French General Philippe Morillon, whose intervention saved the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica from defeat in 1993 and helped establish it as a “safe area” for civilians (and the 28th Infantry Division of the Bosnian [Muslim] Army), made a fatal error last week. He let the truth slip out in his testimony against Slobodan Milosevic at the Hague Inquisition. Now the association of former Srebrenica residents plans to sue him for being an “accessory to genocide”, reported a Croatian daily.
The Zagreb daily “Vecernji List” (The Evening Paper) carried a story of Sunday, 2/15, about how the Srebrenica associations plan to sue Morillon “for his role in the suffering of Srebrenica.”
Reporter Dejan Jazvic wrote that the “statements of the former UNPROFOR commander caused an avalanche of reactions in Bosnia-Herzegovina, especially his claim that the genocide [sic] against the Bosniaks of Srebrenica in 1995 was a reaction to the crimes the Bosnian Army troops committed two years earlier against the Srebrenica Serbs.”
Former Bosnian Muslim mayor of Srebrenica, Sefket Hafizovic, told the paper: “We have documents that clearly show the French general justifying himself to Milosevic for certain events in Srebrenica, and informs him that he prevented American intervention there in March 1993.”
Preventing the intervention that would have benefited the Bosnian Muslim war effort is, by implication, criminal.
Morillon is finding out now what many of his colleagues in UNPROFOR learned the hard way during the conflict: saying anything the Muslims dislike will get one branded a war criminal. Even – or especially – if it’s the truth.