UN's Judge Agius: The conflict in Bosnia is still tangible

N1

The denial of the Srebrenica genocide and the revisionism of history is stronger now than it used to be, and it will only get stronger with time, because of the verdicts by the UN's court, Judge Carmel Agius President of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) said for N1, arguing that, had there been no verdicts, the voice of deniers would be weaker.

“Each time there is a judgement, each time the perpetrators, their supporters are being brought to shame, their guilt is being brought up in the open, once again. And once again, they have to try and bury their guilt and bury the truth so they keep continuing because, over the years, the establishment of facts that happened in Srebrenica became so evident and there is such an abundance of evidence now and such a number of judgements now both from the ICTY and the Court of Justice and the local courts that I think they feel obliged to try to mitigate their guilt and pretend that these things never happened and that therefore they are not guilty,” said Judge Agius who is taking part in the fourth international conference against the denial of genocide, held in Sarajevo.

Speaking to N1's Hana Sokolovic, the Judge talked about convicted war criminals who are now in politics in Bosnia, the role of the IRMCT, the successor of the UN's International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) which dealt with war crimes committed in the wars that followed the break-up of Yugoslavia. The judge also spoke about the Srebrenica Genocide, which took place in July 1995 after the Bosnian Serb Forces entered the city and slaughtered some 8,000 Bosniak men and boys in a matter of days, but also about the Court's role in accepting the truth and building the future.

The entire interview can be seen in the video above.