In 1990, Bosnian Serb forces killed about 8,000 Muslim men and boys during the Balkan conflict in what’s now known as the Srebrenica massacre. It was the worst atrocity on European soil since World War II. But 25 years on, war crimes and crimes against humanity are rarely prosecuted. David Scheffer, who was the US ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues from 1997 to 2001, explains why.
In the 1990s, thousands were massacred in the provinces of the former Yugoslavia. It took years, really, for the international community to intervene and stop the killing. Now some are worried the situation in Syria may devolve into that sort of mass killing — if it hasn’t already.
Serbian military leader Ratko Mladic had been on the run for nearly 16 years. But when it was announced yesterday that he had finally been captured, it released a wave of memories of the genocide that led to the massacre of nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995. Mevludin Oric was one […]