Bosnia Urges Probe into Srebrenica Attack on Serbia PM

by Naharnet Newsdesk 13 July 2015, 15:31

The Bosnian government called Monday for a probe to track down those behind an attack on Serbia's premier during commemorations marking the 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre.

Prime Minister Aleksander Vucic was chased from the Srebrenica memorial site on Saturday by a mob hurling bottles and stones in an assault that laid bare the wounds that still run deep after the Balkans conflicts of the 1990s.

"We have asked all institutions concerned to launch an urgent inquiry to identify and bring to justice the culprits behind this incident which was not only an attack against Aleksandar Vucic but also against the dignity of the victims," Bosnian Prime Minister Denis Zvizdic told reporters.

Vucic had just laid a flower at a monument to the Srebrenica dead when the crowd started to chant "Allahu Akbar" (God is Great) and began hurling missiles, forcing him to run for cover, shielded by his bodyguards.

He said Sunday that a stone hit him in the mouth but he was unhurt, and that only his glasses were broken in the attack.

The Srebrenica massacre was the worst atrocity on European soil since World War I, with 8,000 Muslim men and boys slaughtered by Bosnian Serb forces in July 1995, shortly before the end of Bosnia's 1992-1995 war.

Vucic has condemned the mass killings in Srebrenica as a "monstrous crime," but like other Serbian and Bosnian Serb leaders stopped short of calling the massacre a genocide, a term used by international courts.

Zivzdic said Saturday's incident also undermined Bosnian efforts to "establish good relations with our neighbors".

But he also said it exposed weaknesses in the bodies charged with ensuring law and order in Bosnia, which since the war has been divided into two semi-autonomous entities -- the Muslim-Croat Federation and the ethnic Serbs' Republika Srpska -- linked by weak central institutions in Sarajevo.

Source: Agence France Presse

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