The Srebrenica Massacre - Nova Srpska Politicka Misao

The Numbers Game
were also unable to find any eyewitnesses. Dr. Dick Schoonoord of the
Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (NIOD) confirmed at
the beginning of 2005: “It has been impossible during our investigations
in Bosnia to find any people who witnessed the mass murder or
would talk about the fate of the missing men.” 43
There was also, of course, the testimony of Drazen Erdemovic, who
not only allegedly witnessed but participated in a mass killing episode
in July 1995. His claims and role are discussed at length in Chapter 5.
There were other indications from an early stage that the massacre
claims were unreliable. A former U.S. State Department official, who remained
in close contact with past colleagues at very senior levels, wrote
in 1997 that he had been told that the South Central Europe section in
the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research “saw nothing,
repeat nothing, that had substantiated claims in the press.” He
added that the individual who had told him this had security clearances
to the highest level, and “would have had to know about it” had any
such information existed. 44
Recent decades have been littered with instances where strong and
specific allegations have been made—most notoriously about the existence
of “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq before the 2003 war—
which later have been proven false. In 1999, NATO countries claimed
that thousands—one U.S. official claim reached a total of 500,000—of
Kosovo Albanians had been summarily executed by the Serbs. When
the post-war body hunt in Kosovo produced fewer than 4,000 bodies
in total from all sides and all causes of death, 45 stories began to emerge
of a huge cover-up involving the mass transportation of bodies to burial
sites in Serbia. These stories gained widespread coverage, even though
they were implausible and have never been confirmed. Indeed, one of
the most prominent, the so-called “Freezer Truck” claim, was entirely
discredited during an ICTY trial when the local police chief said that
there was no evidence whatsoever to link bodies taken from the truck
with Kosovo. 46 The parallels between these stories and some of the Srebrenica
allegations are obvious.
The role of Madeleine Albright: Strong claims, link to Operation
Storm, lack of confirmation
International outrage over Srebrenica was first provoked by claims
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