The government of Bosnia's Serb dominated entity Republika Srpska wants a 2004 report about the massacres in Srebrenica to be reviewed, claiming that it was completed under pressure.
According to Prime Minister Milorad Dodik, the previous report, also commissioned by the government of Republika Srpska, RS, was completed under the pressure of the former high representative to the country, Paddy Ashdown. As such, he argued, it does not represent the real truth.
An expert commission set up by the RS government issued a report in 2004 which acknowledged that several thousand Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) were killed in Srebrenica in 1995 and that it represented a serious violation of international humanitarian law.
In the report the commission established “that military and police units, including special units of the interior ministry in Republika Srpska” took part in the massacres of around 7,800 men and boys in July 1995.
After the report was made public, Dragan Cavic, former prime minister of RS, publicly apologised for the crime.
The current RS government on April 19, 2010, instructed the Centre for War Crimes Investigation to work on a new report on Srebrenica that should result in “the final facts about what happened in Srebrenica in 1995”.
Republika Srpska TV reported that Dodik, speaking at a press conference in Banja Luka, said that the government is not denying that crimes were committed, but they expressed the need “to establish facts and truth”.
He added that establishment of a commission of the Centre for Wars Crimes Investigation does not mean that government denies the number of victims that has already been established, but “maybe less, or maybe even more people were killed”, and we need to establish a “reliable truth”.
The RS government established the expert commission in 2003 with the aim to investigate what happened in the area in and around Srebrenica from July 10-19, 1995. The commission was formed after victims of Srebrenica filed a case against the RS government at the Human Rights Chamber, a body established by the Dayton Peace Agreement that stopped the war in 1995.
The Chamber issued a decision which required the RS government to form the commission, a move that was supported by the Office of the High Representative.
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