At the very start of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in April 1992, members of the regular Yugoslav National Army and paramilitary troops mobilized, trained and paid by the State Security Service of Republika Srpska began to attack the towns and villages of eastern Bosnia, driving out the Muslim population from the Drina valley. The campaign, which began in Bijeljina and spread to Zvornik and other towns, led to mass deportations and forced expulsions of the Bosniac population to Cerska, Srebrenia and Žepa, which began to take on the appearance of enclaves.

The Drina river valley, and control of Bosnia's eastern borders, was of crucial importance for the Bosnian Serb leadership's plans. Indeed, it was one of the six key objectives that the political and military leadership of the Bosnian Serbs had set at the outset of the war. These were laid out in the Decision on the strategic objectives of the Serb nation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, adopted at a session of the National Assembly of Republika Srpska on 12 May 1992: "The strategic objectives or priorities of the Serb nation in Bosnia and Herzegovina are: 1. Demarcating state boundaries separating it from the other two nations; 2. A corridor between Semberija and the Krajina; 3. Establishing a corridor in the river Drina valley, so as to eliminate the Drina as a border between Serb states; 4. Establishing borders on the rivers Una and Neretva; 5. Partitioning the city of Sarajevo into a Serb part and a Muslim part and establishing effective state authority over each; 6. Direct access to the sea for Republika Srpska."

By the end of 1993 there could be no further doubt about how this plan was to be executed. On 19 November 1992 General Ratko Mladić, Chief of General Staff of the Army of Republika Srpska, issued operational directive no. 4, which set out in rough outlines the fate of the Bosniac population in the enclaves: To inflict the heaviest possible losses and force [the population] to leave the Birač, Žepa and Goražde area along with the Muslim population. To propose the disarmament of all armed men fit for battle, and if they refuse, to annihilate them.

On 16 April 1993, after a year of siege, with daily attacks on the town and severe food shortages leaving the inhabitants drained of energy, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 819, proclaiming Srebrenica a "safe area. " The following day, 17 April, the Chief of General Staff of the Army of BiH, General Sefer Halilović, and the Chief of General Staff of the Army of Republika Srpska, General Ratko Mladić, signed an agreement on the demilitarization of all military forces in Srebrenica. Even though the status of "safe area " did not depend on demilitarization, to the very end of the war the status of the enclave was made conditional on the disarmament of all its defence forces.

Despite sporadic incidents, Serb incursions across the unprotected boundaries of the enclave, sniper attacks and the kidnapping of some civilians, until July 1995 there were no major military moves in Srebrenica. For the next three years, from April 1993 to July 1995, Srebrenica survived thanks solely to occasional consignments of humanitarian aid. Permission from the Serb military was required for every consignment, and by the beginning of 1995 the inhabitants of the enclave were once again on the verge of starvation.

The ultimate objective of the Serb campaign remained unchanged. A year before the assault on the enclave and the massacre that followed, on 4 July 1994, Lt. Colonel Slavko Ognjenović, who was then commanding officer of the Bratunac Brigade of the Army of Republika Srpska – one of the units holding the enclave under siege – issued an order which was read out to all his men. The key passage read: "We must continually equip, train, discipline and prepare the Army of Republika Srpska to perform the decisive task: to expel the Muslims from the Srebrenica enclave. There can be no withdrawal around the Srebrenica enclave; only advance. The enemy's life must be made unendurable and it must be made impossible for them to survive pro tem within the enclave, so that they will organize a mass exodus from the enclave in the near future, aware that they cannot survive if they remain there. "

In early 1995, the Bosnian Serb leadership realized that this was to be the crucial year for the final outcome of the war. On 8 March the President of Republika Srpska, Radovan KaradŽić, issued Directive No. 7, setting out Republika Srpska's strategic military and political objectives for that year. The section dealing with the operations of the Drina Corps of the Army of Republika Srpska – whose area of responsibility included Srebrenica – included the words: "To cut Srebrenica off completely from Žepa, so as to prevent even individual communication between the two enclaves. To create conditions of total insecurity by means of daily, carefully planned battle activities to make life unbearable and without any future prospects for the continued survival of the local people in Srebrenica and Žepa. "

On 2 July 1995, the commanding officer of the Drina Corps issued orders to launch an assault on the Srebrenica enclave. In his "Orders for active battle operations, " Milenko Živanović ordered his troops to "reduce [the enclave] to the urban area. " All available forces, including some elite troops from the army and the police, took part in every stage of the attack on Srebrenica: the assault on the town, the deportation of the civilian population, the capture, incarceration and massacre of Srebrenica's men and boys, and their burial.

The main, though not the only, troops involved in Srebrenica were parts of the Bratunac Brigade, the Zvornik Brigade, the Vlasenica Brigade and the Fifth Engineers Battalion, all part of the Drina Corps; parts of the 10 th Sabotage Detachment and the 65 th Defence Regiment, which were under the immediate command of the Chief of Staff of the Army of Republika Srpska; troops from a special police brigade from the Training Centre in Jahorina, the Second Detachment from [ekovići and the First Company from Zvornik; and, finally, men from the local Bratunac, Milići and Zvornik police.

The attack began early in the morning of 6 July with a heavy bombardment of the town, which continued over the next few days. Troops from the Drina Corps also attacked observation posts on the boundaries of the enclave, manned by soldiers from the United Nations Dutch Battalion. In the afternoon of 11 July 1995, men from the "Drina Wolves " forces – from the Zvornik Brigade, Bratunac Brigade and 10 th Sabotage Detachment – were the first to enter the town. General Mladić, accompanied by General Milenko Živanovići and the Chief of Staff of the Drina Corps, General Radislav Krstić, went on a victory stroll around the town. Mladić announced to Bosnian Serb television cameras: "Here we are, on 11 July 1995, in Serb Srebrenica, on the eve of a great Serb festival, and at last the time has come to take our revenge on the Turks in this part of the world. "

The day before, at a meeting between Lt. Colonel Ton Karremans, commanding officer of the Dutch Battalion, and the local authorities in Srebrenica, the Dutch officer had promised that there would be massive air strikes, and advised the officers of the 28 th Division in Srebrenica to withdraw their troops from the area designated for air strikes. It was not until 2 p.m. on 11 July that two Dutch aircraft carried out a token strike against Serb troops south of the town, without inflicting any casualties.

Tens of thousands of people who had been living in the enclave, women, children, old people and a certain number of men, left the town and made for Potočari, where they gave themselves over to the protection of the UN Dutch troops. However, a large number of men – about 15,000 – made for Jaglići, a village in the northern part of the enclave on the demarcation line. In the evening of 11 July they formed a long column which set off for Tuzla. The entire route they had to take was under the control of Serb troops. A third of the men were soldiers, the remainder were civilians.

At about eight in the evening that day, General Mladić met the Dutchbat commanding officer in the Fontana Hotel in Bratunac. Later that night, at about 11 p.m., there was another meeting, attended not only by Dutch officers but also by a representative of the refugees in Potočari. These two meetings sealed the fate of the refugees.

At the first meeting, General Ratko Mladić threatened the Dutchbat commanding officer; there were about a dozen Dutch officers being held hostage by Serb troops in the hotel where the meeting was taking place. At the second meeting, General Mladić told the representative of the refugees, Nesib Mand`ić, quite openly that his compatriots were faced with two possible fates, "survival or annihilation. "

The next morning, 12 July, a third and final meeting was held between General Mladić and other officers and representatives of the civil authorities with the Dutch commanding officer and representatives of the refugees. General Mladić at once let it be known that he wanted to oversee the "evacuation " of the civilian population from Potočari and demanded that all the men be checked for possible involvement in war crimes.

Even though he had entered into an agreement with the Dutch CO that UNHCR would evacuate the civilian population, after the very first meeting Mladić decided that his own troops would take care of it. The next morning, the Drina Corps issued one order, and the Republika Srpska Ministry of Defence three, concerning the buses to be used to transport civilians. "All available buses and minibuses owned by Army of RS troops are to be made available to the Drina Corps command," the order read, going on to require them to be at the stadium in Bratunac by 16.30 hours. The order also noted that the corps command had requested the RS Ministry of Defence to commandeer public transport buses and those belonging to private companies, which the corps command would then be take charge of.

The Defence Ministry ordered the Sarajevo Defence Secretariat to send twenty buses and drivers from Pale, Sokolac, Rogatica and Han Pijesak to the Bratunac stadium. Another order was sent to the Zvornik Defence Secretariat, ordering thirty buses and drivers from Zvornik, Zvornik, Vi[egrad, Vlasenica, Milići and Bratunac municipalities to come to the stadium. The third order was identical to the second, except that it increased the number of buses to be commandeered by the Zvornik Secretariat from thirty to fifty.

Lt. Colonel Rajko Krsmanović, the officer in charge of the Drina Corps' transport service, was charged with procuring and deploying the buses. By eight in the morning, the orders had been so effectively carried out that Dragomir Vasić, chief of police in Zvornik, reported to his superiors that "more than 100 trucks for transport have already been secured."

The lorries and buses began to arrive in Potočari at 2 p.m. on 12 July, and the deportation of the women and children began very soon after. The first few buses included some men, for propaganda purposes, but they were taken off the buses just before reaching their destination in the Kladanj area, which was under Army of BiH control. During this process, Serb soldiers and policemen singled out more than 1,000 men, who were briefly held in a building near the Dutch base, and then transferred to Bratunac. Although they were taken off the buses on the pretext that they had to be checked out, Serb soldiers soon began taking and destroying their personal effects and ID papers. In fact, when they were taken to Bratunac, a huge pile of ID papers was left outside the building where they had been held. All the papers were then burnt.

The killings began on 12 and 13 July. On 12 July, Serb soldiers and police decapitated between eighty and a hundred men from one of the factories in Potočari. Their bodies were then taken away in a lorry. At least another thirty civilians, six women among them, were killed over the two days it took to carry out the deportation. Random executions were an integral part of the deportation, with some of the prisoners killed during transportation and others once they had reached their temporary destination, where they were held until the executions were carried out. Between 12 and 15 July 1995, a number of such incidents were recorded in Bratunac, where several thousand people were incarcerated in schools, sports halls and factories until they were killed.

During the night of 12 to 13 July, more than fifty prisoners were removed from a hanger behind the Vuk KaradŽić primary school in Bratunac and summarily executed. In the evening of 13 July, in Bratunac itself, two prisoners were made to get down from a lorry, taken to a nearby garage, and killed. In the evening of 13 July, a mentally handicapped prisoner was taken from a bus parked outside the Vuk KaradŽić primary school and killed; four prisoners taken from the school itself were also killed. The killings went on until the morning of 14 July, when the surviving prisoners were taken off to Zvornik, where they would be executed over the next few days.

During this time, Serb military intelligence operatives were frantically trying to find out the size and intentions of the column that had set off for Tuzla. One report by an intelligence officer of the Zvornik Brigade, referring to a large group of people who had been found in the Brigade's area of responsibility, noted that they were "in a state of utter panic and disarray," and that "they had given themselves up to the police and RS Army troops in this area..."

The first large-scale, organized killings took place in the afternoon of 13 July. An unknown number of men were taken by bus and lorry from Konjević Polje to Cerska and killed. At least one mechanical digger was seen in the convoy. This was the first time there had been indications of organized killings and the burial of the victims. One of the Serb officers, Colonel Ignjat Milanović, the officer in charge of the Drina Corps' anti-aircraft unit, asked the duty officer of the Zvornik Brigade whether "that bulldozer of yours... the one with a scoop... is available, and if so,... we need it, have it come to Konjević polje..." On being told that it was out on site, two hours later, Milanović again called the brigade headquarters and asked for a digger or bulldozer. He was told they were all out in use.

At about 11 a.m. on 13 July a small Serb unit captured sixteen Bosniac men, took them from Konjevi ć Polje to an isolated spot on the banks of the river Jadra, and killed fifteen of them. Only one survived, and managed to escape despite being wounded. On 13 July, before being moved, thousands of prisoners were held in a field in the village of Sandići, right by the Bratunac Konjević-Polje road. One of them, who had asked for water, was beaten up and killed. Soon after nightfall, the deputy commanding officer of a platoon from the Training Centre in Jahorina ordered a group of ten to fifteen prisoners to be summarily executed.

Late in the afternoon of 13 July, Serb troops and police killed more than 1,000 men incarcerated in a large warehouse in the village of Kravica. After locking them all in the warehouse, they opened fire through the windows and door, threw in grenades, and even used hand-held rocket launchers. The troops and police continued all through the night of 13 to 14 July killing the prisoners who survived the first wave of fire. Immediately the firing ended, heavy machinery arrived and dumped the bodies in two large mass graves in the nearby villages of Glogova and Ravnica.

Some of the prisoners were held in lorries parked not far from the warehouse, by the supermarket in Kravica. One of the guards put the barrel of his gun into a prisoner's mouth and fired. The guards also hit the prisoners in the lorries with their rifle butts and ill-treated them in various other ways. The next day, 14 July, the rest of the prisoners were taken to Zvornik, where they were killed by Serb troops.

A third group of prisoners in Kravica were being held in the school building. About a hundred of them were taken to similar buildings in Zvornik, and then to the site of their execution.

The systematic killing of prisoners began on 14 July, once the prisoners had been taken from Bratunac to Zvornik. After being held briefly in various locations, all were shot dead in groups of a few hundred, and then buried.

One group of captives was taken to the school in Grbavci, and hundreds of men from Srebrenica were incarcerated in the village of Orahovac. They were held for a while in the school gymnasium, then taken out, blindfolded and their hands tied, and shoved into lorries. Early in the afternoon of 14 July they were taken to a nearby field, where they were told to get down from the lorry, and then shot dead. Almost a thousand prisoners were killed. That day and the next, members of the Zvornik Brigade's engineer squadron used heavy machinery to bury the dead in mass graves on the execution site, even as the killings were still going on.

About another thousand men were taken from Bratunac to the school in Petkovci. These were mainly prisoners from the column; during 14 July and the early hours of 15 July 1995, the guards beat them up and fired at them with automatic weapons. In the evening of 14 July, troops from the Zvornik Brigade took the survivors from the school to a place close to the Petkovci dam. Once they had assembled them all below the dam, the soldiers machine-gunned them all to death. In the morning of 15 July 1995, members of the Zvornik Brigade's engineer squadron began to bury the victims, using diggers and other heavy machinery.

On 14 and 15 July a group of about 1,200 prisoners was taken to the school in Pilica. Many of them were killed during the next two days. The majority, however, were taken from Pilica to the Branjevo military farm and market garden in the morning of 16 July. There they were summarily executed by a firing squad consisting of members of the 10 th Sabotage Detachment and the Bratunac Brigade, using automatic weapons. The firing went on without a break from ten a.m. to three p.m. A day later, the Zvornik Brigade's engineer squadron buried hundreds of the victims in a nearby mass grave.

After the killings in Branjevo, members of the Bratunac Brigade were sent back to Pilica, where there were still about five hundred men from Srebrenica being held captive in the Cultural Centre. They were all killed by Serb soldiers firing through the windows of the cinema auditorium where they were being held. The next day, 17 July, troops from the Zvornik Brigade collected up the bodies of the victims in the Cultural Centre in Pilica and took them to the Branjevo military farm and market garden That same day, the Zvornik Brigade's engineer squadron buried the victims in a mass grave on the Branjevo farm.

Probably the last mass execution was carried out in Kozluk, the headquarters of the "Drina Wolves." After being taken to a site near the Drina, about five hundred men were shot dead. It is not known if anyone survived this massacre. The next day, 16 July, troops from the Zvornik Brigade's engineer squadron buried the victims in a nearby mass grave.

This was not the last of the killings, however. Right through to the autumn of 1995, Serb forces continued to capture small, stray groups trying to reach Tuzla.

By the end of July, many of these groups had been captured during operations by Serb forces. One group of thirty-three men was taken prisoner near Nova Kasaba, and forthwith executed. Twenty-seven of them had their hands tied behind their backs when they were killed.

Two of the men incarcerated in Konjević Polje were killed and buried in a pit that had been dug out earlier. The rest of the group of twelve men were incarcerated near Glogova, tied together in pairs, shot in the head, and buried in a mass grave near Glogova.

At this time, too, the Serbian police arrested thirty-eight Bosniacs from Srebrenica who were trying to escape to Serbia, and handed them over to the Republika Srpska police. They were all passed on to the Bratunac Brigade and then shot. The remains of some of the victims have since been found.

About ten men captured near Nezuk on 19 July were killed as soon as they were taken captive; another four taken prisoner that day were transferred to Zvornik, interrogated in the Zvornik Brigade headquarters, and shot three days later.

From early August to early November 1995, Serb forces organized a major operation to conceal the bodies of those killed in the areas of responsibility of the Zvornik and Bratunac Brigades, re-burying those they had exhumed from primary mass graves.

The bodies of those buried in mass graves in the Branjevo military farm, Kozluk, the Petkovci dam, Orahovac and Glogova were taken to secondary graves in twelve sites by the čančarski road, four near Liplje, seven near Hod`ići, and seven near Zeleni Jadar. For this purpose, on 14 September, the Army of RS Headquarters approved the issue of four tonnes of D2 diesel fuel "to carry out engineering works on the area of responsibility of the Drina Corps. "

The very same day that the last mass killings were taking place near Zvornik, a meeting was held between the Serbian President, Slobodan Milo[ević, and key representatives of the international community, in a hunting lodge near Belgrade. At the meeting, which was also attended by General Ratko Mladić, the international community was represented by Carl Bildt, at the time the European Union Special Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina; Yasushi Akashi, the UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy; and the UN Force Commander in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the British General Rupert Smith, an agreement on the evacuation of UN forces from the enclave was signed. The men of Srebrenica who had been taken prisoner were not even on the agenda. It was already too late for them, in any case.

(All the above facts concerning the massacre of Bosniacs from Srebrenica have been corroborated during the investigations and by verdicts of the International War Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.)