The Dutch refused crucial air support to their own troops defending Srebrenica under a UN mandate, allowing Bosnian Serb forces to take away and massacre 8,000-10,000 Muslims, it was claimed today.
Lawyers representing about 6,000 relatives of the victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, are suing the Dutch state and the United Nations for failing to stop the killings.
During the 1992-95 Bosnian war, Srebrenica was declared a safe area and guarded by a Dutch army unit serving as part of a larger UN force in Bosnia.
The lightly armed Dutch soldiers, lacking air support and under fire, were forced to abandon the enclave to Bosnian Serb forces, who then massacred Muslim men and boys who had relied on the protection of the Dutch troops.
"Shortly before the fall of the safe area air support was obstructed by the Netherlands itself," lawyers Axel Hagedorn and Marco Gerritsen said in the writ of summons to be filed at the district court of The Hague.
A spokesman for the office of Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said on Friday the Dutch state would not comment until it had received the legal documents.
Families of Srebrenica victims have been dismayed by the failure of the two fugitive chief suspects to be brought to justice.
Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and former Bosnian Serb Army chief Ratko Mladic are wanted by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague on genocide charges.
In February the UN's highest court cleared Serbia of genocide at Srebrenica, though it pronounced Belgrade guilty of failing to prevent genocide. Many Bosnian Muslims saw this as a further injustice against them.
Relatives of the Srebrenica victims are planning to march through the centre of The Hague today and handover the legal documents at Prime Minister Balkenende's office.
The Dutch state has always said its troops were abandoned by the UN which gave them no air support, but public documents show a network of Dutch military officials within the UN Protection Force blocked air support because they feared their soldiers could be hit by friendly fire, the lawyers said.
"This 'Dutch line' ... maintained close contact with The Hague, breaching UN command and control," Mr Hagedorn told Reuters in an interview.
"It is a wrong idea that the Dutch soldiers were let down by the United Nations," Mr Gerritsen added.
"It was a decision by high ranking Dutch officers together with the Dutch state to see that requests for air support were denied."
After requests for air support were initially granted by UN officials the Dutch state did everything in its power to reverse this approval.
Air support could have contained the Bosnian Serb forces and halted their advance, the lawyers said.
The lawyer argues that the UN is to blame for not trying to convince the Dutch that air support could not be recalled.
The Dutch government led by Wim Kok resigned in 2002 after a report on the massacre blamed politicians for sending the Dutch UN troops on an impossible mission.
However attempts by the families to seek compensation from the Dutch government were refused as the government denied liability.