ICC Blames Holland for Bosnian Murders

The war in the Balkans in the mid-1990s was a terrible and confounding ethnic battle that left hundreds of thousands dead at the hands of war lords and despots.

There were many people and cumulative circumstances that encouraged the atrocities in the former Yugoslav territory to happen, but relatively few have been admonished.

One of the worst moments of that period is now known as the Srebenica Massacre, in which more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed by Serbian Croats.

The lead perpetrator of the massacre, Ratko Mladic, was arrested in May 2011, and he has been brought to The Hague for a United Nations criminal trial on war crimes.

This week, the International Criminal Court has issued guilty ruling in connection with the massacre -- but this time to a very unlikely recipient. The U.N.-sponsored court has determined that the nation of Holland is responsible for the death of three Bosnian Muslims in Srebenica.

According to the court, Dutch peacekeepers handed over three men to Mladic after he overran a U.N.-declared safe-area.

The court ruled that the Dutch state is responsible for the death of these men because Dutchbat (Dutch U.N. troops) should not have handed them over, a spokeswoman for the court in The Hague told Reuters.

If some reports are true, The Netherlands might have gotten off easy and more suits could be on the way. During the events under discussion, Dutchbat troops allegedly emptied a U.N. compound of thousands of Bosnian Muslims, ostensibly delivering them to Mladic.

This is not the first time that Holland has faced legal trouble for the events in Bosnia.

Over the years, family members of victims have sued the Dutch government, but until now all the cases were ruled in favor of Holland. The Dutch government still claims that the United Nations did not provide the proper air support needed to protect civilians.

The ruling marks the first time that a country, and not an individual, has been blamed for troop actions. The Dutch government will have to compensate the families of the three victims.

The anniversary of the Srebenica Genocide is next week, on June 11. Many Bosnian Muslims will travel to site of the massacre to re-bury loved ones, who are still being found and identified inside mass graves.