Dutch Srebrenica blue helmets drop suit against state

More than 200 Dutch former UN peacekeepers sent to defend the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica in 1995, dubbed a “mission impossible”, have dropped a lawsuit against the state, their lawyer announced Friday.

Around 230 former blue helmets, known as “Dutchbat III” during the bloody 1992-95 Bosnian civil war, last year claimed at least 22,000 euros each in compensation from the Dutch state.

The soldiers say they continue to suffer trauma and are stigmatised as a result of the mid-1995 incident when the lightly armed Dutch troops were overrun by Bosnian Serb fighters at a supposedly “safe haven” in eastern Bosnia.

In the days after almost 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered in what became Europe’s most bloody massacre since World War II and has been termed a genocide by two international courts.

“We have enough confidence now that our grievance is heading in the right direction, therefore we’re dropping our claim,” Michael Ruperti told popular daily tabloid De Telegraaf.

The decision to drop the case followed a probe announced by Dutch Defence Minister Ank Bijleveld in January into the welfare of former Dutchbat III veterans.

Last year when lodging the claim Ruperti said his clients were “still experiencing damages in all aspects of their lives and believe that the defence ministry should be held responsible.”

Although the ministry’s report is still pending, Bijleveld last week again called it “an important investigation which must ensure solutions and to help reduce these problems.”

Ruperti added the lawsuit “was never about the money.”

“It was to pressure the defence ministry into understanding that something really needs to be done to give this group justice,” he said.

Last year, a Dutch appeals court ruled the state was partly to blame for the deaths of hundreds of the victims at the Srebrenica massacre.

The ruling, which largely upheld a 2014 decision by a lower court, said the state was liable for the deaths of some 350 men who were allowed to leave the Dutch base at nearby Potocari.

Former Dutch defence minister Jeanine Hennis in 2016 acknowledged the Dutch troops were sent to Bosnia on an “unrealistic mission, in impossible circumstances.”