July 12, 2007	Thursday	Jamadi-us-Sani 26, 1428

SREBRENICA, July 11: Thousands of Bosnian Muslims on Wednesday attended the funeral of 465 more victims of the Srebrenica massacre on the 12th anniversary of one of modern Europe’s darkest chapters.

Up to 30,000 people braved heavy rain to reach the Bosnian town in thousands of cars and buses, organisers said.United Nations chief war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte attended the ceremony with the international community’s top envoy Miroslav Lajcak of Slovakia and the country’s leaders.

Bosnian Serb troops overran the UN-protected enclave on July 11, 1995, summarily killing some 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the days that followed.

Wednesday’s downpour filled the freshly dug graves at the memorial cemetery just outside the town where more than 2,400 victims of the massacre are already buried. Mourners struggled to remove the water. The rain stopped just before the ceremony.

To the sound of prayer and sobbing of mourners, the caskets containing the remains and each wrapped in a green cloth were simultaneously laid in the graves.

Among the new victims being buried was one 75-year-old woman, while all the others were male, aged between 13 and 77. They were retrieved from mass graves around the eastern town and later identified by DNA analysis.

According to the organisers, the victims included four men who appeared in a chilling video showing Muslims from Srebrenica being shot dead by a Serbian paramilitary unit ‘Scorpions’ in the Bosnian village of Trnovo in July 1995.

The footage shocked the public in both Bosnia and Serbia and led to the war crimes trial of some Scorpions members.

“May grief become hope. May revenge become justice. May mothers’ tears become prayers. That Srebrenica never happens again. To no one and nowhere,” said Mustafa Ceric, the head of Bosnia’s Muslim community, during the ceremony.

Vezira Hasanovic and her husband Alija were standing under an umbrella and silently staring at the grave where the body of their son Ohran was to be buried.

“People told me not to come here because it is too hard. I would like to die and never come back home,” the 74-year-old woman said.

Ohran was 37 when he was killed. His remains, without arms and feet bones, were found earlier this year in a mass grave in the Srebrenica region.

“There is no more joy in my life. I wish I were there,” said Hasanovic pointing to the grave. She is still looking for the remains of another son who was 22 when she last saw him 12 years ago.

“Serbia finally, finally has to fulfil its obligation,” said Del Ponte, the prosecutor of the Hague-based tribunal probing war crimes.

“We expect this and I hope that Karadzic and Mladic will be in The Hague before I leave the tribunal,” she said. Del Ponte’s mandate expires at the end of the year.

Although the Srebrenica massacre occurred 12 years ago, the two people considered the most responsible for it — Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander Ratko Mladic — remain at large.

The pair face charges of genocide for atrocities committed during the war, which claimed up to 200,000 victims and are believed to be hiding in Serb-controlled parts of the former Yugoslavia.—AFP