A Dutch appeals court ruled on Tuesday the state was partly to blame for the deaths of some 350 Muslim men in the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, and in a landmark move ordered it to pay limited damages.

"The court finds that the Dutch state acted unlawfully," judge Gepke Dulek said in an hour-long ruling, which largely upheld a 2014 decision by a lower court.

"The conclusion is that the Dutchbat (Dutch peacekeepers) knew that during the evacuations by the Bosnian Serbs to separate the Muslim men and boys there was a real risk they could face inhumane treatment or execution," she said.</s>Image copyright AFP Image caption Munira Subasic, of the Mothers of Srebrenica group, said the ruling was a "great injustice"

A Dutch appeals court has largely upheld a 2014 ruling finding the Netherlands responsible for the deaths of 350 Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) men in the Srebrenica massacre.

The Dutch state acted unlawfully in July 1995 as peacekeepers handed the men over knowing the dangers they faced, Judge Gepke Dulek said.

But she ruled it was not 100% liable as many would have been killed regardless.

A campaign group for the families has called the ruling "a great injustice".

Munira Subasic, of the Mothers of Srebrenica group, said: "The Dutch state should take its responsibility for our victims because they could have kept them all safe on the Dutchbat compound."

The July 1995 massacre of more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys was considered Europe's worst since World War Two and the case against the Netherlands was brought by 6,000 relatives of those who died.

Some 5,000 Bosniaks had sought shelter from Bosnian Serb soldiers in a UN base, which was being defended by the lightly-armed Dutch peacekeepers - known as Dutchbat. Thousands more had sought protection outside the base.

But after the base was overrun, the Muslim men and boys were told by the peacekeepers they would be safe and handed over to the Bosnian Serb army.

In 2014, a Dutch court found the Netherlands liable for the deaths of 350 who had been inside the base, but not those outside.

Image copyright AFP Image caption A battalion of Dutch peacekeepers was stationed at Srebrenica in 1995

Three years later, Judge Dulek - sitting at the Hague Appeals Court - backed the decision.

In an hour-long ruling (in Dutch), she concluded that "Dutchbat knew that the men ran a real risk of inhumane treatment or execution".

The judge added that the Dutchbat soldiers had facilitated the separation of the men and the boys among the refugees.

But she said the Netherlands should only be responsible for 30% of damages, as there was a 70% likelihood the male refugees would have been dragged from the safety of the base whatever the peacekeepers had done.

The Dutch government has previously acknowledged its failure to protect the refugees, while the Bosnian Serbs were responsible for the killings.

Separately, some 200 veterans of the Dutch battalion have launched a lawsuit against the Dutch government, claiming around €4.5m ($5m/£3.9m) in compensation for the trauma they suffered.

The precise number of Bosniaks murdered at Srebrenica may never be known. The International Committee of the Red Cross said up to 8,000 had died, while the UN tribunal at The Hague said it was more than 7,000.

Timeline of Srebrenica siege

Image copyright AFP Image caption A woman sobs during a mass burial of newly identified victims, 15 years after the 1995 massacre,

6-8 July 1995: Bosnian Serb forces start shelling Srebrenica enclave

9 July: Bosnian Serbs step up shelling; thousands of Bosnian Muslim refugees flee to Srebrenica

10 July: Dutch peacekeepers request UN air support after Bosnian Serbs shell Dutch positions. Large crowds of refugees gather around Dutch positions

11 July: More than 20,000 refugees flee to main Dutch base at Potocari. Serbs threaten to kill Dutch hostages and shell refugees after Dutch F-16 fighters bomb Serb positions. Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic enters Srebrenica and delivers ultimatum that Muslims must hand over weapons

12 July: An estimated 23,000 women and children are deported to Muslim territory; men aged 12-77 taken "for interrogation" and held in trucks and warehouses

13 July: First killings of unarmed Muslims take place near village of Kravica. Peacekeepers hand over some 5,000 Muslims sheltering at Dutch base in exchange for the release of 14 Dutch peacekeepers held by Bosnian Serbs

14 July: Reports of massacres start to emerge</s>The Dutch court affirmed that Bosnian Serb paramilitary units bore the main responsibility for the massacre, but agreed with the plaintiffs that the Dutch peacekeeping battalion operating under the aegis of the United Nations, known as Dutchbat, could and should have done more to protect the 350 men.

“All arguments weighed against each other, the court puts the chance that the men would have escaped inhumane treatment and execution by the Bosnian Serbs if they could have stayed at the United Nations compound at 30 percent,” the ruling, by the Dutch Court of Appeal in The Hague, stated. By not giving the men the choice to stay, “the Dutch state deprived them of this possibility.”

The ruling, presented in court by the presiding judge, Gepke Dulek-Schermers, found that the Dutch soldiers “knew or should have known that the men were not only being screened” for their religion and ethnicity, “but were in real danger of being subjected to torture or execution.”

Simon van der Sluijs, a lawyer for the Mothers of Srebrenica, an advocacy group for the families of about 6,000 victims, which brought the lawsuit, said the plaintiffs were disappointed by the reasoning of the judges.

“It’s rather mysterious how they arrived at 30 percent,” he said. “That’s based on a number of uncertainties: Were the Bosnian Serbs prepared to use violence against the compound? If they had used violence, would the people in the compound have survived?”

He called the ruling “Solomonic,” in that it tried to split the difference, but he also called the 30 percent figure “arbitrary.” The judgment can be appealed, he said, but only on procedural grounds; the appellate court’s findings of fact, he said, cannot be challenged.

The appellate court agreed that family members — the spouses and children of the men, and the parents of the boys — were entitled to damages. The amount of damages has not been determined and is subject to negotiation with the government.

The paramilitary forces overwhelmed the small and lightly armed battalion of Dutch soldiers, whose pleas for airstrikes and reinforcements went unheard. The United Nations and the Dutch government have largely accepted the judgment of several studies, which faulted them for sending peacekeepers into a terrible situation with ill-defined goals, a weak mandate, little intelligence about the paramilitary forces surrounding them and no clear strategy for concluding their mission.

The Srebrenica killings have long haunted the Dutch. In 2002, Prime Minister Wim Kok and the rest of his cabinet resigned after an investigation faulted the government for its failure to protect the victims.

The United Nations issued a blistering self-examination of its role in 1999, acknowledging that “the tragedy of Srebrenica will haunt our history forever.” The plaintiffs in the Dutch case also tried to sue the United Nations, but Dutch judges found that the world body enjoyed “absolute immunity” from prosecution in national courts.

Several Bosnian Serbs have been prosecuted for their roles in the mass killings, part of a campaign of so-called ethnic cleansing. Last year, Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, was convicted of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity and sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Ratko Mladic, who was Mr. Karadzic’s military chief during the campaign, went on trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, based in The Hague, in 2012; his case is pending.

Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian president whose extreme nationalism instigated and enabled much of the fighting, died in his cell in The Hague in March 2006, before the end of his trial.

While finding the Dutch government partly liable, the court found that “the deaths of the men was the direct consequence of the actions of the Bosnian Serbs and that without the actions of the Bosnian Serbs the men would certainly not have been executed.”

Niels Blokker, a professor of international public law at Leiden University in the Netherlands, predicted an appeal of the ruling.

“The 30 percent will probably be looked at, but also the responsibility of the United Nations, because the battalion was operating under the orders of the United Nations,” he said. “Besides the Dutch state, what was the responsibility of the United Nations? That’s a question about principles. Where does the responsibility of the U.N. end?”

Cornelis Flinterman, a professor emeritus of human rights law at Utrecht University, said he found the 30 percent figure mystifying. “The judiciary should have recognized the full responsibility and liability of the state of the Netherlands for what happened at Srebrenica,” he said, while also predicting that the case would go to the Dutch Supreme Court.</s>The Hague Appeals Court ruled Tuesday that the Netherlands was partly responsible for the deaths of 350 Bosnian Muslim males during the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, upholding a lower-court ruling from 2014.

But Tuesday’s decision differed from the one three years ago in one important respect: The Hague Appeals Court ruled the Dutch state was liable for 30 percent of the losses suffered by the families of those men who were killed. It said the Dutch U.N. peacekeepers should have given the men a chance to remain inside their compound.

“Perhaps they would not have survived either in that case, because the Bosnian Serbs would have blocked access of relief supplies (water, food) or would have removed the men from the compound by force, but they would still have had a chance of survival in that case,” the ruling said. “The Court of Appeal estimates that chance to be 30%. The State is therefore liable for 30% of the losses suffered by the relatives.”</s>A Dutch appeals court has ruled that the state was partially liable in the deaths of some 300 Muslim men killed by Bosnian Serb forces in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

The ruling by The Hague Appeals Court on June 27 largely upheld another court's 2014 judgment that said the state was liable in the deaths of the Bosnian Muslim men who were expelled from a Dutch UN base in July 1995 and subsequently killed by the surrounding Bosnian Serb troops.

Both the relatives, who seek Dutch responsibility for all Srebrenica victims, and the Dutch government appealed the ruling.

The appeals court’s presiding judge, Gepke Dulek, said that because Dutch soldiers sent the men off the Dutch compound along with other refugees seeking shelter there, "they were deprived of the chance of survival."

The 300 men were among around 8,000 Muslim men and boys who were killed by Bosnian Serb troops under the command of General Ratko Mladic at Srebrenica in July 1995, the worst mass killing on European soil since World War II.

The UN's International Court of Justice ruled in 2007 that the massacre in the Srebrenica enclave was a genocide perpetrated by Bosnian Serb forces against the Muslims.

The 2014 ruling also provided for compensation for the relatives of the 300 victims.

The Hague Civil Court ruled in 2014 that Dutch peacekeepers could have known that the 300 men seeking refuge at their base in the village of Potocari would be murdered by Bosnian Serb troops if forced to leave.

However, in a departure from the earlier ruling, the appeals court said the Netherlands should pay only 30 percent of damages, as it estimated the odds at 70 percent that the victims would have been dragged from the base and killed regardless of what the Dutch soldiers did.

The court did not say at the time how much compensation the families should receive.

The amount of damages is determined in a separate procedure unless the victims and the state can reach a settlement.

In the 2014 trial, which was launched by relatives of the victims under the name Mothers Of Srebrenica, the Dutch state was cleared over the deaths of more than 7,000 other men killed in and around Srebrenica. That decision was upheld by the appeals court on June 27.

The ruling is seen as exceptional as the United Nations enjoys immunity from prosecution.

The government of Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok resigned in 2002 after acknowledging its failure to protect the refugees. However, the Netherlands says the Bosnian Serbs, not Dutch troops, bear responsibility for the killings.

Mladic, the former commander of the Bosnian Serbs, is on trial for genocide, with a verdict expected later this year.

With reporting by Reuters, AP, dpa, and the BBC</s>A Dutch appeals court in The Hague ruled on Tuesday that the Netherlands is partly liable for the deaths of 300 Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) killed in Srebrenica.

The 300 civilians were killed by the Serbian Republic Army (RS) under the leadership of the convicted war criminal General Ratko Mladic.

Tuesday’s ruling upholds a 2014 ruling which specified that a Dutch UN peace-keeping battalion could and should have known that Muslim men and boys were in danger and should have allowed them to leave the base.

In 2014, Bosnian families claimed the Dutch government was, in fact, responsible for the death of 8,000 civilians; that is, a claim the Court dismissed.

In July 1995, the Dutch forces negotiated with Mladic the evacuation of 30,000 Muslim civilians. The evacuation continued even when the Serbs started separating women and children from elder boys and men. The Court on Tuesday said the question of whether the men and boys would have survived had they remained in the Dutch base remains open, as the Serbian Army could have launched an attack.

The Dutch government has long argued there was no way to predict any of the Bosniak civilian casualties and appealed the 2014 ruling. But, the ruling means the Netherlands will have to pay the families compensation. But by laying the legal precedent of state responsibility, this final ruling could mean states are reluctant to participate in UN peacekeeping operations, the Dutch press reports.

In parallel, Dutch army veterans of the Srebrenica massacre are suing the Dutch government for shifting the responsibility to them for the humanitarian disaster, while they were sent to battle unprepared, ill-informed, and ill-equipped.</s>A Dutch appeals court ruled Tuesday that the government was partially liable in the deaths of more than 300 Muslim men killed by Bosnian Serb forces in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

The ruling formally struck down a civil court's landmark 2014 judgment that said the state was liable in the deaths of the Bosnian Muslim men and boys who were turned over by Dutch UN peacekeepers to Bosnian Serb forces in July 1995 and subsequently killed.

But the appeals panel largely upheld the earlier case's findings while significantly cutting the amount of damages relatives of the dead could receive by assessing the victims' chances of survival had they remained in the care of the Dutch troops.

The court estimated the chances of Muslim males' survival if they had stayed in the Dutch compound at around 30 percent.

"The state is therefore liable for 30 percent of the losses suffered by the relatives," the court said in a statement. The 2014 judgment didn't include that qualification.

In a written reaction, the Dutch Defense Ministry said the government would carefully study the latest ruling.

"The starting point is that the Bosnian Serbs were responsible," the statement said.

The appeals judgment is the latest in a string of legal cases in the Netherlands concerning the country's role in the Srebrenica massacre and whether the country's soldiers could or should have done more to prevent the mass killings.

Hague Appeals Court presiding judge Gepke Dulek said the men were killed after being removed by Dutch UN peacekeepers from their compound during a mass evacuation. Bosnian Serb forces led by Gen. Ratko Mladic had overrun the UN-declared safe haven in eastern Bosnia.

"By having the men leave the compound unreservedly, they were deprived of a chance of survival," presiding judge Gepke Dulek said.

The men were among around 8,000 Muslim men and boys killed by Bosnian Serb forces in Europe's worst massacre since World War II.

The ruling angered a group of female relatives of victims of the massacre who were in court for the ruling.

Munira Subasic, who leads an organization called the Mothers of Srebrenica that brought the case, stood up and waved her finger at the judge after the ruling, saying "this is a huge injustice."

Lawyers for the victims can now begin discussions with government lawyers about compensation.

Lawyer Marco Gerritsen, who represented the relatives, said he understood the relatives' anger. "But from a legal point of view it is not that bad. Of course we would have hoped for more and I think we had a good case," he said.

Gerritsen called the court's assessment of the men's survival chances "very arbitrary." He said he will study the judgment to see if it is possible to appeal to the Dutch Supreme Court.

On July 13, 1995, Dutch peacekeepers bowed to pressure from Bosnian Serb forces commanded by Mladic and forced thousands of Muslims out of their fenced-off compound, where they had sought refuge.

The Bosnian Serb forces sorted the Muslims by gender, then trucked the males away and began killing them in what would become the bloody climax to the 1992-95 Bosnian war, a slaughter that international courts have ruled was genocide. The war claimed 100,000 lives in all.

The Srebrenica bodies were plowed into hastily made mass graves, which were later bulldozed and scattered among other burial sites in an attempt to hide the evidence.

Mladic is on trial for genocide and other offenses at a UN tribunal in The Hague for his alleged role in the Srebrenica massacre and other crimes during the war.</s>The Hague, June 27 (Reuters) - A Dutch appeals court on Tuesday confirmed that the Netherlands was partly liable for the deaths of some 300 Muslim males who were expelled from a Dutch U.N. base after the surrounding area was overrun by Bosnian Serb troops.

The ruling by the Hague Appeals Court upholds a 2014 decision that Dutch peace-keepers should have known that the men seeking refuge at the base near Srebrenica would be murdered by Bosnian Serb troops if they were forced to leave -- as they were.

States participating in U.N. peacekeeping missions have rarely faced legal action over their performance.

Lenneke Sprik, an international security lecturer at Amsterdam's VU University said the ruling was "very important for future peacekeeping missions and the law on state responsibility." She said the decision might deter countries from contributing peace-keeping troops to future missions.

Some 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed by Bosnian Serb troops under the command of former General Ratko Mladic at Srebrenica in July 1995, the worst mass killing on European soil since World War Two.

Many of the Muslim victims had fled to the U.N.-declared "safe zone" in Srebrenica only to find the outnumbered and lightly-armed Dutch troops there unable to defend them. They then headed to the nearby Dutch base.

Reading the complex ruling, Presiding Judge Gepke Dulek-Schermers said that Dutch soldiers "knew or should have known that the men were not only being screened ... but were in real danger of being subjected to torture or execution."

The ruling relates only to the 300 men who had sought safety on the Dutch-controlled base.

In a departure from the earlier ruling, it said the Netherlands should pay only 30 percent of damages, as it estimated the odds at 70 percent that the victims would have been dragged from the base and killed regardless of what the Dutch soldiers did.

The amount of damages is determined in a separate procedure unless the victims and the state can reach a settlement.

Dutch state lawyers left the court building without commenting on the ruling. The Dutch government resigned in 2002 after acknowledging its failure to protect the refugees, though the Netherlands maintains that the Bosnian Serbs, not Dutch troops, bear responsibility for the killings.

Mladic is on trial for genocide with a verdict expected later this year.

The court rejected an appeal from relatives of other Srebrenica victims, who argued the Dutch government should be held responsible for the protection of thousands more Muslims who had gathered outside the base.

"This is a great injustice," said Munira Subasic of the 'Mothers of Srebrenica' group. "The Dutch state should take its responsibility for our victims because they could have kept them all safe on the Dutchbat (Dutch battalions') compound."</s>The Hague — On Tuesday, a Dutch appeals court confirmed that the Netherlands was partly liable for the deaths of some 300 Muslim males who were expelled from a Dutch UN base after the surrounding area was overrun by Bosnian Serb troops.

The ruling by the Hague Appeals Court upholds a 2014 decision that Dutch peacekeepers should have known that the men seeking refuge at the base near Srebrenica would be murdered by Bosnian Serb troops if they were forced to leave — as they were.

States participating in UN peacekeeping missions have rarely faced legal action over their performance. Lenneke Sprik, an international security lecturer at Amsterdam’s VU University, said the ruling was "very important for future peacekeeping missions and the law on state responsibility", adding the decision might deter countries from contributing peacekeeping troops to future missions.

Some 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed by Bosnian Serb troops under the command of former General Ratko Mladic at Srebrenica in July 1995, the worst mass killing on European soil since the Second World War.

Many of the Muslim victims had fled to the UN-declared "safe zone" in Srebrenica only to find the outnumbered and lightly armed Dutch troops there were unable to defend them. They then headed to the nearby Dutch base.

Reading the complex ruling, Presiding Judge Gepke Dulek-Schermers said that Dutch soldiers "knew or should have known that the men were not only being screened ... but were in real danger of being subjected to torture or execution". The ruling relates only to the 300 men who had sought safety on the Dutch-controlled base.</s>A court has found the Netherlands is in part to blame for the deaths of hundreds of Muslim men in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

An appeals court in the Hague upheld a judgement from 2014 that ordered the Dutch government to compensate families of the Bosniak Muslims who were handed to Bosnian Serb troops by Dutch UN peacekeepers.

The court said the peacekeepers knew the men seeking refuge at a UN base in the village of Potocari would be killed.

Judge Gepke Dulek said the victims were "deprived of the chance of survival".

The case is unique as the UN normally has immunity from prosecution and this is a rare case of UN peacekeepers being held to account over their actions.

The Srebrenica massacre was the worst on European soil since the Second World War, in which more than 8,000 Muslims were murdered in the small mountain town.

War broke out in Bosnia in April 1992 after months of growing tension between Serbs, Bosnians and Croats. Bosnian Serbs, under Radovan Karadzic, laid siege to Sarajevo and began the widespread ethnic cleansing of non-Serbian inhabitants in eastern Bosnia.

In July 1995, Bosnian Serb forces took hold of Srebrenica, designated a UN "safe area" just two years before. Bosnian Muslim men and boys were rounded up for execution. Women were raped, tortured and forcibly displaced from their homes.

A survivor, Adisada Dudic, told IBTimes UK more than 50 members of her family were killed in the massacre. Dudic fled Srebrenica with her family, but her father stayed behind.

"My father loaded my pregnant mother, myself and my sisters on to trucks for women and children," she said. "He stayed behind in Srebrenica but we were to go as far away as possible. We travelled for nine days – mostly at night – until we reached a refugee camp in Ljubljana, Slovenia."

"We lost over 50 members of our family in July 1995. One of our uncles spent three months in the woodland, hiding and eating what he could find. I remember women and children on buses being deported from the area and they were completely traumatised. These are the kinds of images that stay in my head always."
An appeals court in The Hague rules that Netherlands is partly to blame for the deaths of some 350 Muslim Bosnian men in the 1995 Srebrenica genocide and, in a move considered landmark, orders it to pay limited damages.