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Summary Bosnia buried more victims of the Srebrenica massacre, Europe's worst atrocity since World War Two.
Another 520 victims of the Srebrenica massacre were buried in Bosnia on Wednesday (July 11), marking the 17th anniversary of the atrocity, for which accused mastermind Ratko Mladic is now standing trial.Under a scorching sun, thousands of Bosnian Muslims prayed with open palms as rows of coffins draped in green cloth were passed overhead through the crowd and interred in the Potocari memorial centre in eastern Bosnia.The ceremony, a yearly ritual, brings the number of Srebrenica victims identified and buried to 5,657.It was marred by whistling and booing when foreign and local dignitaries arrived, reflecting anger over a ruling that thousands of Muslim refugees from Srebrenica, who no longer live there, cannot vote in the towns local election in October, meaning control will likely pass to Serbs.The remains of an estimated 2,400 victims are still to be identified or dug up from the mass graves they were dumped in by Mladics Bosnian Serb forces as they swept into a town designated by the United Nations as a safe haven in the maelstrom of war.The brutality of what took place here can never be forgotten not just in our generation, but also for all time said New York Rabbi Arthur Schneier, a Holocaust survivor and the first non-Muslim cleric to address the annual ceremony.Mladic, the 70-year-old former general of Bosnian Serb forces, was arrested in May last year, after he was found hiding in a village in northern Serbia.U.N. prosecutors opened their case against him on Monday at the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, where he faces a string of charges including genocide for the Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys and the 43-month siege of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, which killed more than ten thousand people.The trial comes as little compensation to the families of his victims. Dzemila Omerovic, whose husband was killed in the conflict says she thinks Mladic will be acquitted.They (The Hague War Crimes Court) will acquit Karadzic now, they are only killing us again with this. This court shouldnt have been established in the first place. Injustice hurts more than killing. Hes (Mladics) laughing in our faces, his disrespect for the victims, it hurts.
