Dutch Supreme Court Downgrades Dutch Responsibility For Srebrenica Massacre - Reports

The Supreme Court of the Netherlands ruled on Friday that the Dutch state was less responsible for the deaths of Muslims during the 1995 Srebrenica Massacre than was initially determined by lower courts, local media reported

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 19th July, 2019) The Supreme Court of the Netherlands ruled on Friday that the Dutch state was less responsible for the deaths of Muslims during the 1995 Srebrenica Massacre than was initially determined by lower courts, local media reported.

The Supreme Court decided that 350 out of about 8,000 murdered Muslim Bosniaks had a 10 percent chance of surviving had Dutch peacekeepers intervened. The verdict went on to say that the victims' relatives had a right to claim 10 percent in damages from the Netherlands instead of the 30 percent rate that had been decided earlier by lower courts.

The massacre in Srebrenica, a town in western Bosnia that lies close to the Serbian border, was staged by the Bosnian Serbs in July 1995 and left over 8,000 Bosniaks dead.

The tragedy is one of the episodes of the Yugoslav Wars, which raged on the territory of the dissolved Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

In 2014, a Dutch court decided that the Netherlands was guilty for the deaths of at least 300 Muslims in Srebrenica since its peacekeepers failed to protect refugees who had asked for help.

In June 2017, a court of appeal upheld the verdict, but in September 2017 the Dutch government asked the Supreme Court to revise the decision.