On this day

1995: Serbs overrun UN 'safe haven'
The Bosnian Serb army has seized control of the United Nations "safe area" of Srebrenica after Dutch peacekeepers were forced to withdraw.
Some 1,500 Serb troops overran the lightly-armed Dutch troops, despite two Nato air strikes on Serbian tanks inside the enclave.

The Bosnian Prime Minister, Haris Silajdzic, called the Nato response "too little, too late" and said the people of Srebrenica had been "betrayed".

Up to 30,000 refugees from the mainly Muslim town are now reported to be fleeing to the north and the United States has questioned the UN's ability to carry out its "humanitarian mission" in the region.


This raises the question as to whether the UN force will be able to stay in Bosnia to perform the humanitarian mission

US Defence Secretary William Perry

UN spokesman Alexander Ivanko old reporters: "It is our understanding that Srebrenica has fallen to the Bosnian army.

"Thousands of refugees are fleeing to a town called Potocari in the north of the enclave. The Dutch company that was in Srebrenica has also withdrawn to Potocari."

Thirty Dutch peacekeepers had been captured during the Serbian advance, Mr Ivanko added.

The 400-strong UN battalion had set up a "blocking position" south of Srebrenica in an attempt to defend the town.

Nato air strikes hit two Serbian tanks, but Dutch Defence Minister Joris Voorhoeve requested they were suspended after receiving "terror threats" from the Serbs.

Mr Voorhoeve said: "They threatened to shoot dead the 30 Dutch soldiers they are holding hostage and to raze the Dutch battalion's headquarters to the ground. And to raze Srebrenica to the ground."

But the Bosnian Serb Army commander, General Ratko Mladic, said in a letter to the UN that the offensive had been necessary to "neutralise terrorists" and accused the UN of failing to demilitarise the area.

And the general said that civilians and peacekeepers had no need to fear the Serb advance.

With Serb sights now set on the nearby Zepa safe area - according to a broadcast by a Serbian-controlled television station in Pale - US Defence Secretary William Perry said the now UN faced a serious challenge.

"This raises the question as to whether the UN force will be able to stay in Bosnia to perform the humanitarian mission," he said.


E-mail this story to a friend






Up to 30,000 refugees are thought to have fled Srebrenica





In Context
What happened in the weeks after the Serb offensive have since been described as the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.
On 12 August 1995 the UN announced an investigation into reports up to 2,700 Muslim men had been shot dead with machine-guns and buried in mass graves. US aerial photographs appeared to show evidence of mass graves close to Srebrenica.

It is now thought that between 7,000 and 8,000 Muslim men were killed by Serb soldiers following the fall of Srebrenica.

Refugee accounts claimed General Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb commander, addressed the Muslim captives and warned that 1,000 refugees would be killed for every Serb who died.

General Mladic and the Bosnian Serb President at the time, Radovan Karadzic, were both later indicted by the War Crimes Tribunal for genocide. Mr Karadzic was finally arrested in Belgrade in July 2008 and is expected to face trial at the Hague but General Mladic is still at large.

One senior Bosnian Serb, General Radislav Krstic, was jailed for genocide for his part in the Srebrenica tragedy.

There have been a number of investigations into the massacre. In 2002 the entire Dutch government resigned after an inquiry blamed officials for giving the poorly-armed troops an impossible task to defend the enclave.

Initial findings of a commission involving the Bosnian Serbs admitted for the first time in June 2004 that Serbs had taken part in the killings.


Stories From 11 Jul
1995: Serbs overrun UN 'safe haven'
1979: Skylab tumbles back to Earth
2000: Britain pioneers HIV vaccine
1977: Gay paper guilty of blasphemy
1991: Anti-poll tax MP jailed
1987: Soldiers remember Passchendaele

Search ON THIS DAY by date




Front Page | Years | Themes | Witness
About This Site | Text Only


1995: Srebrenica - a survivor's story
Emir Suljagic can remember the precise moment when war in the Balkans overtook his life.
It was 12 May 1992 and he was standing with his father on a wooded hill above Bratunac, the small town on the Bosnia-Serbia border where the 17 year old lived with his family.

The pair watched as columns of trucks from the Serbian bank of the Drina river crossed into Bosnia to pick up Muslims expelled from their villages in the valley.

"The women and children were mostly taken straight to the Bosnian government-controlled territory, whereas the men were held in Bratunac for no longer than a couple of weeks," Suljagic says.

"But in those couple of weeks, of some 700 people at least half were killed in what the survivors later related to us were really brutal murders."


The first reaction was to run for our lives - and that's what my dad and I did

Emir Suljagic

It was also a brutal awakening for the young Suljagic, who knew that family and friends were among the captured.

Before the war he was just a regular teenager, says Suljagic, now a 30-year-old journalist living in Sarajevo.

"I was interested in computers, I was interested in heavy metal music, I was a Metallica fan, I watched basketball. I did what everybody else my age did."

But the only thing on his mind watching the Serbian operation that afternoon was escape.

"The first reaction was to run for our lives. And that's what my dad and I did.

"We ran into the woods and we travelled the whole day to get to a village which was still not under Serb control."

Execution squad

Suljagic and his father ended up in Srebrenica - among the first of many Muslims who sought refuge there during the war.

They were joined by his mother and sister the following day. They told how many of their extended family in Bratunac had surrendered to Serb neighbours, who had guaranteed them safe passage to Tuzla.

"My dad's mother was actually looking for my father and me in an attempt to convince us to surrender to the Serbs."

But the decision to run probably saved their lives.

Two months later, Suljagic says a 17-year-old cousin who had surrendered joined them at Srebrenica.

"He told us that he had survived the execution squad in which everyone else was killed - all other male members of my family.

Refugees

"My relative said that the guy who was behind the machine gun on an armoured personnel carrier was the bus conductor on a bus we took to school every day," he adds.

Suljagic's father was killed by a Serb shell in December 1992 as he made his way back to the frontline near Bratunac. His mother and sister left for Tuzla in April 1993.

Suljagic stayed in Srebrenica for the next three years with his maternal grandparents.

Conditions in the town were terrible. The number of refugees in Srebrenica swelled to over 40,000 in early 1993. Many were forced to live on the streets in freezing temperatures.

Mass grave

When the United Nations arrived, the teenager secured a job as an interpreter working for UN military observers roving around the enclave.

Although suspicious of the rapport the Dutch officers developed with their Serb counterparts, Suljagic says he firmly believed the besieged Srebrenica would remain in UN hands - even after Serbian commander General Ratko Mladic attacked on 6 July 1995.

But the UN's "safe area" fell to the Bosnian Serb army on 11 July.

"I first knew what would be happening the moment they started separating men from women and children," Suljagic says.

"I knew that whenever they separated men from women, they most of the time kill the men."

Over the next three days, at least 8,000 Muslim males were killed, including Suljagic's 70-year-old grandfather, whose remains were identified in a mass grave near Zvornik in 2003.

Suljagic believes he was lucky to escape, despite running into General Mladic himself on 12 July while accompanying UN observers to nearby Potocari.

No forgiveness

The general questioned him on whether he had served in the army before dismissing him.

"I got really scared. I was pretty sure he was going to have me shot - there or somewhere else.

"I asked for my ID card back. The only thing that went through my mind was that if I'm shot on the way back to the camp, I don't want to be a nameless body."

Suljagic eventually made it safely to Tuzla. He says he will never come to terms with what happened at Srebrenica.

He wants the perpetrators to be tried, but is not sure justice has an "adequate answer" to a crime of this magnitude and nature.

"Of course it would be very good to see them in prison. I'm just not quite sure if it will mean anything 10 years later."

And he says he finds no solace in concepts of truth or reconciliation.

"I'm not going to forgive. It doesn't mean I'm going to hate, but I'm not going to forgive."


E-mail this story to a friend






At least 8,000 Muslim men died in Srebrenica after the UN lost the town




Emir Suljagic lost almost all the male members of his family in the Balkan war

Srebrenica Now: The town through the eyes of those who live there

In pictures
In Context
Emir Suljagic is a journalist for the Sarajevo weekly news magazine Dani.
He recovered the remains of his father in 2004 and will bury him in Srebrenica on the 10th anniversary of the massacre.

His book about Srebrenica, Postcards From The Grave, was published in June 2005.



Witness Stories
1956: 'Laughing stock of the world' - Suez veteran
1988: Debris of a disaster
1963: 'Stunned into silence' by JFK's death
1989: The night the Wall came down
1980: The legend of Lennon

1533 - Pope Clement VII excommunicated England's King Henry VIII.

1776 - Captain Cook set sail from Plymouth in the Resolution, accompanied by the Discovery, on his last expedition.

1848 – Waterloo railway station in London opens.

1859 - A Tale Of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, was published.

1962 – The first transatlantic satellite television transmission is broadcast.

1975 - Excavations at the tomb of Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi, near the ancient Chinese capital of Xi'an, uncovered an army of 8,000 life-size terracotta warriors dating to about 206 BC.

1979 - The abandoned U.S. space station Skylab made a spectacular return to Earth after being in space since 1973, burning up in the atmosphere and showering debris over the Indian Ocean and Australia.

1987 – According to the United Nations, the world population reaches 5 billion.

2006 – 209 people are killed in a series of bomb attacks in Mumbai, India.

1833 - Yagan was killed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yagan

927 – Æthelstan, King of England, secures a pledge from Constantine II of Scotland that the latter will not ally with Viking kings, beginning the process of unifying Great Britain.

1543 - England's Henry VIII married Catherine Parr, his sixth and last wife, at Hampton Court Palace.

1690 - Protestant forces led by William of Orange defeated the Roman Catholic army of James II at the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland.

1794 - British admiral Horatio Nelson lost his right eye at the siege of Calvi, in Corsica.

1910 - Charles Rolls, aged 33, pioneering pilot and co-founder of Rolls-Royce, was killed when he crashed his biplane in a flying competition at Bournemouth.

1960 - The first Etch-A-Sketch toy went on sale.

1962 – The Rolling Stones perform their first ever concert, at the Marquee Club in London.

1971 – The Australian Aboriginal flag is flown for the first time.

2005 - Prince Albert II is enthroned as ruler of the Principality of Monaco.

2011 – Neptune completes its first orbit since its discovery on September 23, 1846.

1955: Ruth Ellis hanged for killing lover
Convicted murderer Ruth Ellis has been hanged at Holloway Prison, London.
Ellis was sentenced to death at the Old Bailey for shooting her lover, 25-year-old racing driver David Blakely, outside the Magdala public house in north London on Easter Sunday.

Home Secretary Major Lloyd George rejected the final appeals to reprieve the 28-year-old former model and nightclub hostess last night.

Public support

The Prison Governor at Holloway was forced to call for police reinforcements yesterday evening as a crowd of 500 massed outside the prison's gates singing and chanting for Ellis for several hours.

Some people broke through police cordons to bang on the jail's doors, calling for Ellis to pray with them, but by 2330 BST the crowd had dispersed.

Thousands of people have signed petitions asking for the death penalty to be lifted in this case, including 35 members of London County Council who delivered their plea to the House of Commons last night.

The executioner, Albert Pierrepoint, arrived at the prison yesterday after travelling to the capital from Preston, Lancashire.

A silent crowd - including women with prams - collected around Holloway this morning, waiting for the execution at 0900 BST.

Eighteen minutes later, notice of Ellis' death was posted outside and the crowd surged forwards, blocking the road and stopping traffic.

Legal questions

Yesterday, Ellis was visited by her mother, her solicitor J G Bickford and her friend, Jacqueline Dyer, within an hour of hearing there would be no reprieve.

Her trial opened on 20 June and the jury took just 14 minutes to find her guilty of murder.

She did not appeal against her conviction.

The case has increased debate about British criminal justice and the death penalty.

The Royal Commission on Capital Punishment has reported recently that the incidence of murder is not significantly greater in countries where the death penalty has been abolished.


E-mail this story to a friend





Notices of execution were posted outside the jail



In Context
The trial and punishment of Ruth Ellis became notorious as she was the last woman in England to be executed.
The death penalty in the UK was suspended in 1965 and permanently removed in 1970.

Ruth Ellis' family campaigned for her murder conviction to be reduced to manslaughter on the grounds of provocation. Through the Criminal Cases Review Commission they brought the case to the Court of Appeal in September 2003.

They argued Ellis was suffering "battered woman syndrome". She had suffered a miscarriage just 10 days before the killing after David Blakely had punched her in the stomach.

But the appeal judges ruled she had been properly convicted of murder according to the law as it stood at the time. The defence of diminished responsibility did not then exist.


Stories From 13 Jul
1985: Live Aid makes millions for Africa
1955: Ruth Ellis hanged for killing lover
1971: Death for Moroccan rebel leaders
2001: Family demand inquiry into police shooting
1993: Green light for Manchester Olympics

1793 link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Corday

1713 - A treaty signed between Great Britain and Spain at Utrecht ceded Gibraltar to Britain in perpetuity.

1837 - Queen Victoria became the first sovereign to move into Buckingham Palace.

1939 - Frank Sinatra made his recording debut with the Harry James band.

1943 - The Battle of Kursk, the largest tank battle in history, involving some 6,000 tanks, 2,000,000 troops, and 4,000 aircraft, ended in defeat for Germany.

1985 – The Live Aid benefit concert takes place in London and Philadelphia, as well as other venues such as Sydney and Moscow.

1991 - Bryan Adams went to number one on the UK singles chart with Everything I Do I Do It For You. It stayed in the top spot for a record breaking 16 weeks.

1995 - The first man in Britain to be prosecuted under the War Crimes Act, appeared at Epsom Magistrates. Szymon Serafimowicz, aged 84, was charged with murdering 4 million Jews in 1941 and 1942.

1991: UK forces withdraw from Kurdish haven
British troops protecting the Kurdish population in Iraq have begun to pull out of the region.
They had been part of a western relief effort - Operation Haven - to re-settle 450,000 Kurdish refugees who fled into the Turkish mountains when Iraqi President Saddam Hussein crushed their rebellion in March.

At its height the allied presence in northern Iraq - which began in May - numbered 20,000 men from 13 nations.

The decision for the remaining 3,300 soldiers to leave was announced in Washington two days ago.

Some Kurds have spoken of their fear of reprisals from Saddam Hussein as the allies withdraw and there have been peaceful demonstrations around the former headquarters.


It would be better for us if they stayed

Guerrilla Leader Tawfiq Abu

All foreign troops - including American, French and Dutch - are on schedule to meet the withdrawal deadline of sunset tomorrow.

Local guerrilla leader Tawfiq Abu said: "It would be better for us if they stayed, so Europe would remember us. But they helped us at the right time. If they hadn't come we would all be dead."

A force of around 3,000 American, British and French - and possibly Italian and Turkish - troops will form a Rapid Reaction Force (RRF) in southern Turkey to preserve the Kurdish security zone 50 miles into north-western Iraq.

The allied command hopes this will provide enough support for the Kurdish leadership to reach agreement with Baghdad.

The Pentagon has warned Saddam Hussein no Iraqi aircraft are to fly over the Kurdish settlements north of the 36th parallel air exclusion zone and US planes will continue to fly over the region.

Most British soldiers will return to the UK but 400 will join the RRF in Operation Poised Hammer based at Silopi, Batman along the Turkish border and at Incirlik in south-eastern Turkey's Adana Province.



E-mail this story to a friend






British troops were amongst 20,000 allied soldiers protecting Iraqi Kurds





In Context
Between 1975 and 1990 4,200 Kurdish villages in Iraq were demolished and countless Kurdish people were killed in mass executions by the regime. Saddam Hussein took over as Iraqi leader in 1979.
In October 1991 Kurdistan began a fragile self-rule for its population of 3.5m in three provinces of northern Iraq, with a no-fly zone assured by the Western allies.

Saddam Hussein responded in November with crippling sanctions against the Kurdish areas.

The Kurds held democratic elections in May 1992 and the two leading parties - the PUK, under Jalal Talabani and the DPK under Masoud Barzani - formed a coalition government in July of that year.

But fierce fighting between the two main factions in the mid-1990s led to the effective partition of the Kurdish region.

In May 2006 the Kurdish parliament approved a single administration, uniting the two rival parties. /CPS:BOX>


Stories From 14 Jul
1958: Coup in Iraq sparks jitters in Middle East
1991: UK forces withdraw from Kurdish haven
2001: NI agreement stalls in Staffordshire
1989: Paris in 200-year-old revolutionary fervour
1971: Suicide note reveals murder confession

1950 - Battle of Taejon - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Taejon