Thom Karremans

Colonel (ret.) Thomas Jakob Peter (Thom / Ton) Karremans (born 29 December 1948 in Apeldoorn) was the commander of Dutchbat troops in Srebrenica at the time of the Srebrenica massacre during Bosnian War. Karremans had been assigned to defend the Bosniak enclave made the U.N. "safe area", but he failed to prevent the Serbs from rounding up and killing 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in 1995.

Military career

Karremans followed his military training at the Royal Military Academy in the Netherlands, and subsequently he was part of the 1979-1980 UNIFIL peacekeepers in Lebanon. In the eighties he was stationed at the NATO Headquarters SHAPE in Mons (Belgium), where he was involved in the subject of arms control. In 1991, Karremans had his first experience in Bosnia as liaison officer to the EC observation committee. He then became commander of an infantry battalion in Assen.

Srebrenica massacre

Further information: Srebrenica massacre

In 1994 Karremans was appointed as commander of Dutchbat III battalion that was deployed to the Srebrenica enclave as a part of the peacekeeping mission, under command of the United Nations in operation United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR). On 11, 12 and 13 July, the enclave was captured by Serb soldiers, while the Dutch battalion was stationed there. Karremans requested NATO air support to defend the enclave, which arrived too late and was too little to stop the Serbian advance. After Serbian forces entered Srebrenica, Karremans was interrogated by Serb General Ratko Mladić (video of the interrogation is available on YouTube). During the interrogation, Karremans was confined against a wall and surrounded by Serb soldiers, defensive and submissive, excusing himself from ever requesting air strikes against Bosnian Serb forces, claiming the decision was made by higher authorities based on information he provided. This is in sharp contrast with facts - it was determined that it was Karremans who requested air strikes several times, but they were first denied, then delayed, and later granted by UN General Bernard Janvier.

Under pretext of evacuating the Bosniak population to a sheltered city, Serbs transferred most of the women and children by bus to a zone under Bosnian-Serb control, assuring that the men would be transferred later. After this Karremans was filmed raising a glass with Serb General Ratko Mladić. Mladić became later a war crimes suspect.

Following negotiations between UN and Bosnian Serbs, on Friday, 21 July 1995, lieutenant-colonel Karremans and Dutch UN soldiers were allowed to leave Srebrenica. On the farewell, Colonel Karremans accepted gifts from General Mladić, smiled, shook his hand and departed. Shortly after his return to The Netherlands Karremans was promoted to full colonel.

Karremans himself has said a Serb blockade had left his soldiers desperately short of food and fuel. He told the Hague ICTY tribunal in 1996 that when his requests for NATO air strikes against Bosnian Serb troops were finally granted, they were "too late and too little."[1] In 1999 the United Nations admitted its error in expecting a small number of troops to protect the Srebrenica Safe Area.

After retiring from the army, he and his wife moved to Spain, partly because of death threats in his native Netherlands.[2] He wrote of his experiences at Srebrenica in Srebrenica, who cares?: Een puzzel van de werkelijkheid (A puzzle of reality). He describes problems and dilemma's for him and his man during 6 months in Bosnia and 6 days of war. In the book, he shows his vision on the lack of support of the Dutch politics at the time. He was forced by the Dutch politicians to fight ''with his hands on his back".[3]

In 2010, a survivor of the Srebrenica genocide, Hasan Nuhanović, and the relatives of the murdered Muslim electrician Rizo Mustafić (who was employed by Dutchbat during the genocide until he was turned over to the Serbs and executed) made a legal complaint of genocide and war crimes against Karremans, his former deputy Major Rob Franken, and Human Resources manager Berend Oosterveen, for their transfer of the Muslim families to the Serbs.[4] The Public Prosecution Service first concluded in a Nolle prosequi decision that Karremans and the other persons were not culpable. Through a special procedure (Dutch art. 12 Wet strafvordering), this decision was brought to court. On 29 April 2015 the court in Arnhem confirmed that Karremans and his secondants should not be prosecuted.[5] Directly after the ruling, the lawyer Liesbeth Zegveld annoyanced appeal at the European Court of Human Rights.[5]

References

  1. ↑ http://www.icty.org/x/cases/mladic/trans/en/960704it.htm Transcript from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Retrieved on 13 June 2013
  2. ↑ Taylor, Rachel S. (2004). "Karremans Recalls Srebrenica Fall". Tribunal Update. Institute for War & Peace Reporting. Retrieved 2006-07-02.
  3. ↑ "Srebrenica who cares?" (in Dutch). Literatuurplein. Retrieved 1 May 2015.
  4. ↑ legal complaint against Dutchbat-commanders due to Genocide - NRC Handelsblad, 6 July 2010 (Dutch)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Karremans not prosecuted for role in Srebrenica" (in Dutch). 29 April 2015. Retrieved 29 April 2015.

See also

Further reading