British Hide Their Involvement In Srebrenoca Massacre
Barry Marjanovich
July 9 2000
SAS book on Bosnia blocked
Tom Walker, Diplomatic Correspondent
THE Ministry of Defence has blocked a former SAS soldier from
publishing a book detailing the secret role of British intelligence
inside the doomed Srebrenica enclave in Bosnia in 1995.
The book tells the story of a two-man SAS team sent in as the Serb
stranglehold on the so-called "safe haven" for Muslim refugees
tightened.
The pair helped to call in a Nato airstrike as the Serbs attacked the
enclave in July, and then had to blend in with Dutch United Nations
peacekeepers as they abandoned Srebrenica and the Serbs took
control, massacring about 7,000 Muslim men.
Dutch sources familiar with the mission believe the book would have
revealed that British soldiers were dismayed when Nato abandoned
its airstrikes, and probably knew about the slaughter.
"It was a black day for the UN," said one former peacekeeper. "The
British don't want to be seen to have been there."
There has never been any official acknowledgment that the SAS was
in Srebrenica, and the Dutch peacekeepers have taken the blame for
a chapter regarded as the low point in the UN's history.
Dutch investigators of the catastrophe have also been barred by the
MoD from speaking to the author, despite Nato clearance.
Serving and former SAS soldiers have been prevented from writing
books since the Gulf war. More than 30 former SAS men are
currently barred from regimental functions for writing about their
experiences.
The argument about exposing the secret services has been rekindled
by the memoirs of Dame Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5,
and critics say the censure reinforces a pattern of intimidation. Two
years ago the home of Tony Geraghty, a former Sunday Times
defence correspondent, was raided by MoD police. One of his
alleged sources is currently being prosecuted.
The former soldier has not co-operated with The Sunday Times, but
other sources have described how the SAS team worked alongside
the Dutch, and kept in touch with Lieutenant-General Rupert Smith,
the British commander of UN forces in Bosnia.
The SAS soldiers spoke good Serbo-Croat, and "certainly knew their
way about", said Colonel Charlie Brantz, the UN's Dutch commander
in Tuzla at the time. He remembered the SAS as being secretive.
"One introduced himself as Tom Sawyer, and I said to him, 'Well,
then I'm Oliver Twist.' They could do anything they wanted."
Srebrenica, just 10 miles from the Serbian border, formed part of
President Milosevic's plans for a greater Serbia, and its UN status
was never respected by the Bosnian Serb military leadership of
General Ratko Mladic.
After Muslim forces raided two Serb villages on the edge of the
enclave, the attack on Srebrenica town began on July 6.
The SAS team relayed information back to Sarajevo while the UN
command dithered over airstrikes. Permission was given on July 10,
and the following day the Dutch bombed Serb positions.
Mladic immediately threatened to kill 44 Dutch soldiers taken
hostage, and the Dutch and the UN aborted the operation. The
Bosnian Serb army entered Srebrenica, while thousands of people
fled to the Dutch UN compound. Around 15,000 Bosnian men began
escaping towards Tuzla, 50 miles away.
Many were killed or herded into detention centres. By July 18 most
of the captives had been shot and buried in mass graves.
The MoD denied it was involved in a heavy-handed cover-up.
"These days that you just have to walk past the SAS headquarters
in Hereford to be able to write a book," said one source. "It has to be
stopped."
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Barry Marjanovich
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Srebrenica Survivors Block Sarajevo Road In Protest
SARAJEVO, Jul 14, 2000 -- (Reuters) Dozens of survivors of the worst
massacre of the Bosnian civil war blocked a main highway into Sarajevo on
Thursday in protest at being evicted from Serb-owned homes where they were
reposed.
Long columns of vehicles tailed back from the city's main exit to the south
as angry
women and men blocked the road at two different points.
Sakib Muhic, 35, a refugee from the now Serb-controlled town of Bratunac
near
Srebrenica, said the refugees were protesting against the attempted eviction
on
Thursday of 20 Moslem families from the southern suburbs of Sarajevo under a
court order.
Thousands of Moslems from Srebrenica, the survivors of a 1995 massacre of
about 8,000 Moslem men by Bosnian Serb forces, have been accommodated in
empty Serb houses in Sarajevo suburbs since the Serb exodus from the capital
in
1996.
The international organizations overseeing the Bosnian peace process have
put
pressure on local authorities and courts across the country to pave the way
for
people to return to their homes to try to undo the "ethnic cleansing" of the
war.
MOSLEMS SAY NOT SAFE TO RETURN
Muhic, who lives with eight members of his extended family in an empty Serb
house, told Reuters that hundreds of refugee families had been told they
must leave
the houses they are occupying, but did not feel safe enough to go home.
"We would leave these houses anyway, but only when we are enabled to return
to
our own homes," Muhic said.
"We want to go back to our homes; we don't want to go to third countries, "
said
Muhic's sister Kadefa Rizvanovic, who lost her husband after the fall of
Srebrenica. "We only demand security for our return."
Muhic said the protest had begun in the morning. It was watched by police,
who
did not try to intervene, and by early on Thursday evening the Moslem
refugees
had dispersed.
During the protest, the refugees complained that local Serbs did not return
to live in
their houses even after they had been evacuated, while the evicted Moslems
had to
go to live in schools and collective camps.
"They get donations to rebuild their houses. Who will pay for our houses?"
one of
them said.
Some 3,000 Moslems held a solemn prayer for their dead in Srebrenica on
Tuesday amid tight security measures to mark the fifth anniversary of what
is
widely seen as Europe's worst atrocity since the end of World War Two.
On the eve of the anniversary a Moslem house in Srebrenica, whose Serb
occupants had recently been evicted to make way for the owner's return, was
set
on fire, the fourth such arson attack in the town in the past two months.