdemovic is above all a valued witness; The Institute of War and Peace Reporting 1996

4) Jane Perlez, Milosevic is expected to Aid in a War crimes Case; 2 Bosnian Serbs may face court, IHT, 14.3.96 (emphasis added)

5) Klarin, Mirko; op cit

6) cd sg Bosnien/UN/Jugoslawien; Tribunal verlangt in Belgrad Auslieferung von Srebrenica-Zeugen, dpa 12.03.1996 - 12:57

7) Johnstone, Diana; Selective Justice in The Hague: The War Crimes Tribunal on Former Yugoslavia is a Mockery of Evidentiary Rule; The Nation, 22.9.97

8) Klarin, Mirko; op cit

9) Johnstone, Diana; Ibid

10) Drazan Erdemovic sentenced to 5 Years imprisonment; Press Communiqué of the ICTY; http://www.un.org/icty/pressreal/p299-e.htm