The Netherlands wants the Court to bring down the verdict that convicts him of the Srebrenica massacre

The Dutch government will reject the decision declaring it responsible for the deaths of 300 Bosniaks from Srebrenica in July 1995, media reported on Wednesday. But lawyers representing the families of some of the Bosniaks killed told BIRN that they would also appeal to the Dutch Supreme Court, demanding it declare Holland responsible for much more deaths.

One of the lawyers, Marco Gerritsen, who is acting for the organisation “mothers of Srebrenica”, said he will ask the Supreme Court to declare Dutch authorities guilty “over the death of a group much larger than 350 boys and men”.

The Dutch ruling, handed down by the appeals court in The Hague in June, relates to the death of about 300 Bosniak men who had been sheltered at the base of Dutch UN peacekeepers near Srebrenica in July 1995 but were forced to leave and later were killed by Bosnian Serb forces.

But the decision does not relate to the deaths of the rest of some 8,000 Bosniaks from Srebrenica, who were killed by Bosnian Serb forces in July 1995, a crime classified as genocide by international court decisions.

The Dutch defence ministry said it does not believe its troops violated the law. “We do not share the opinion with the judge that Dutch UN peacekeepers acted illegally and do not understand how the court reached that decision,” Defence Ministry spokesman Klaas Meier told Retweers on Wednesday.

But Gerritsen told BIRN that the Netherlands “has denied any responsibility for the deaths of more than 7,000 men and women from Srebrenica since the beginning of”, so her decision to hand the case over in appeal is no surprise. Their position has changed since we took our first step in 2007,” said Gerritsen.

He said Dutch peacekeepers “failed to fulfil their obligations and orders given by the United Nations to protect civilians”.

It is important to mention that Dutch soldiers did not inform the United Nations of the terrible human rights violations they saw, so our position is that the Netherlands is responsible for the deaths of thousands of men and boys who were present in enclaves,” he added.

Hajra Catic of the “Srebrenica mothers” said on behalf of the victims' families that they would continue to fight for justice. “Hope dies last. Our lawyers will also appeal. I consider Holland responsible for what happened inside and outside the base, as well as in the forests where Bosniaks tried to hide from Bosnian Serb forces,” said Catic.

Hasan Nuhanovic, who won a case in 2013 at the Dutch High Court, who ruled that the Dutch state was responsible for failing to prevent the murder of three Bosniaks in the 1995 massacres in Srebrenica, said he has made “mothers of Srebrenica” and their lawyers his documentation and material evidence available. Nuhanovic said he hoped the final decision on their case would go in favour of the victims' families, adding that in his case “compensation was paid”.