Del Ponte arrives for Srebrenica commemoration

Jul 11, 2006, 12:12 GMT

Srebrenica - The Chief Prosecutor of the UN War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, Carla Del Ponte, arrived Tuesday in the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica to attend the commemoration of the 11th anniversary of massacre.

More than 30,000 people had gathered at the Memorial Centre Potocari near Srebrenica to attend the commemoration and funeral of 505 recently-identified victims of the massacre.

Up to 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men were massacred after Bosnian Serb troops captured the former eastern Bosnian Muslim enclave of Srebrenica on July 11, 1995 during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia- Herzegovina.

The alleged masterminds of the massacre, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander General Ratko Mladic, who led the Serb troops in Srebrenica, remain at large.

The Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) raised indictments against both Karadzic and Mladic more than a decade ago, charging them with war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity and severe breaches of the Geneva Conventions.

The ICTY Chief Prosecutor Del Ponte has so far strongly criticized Bosnian Serb authorities as well as NATO and Serbian authorities for their failure to apprehend the most wanted ICTY fugitives.

Del Ponte stressed the tribunal would not close its doors until Karadzic and Mladic appear before it.