Srebrenica participants named

Wednesday, October 5, 2005; Posted: 6:26 a.m. EDT (10:26 GMT)

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BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) -- A Bosnian Serb commission said it has identified more than 17,000 participants in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, Europe's worst slaughter of civilians since World War II.

The Special Bosnian Serb Government Working Group, which has been compiling the report since 2003, said the names would not be released publicly but would be turned over to the state prosecutor's office for review and possible charges.

The commission said it submitted the report to the office of Bosnia's top international official, Paddy Ashdown, who requested it as part of efforts to bring to justice those responsible for the massacre of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys -- one of the worst atrocities in Bosnia's 1992-1995 war.

The panel said 19,473 members of various Bosnian Serb armed forces and civilians took part in various ways in the massacre, and that of those, 17,074 had been identified by name.

The commission did not establish how many of the participants were directly involved in the slaughter because its mandate "was not to establish the level of responsibility in the killings," said Smail Cekic, a member of the panel.

The state prosecutor's office said it had not yet seen the report but said authorities would review it carefully, and that they would treat as a "special priority" any individuals on the list who are currently holding public office or working in law enforcement or the judiciary.

The U.N. war crimes tribunal's top two wanted fugitives, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his wartime military leader, Gen. Ratko Mladic, were indicted together in 1995 for genocide and crimes against humanity stemming from the Srebrenica killings.

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic is standing trial before the tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, for command responsibility for what happened at Srebrenica and for atrocities elsewhere in the Balkans.

The commission put the report together using documents from 1995 taken from the Bosnian Serb Defense Ministry, the Bosnian Serb Army and the Bosnian Serb police, Cekic said.

"A significant source was also the U.N. tribunal in The Hague," he said, adding that some of the documents involved in the report had not even been available to tribunal investigators.

Ashdown's office issued a statement Tuesday evening acknowledging that the Bosnian Serb government had "finally ... taken its obligations seriously" in providing details about the July 1995 massacre in Srebrenica, a U.N.-declared "safe haven" for Muslims who had sought refuge from the Serbs.

Ashdown's office said it "firmly believes that no investigation can replace those loved ones tragically lost."

"But by breaching the wall of silence that has surrounded these events for almost a decade, those who lost loved ones have an opportunity to get the answers they have sought since July 1995 and to see justice served," it said.

The bloodshed began on July 11, 1995, when Serb forces stormed past the eastern enclave's hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned Dutch U.N. protectors and rounded up its inhabitants. At a car battery factory on the edge of town, men and boys were separated from women and girls, then hauled away, forced to strip -- and shot one by one.

A U.N. tribunal judge involved in the indictment described the slaughter as "scenes from hell written on the darkest pages of human history."