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Srebrenica Victim Graves Probed at Brnica
By Mark Heinrich
The six investigators from the international war crimes tribunal, guarded by U.S. and Russian peacekeeping troops, combed a rocky, dusty expanse in blazing heat on the last day of their 10-day mission in Serb-controlled eastern Bosnia.
They are expected to present their findings, including the results of partial exhumations of two mass tombs which they found using satellite photos and survivors' testimony, to a tribunal hearing at the end of June.
Thousands of Moslem men went missing, believed killed and piled into mass graves, after separatist Serbs captured Srebrenica, a U.N.-declared "safe area." Analysts have described it as perhaps the most horrific event in Bosnia's ethnic war.
The tribunal investigators concentrated on Friday on a reservoir spillway at Brnica, an aluminium plant waste disposal site 10 km (six miles) northwest of Zvornik. After a Norwegian mine-clearing team used sniffer dogs to check for unexploded ordnance or booby traps, they methodically swept a 120 by 50 metre (yard) area below a rocky reservoir embankment. They placed hundreds of yellow strips of tape under stones to mark telltale evidence before collecting it in dozens of plastic bags.
Seen from above, the ground bore an unnatural patchwork of weedy, rocky and earthen segments suggesting that someone had disturbed it. The surface was strangely uneven in parts and a square shaped mound of rocks, resembling a cairn, rose in the centre. Inestigators declined to speculate what the rock pile was.
Although one investigator said he spotted a dental prosthesis, the team refused to describe other evidence or say
what specific event they believe took place at the site. Bullet casings including some from large calibre rounds were found along the embankment and forest which fringed the site.
Journalists who dodged Serb police earlier this year to visit the area, found traces of bones -- apparently the remains of what survivors described as a mass execution in July 1995. Various teams from the Hague-based tribunal are expected to return to the reservoir site and other suspected mass graves later to excavate them fully with the help of earth-moving machinery.
Investigators dug a test trench on Wednesday to confirm a mass grave in a meadow at Nova Kasaba, 20 km (12 miles) west of Srebrenica. They found at least six contorted bodies, two of them with hands tied behind their backs.
Up to 8,000 Moslem men may have been killed as they fled Serb forces attacking Srebrenica, some shot after they were captured and others hit in machine-gun ambushes of refugee columns in the woods of eastern Bosnia. |
BRNICA, Bosnia, June 7 (Reuter) - Investigators scooped up evidence of war crimes, including countless spent bullet casings, on Friday near suspected mass graves of Moslems missing after Bosnian Serb forces overran Srebrenica enclave in 1995.
Berserkistan, June 5 · Mass Grave at Nova Kasaba May Hold 2700 Srebrenica Victims
Berserkistan, May 29 · Documentary Claims Serbia Provided Srebrenica Arms
Berserkistan, May 29 · War Crimes Team Probes Suspected Mass Grave
Berserkistan, Apr 5 · Tribunal Probes Srebrenica Killing Fields
Berserkistan, Massacre Hill Jim Bartlett in Bosnia's Killing Fields
Berserkistan, Ghosts in the Woods Team Berserkistan Investigates a Srebrenica Massacre Site
Serbs Massacre Muslims in "Safe Area" of Srebrenica
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia United Nations
Coalition for International Justice
Reports concerning human rights abuses in Bosnia Intac Access
Major War Criminals/Suspects CalTech's Bosnia Site
Reports on War Crimes in the Former Yugoslavia CalTech's Bosnia Site
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