The photograph above is a unique historical image. It captures a massacre actually in progress
near the United Nations "safe area" of Srebrenica around 17:15 on July 13,
1995. What makes this image even more remarkable -- and worth studying by anyone interested in the subject of genocide
prevention -- is that it became a public document one day after the massacre, on
July 14. It was part of a video
reportage on events in Srebrenica aired by a Belgrade television station.
Granted, the photograph is initially difficult to
interpret. If you look closely, however,
you can identify bodies piled outside a warehouse, guarded by
a soldier. In the video from which the
image was taken (shown below), you can hear shots, and a reporter talking about
"dead Muslim soldiers." Combined with
overhead reconnaissance collected by the United States, intercepts, and
eyewitness accounts, the fleeting image displayed on Belgrade Studio B was
clear evidence that terrible events were taking place in eastern Bosnia.
Of course, it is easy to pull all this evidence together now
and analyze exactly what it means. The
challenge for the American intelligence community back in 1995 was the same as
it was during the run up to 9/11: "connecting the dots." An additional problem, in the case of
Srebrenica, was that preventing genocide in a faraway country ranked low on the list of U.S. intelligence priorities. At the time, the U.S. government was more
interested in the military/strategic aspects of the three-and-a-half-year Bosnia war.
The July 13 massacre at the Kravica warehouse was one of the
bloodiest in a series of incidents that followed the capture of Srebrenica by
Bosnian Serb forces commanded by General Ratko Mladic. The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal concluded
that a
thousand Muslim men and boys were slaughtered after their Serb captors
threw M75 hand grenades into the warehouse. Those who attempted to escape through the front entrance were mowed down
with automatic rifle fire -- accounting for the pile of bodies that you can see in
the photograph above.
Before describing the corroborating information that was
available to U.S. intelligence analysts, I would like you to take a look at
snippets from the video shot by Serbian cameraman Zoran Petrovic that was shown
on Belgrade TV the day after the massacre. The first part of the video (repeated subsequently in slow motion) shows
prisoners gathered in a field, guarded by soldiers in uniform. The second part was taken by Petrovic as he
drove back toward Srebrenica through the village of Kravica while the massacre
was underway. You hear shots ring out,
mingled with the throbbing beat of music from the car radio. In addition to the crumpled bodies (more
visible in the slow motion part of the video that begins at 0.50'), you see the
bullet-spattered façade of the warehouse and empty white buses (used to
transport the prisoners).
It should be noted that Petrovic, who was escorted by a
senior Bosnian Serb policeman, may have been unaware of the full significance
of his video footage. He was trusted by
the Bosnian Serbs, and did everything he could to paint a sympathetic picture
of what was happening. He described the
crumpled bodies as "dead Muslim soldiers" and suggested they had died in
combat. After visiting Srebrenica, he
rushed back to Belgrade and aired his video report without considering the
possibility that it might be used against his own side in a war crimes trial.
The significance of the Petrovic video was, however, immediately
understood by Robert Block, Belgrade correspondent for the London Independent, who
wrote a report published on July 16, under the headline "Bodies pile up in
horror of Srebrenica." Block visited the television station and analyzed the
video frame by frame. His report,
available here,
included the following passage:
There it was in freeze frame: the horror of Srebrenica in
piles two feet high. The bundles were clearly not empty clothes. They had
heads, arms, and legs. The fit body of a young man in the foreground filled out
a white T-shirt. The bodies up against the wall looked to be three deep in
places...[The Petrovic report implied] that these were Muslim soldiers killed in
combat. The scene, however, looked more like a place of summary execution than
of combat.
If a lone reporter was able to reach such conclusions on the
basis of examining a few seconds of video footage, think what a powerful
intelligence agency would have been able to do had it been explicitly tasked to
gather evidence of war crimes. We now
know that the CIA had additional imagery of the Kravica events that was
captured in real time, but not analyzed for many weeks. Signals intelligence could have provided
further information, but the United States government has been unwilling so far
to release this evidence.
What the government has released (and provided to the
Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague) is damning enough, when combined
with the Petrovic video and various forensic evidence. A U.S. reconnaissance satellite was above the
area at the time and captured a series of images that would have enabled
analysts to locate the site of the massacre very precisely, had they been
instructed to do so. The first image
below (taken around 14:00 on July 13) shows a group of prisoners under guard at
Sandici meadow (visited by Petrovic a short time later.)
In this photograph, you can see a group of Muslim prisoners
assembled near the side of the road following their surrender to Bosnian Serb
forces. (See more Petrovic video here.)
Buses are lined up along the road, waiting to transport the prisoners. Two buses (on the right hand side of the
photograph) appear to be already in motion.
The photograph below shows the agricultural warehouse at Kravica,
a mile or so down the road. Two white
buses are visible, similar to the buses in the Petrovic video. It is still around 14:00, three hours before
the images captured in the Petrovic video. It is reasonable to draw the conclusion that
prisoners are in the process of being transported to the warehouse from Sandici
meadow. There is no sign of the bodies piled up outside at 17:15.
The final photograph below (prepared for the Yugoslav war
crimes tribunal) compares the Petrovic Studio B image with later photographs of
the front of the Kravica warehouse, taken in 1996 and 1997. The bodies are now gone, of course, but in
the 1996 shot there is a gaping hole around the entrance. Investigators have since established that the
hole was created
by a mechanical excavator smashing into the warehouse to remove the bodies
piled up inside. The bullet holes from
the Petrovic video are still clearly visible. The door has been sealed up again
by 1997.
While all this intelligence arrived too late to prevent the
Kravica massacre, it might have been possible to forestall further rounds of
killing in the Srebrenica area had the analysts got to work immediately. The Petrovic video aired on the evening of
July 14. We now know that the murders
of Bosnian Muslims captured following the fall of Srebrenica continued
until July 22 in some areas.
As a footnote, I should mention that the Serbian authorities
went to considerable lengths to cover up the evidence of the massacre following
the airing of the Petrovic video. After
Block's report was published, the original footage aired by Studio B
mysteriously disappeared. Petrovic made a sanitized version of his video
(without the Kravica warehouse material) available to the war crimes tribunal
in The Hague. It was not until many years
later, in 2003, that an enterprising Dutch reporter managed to track down the
original footage aired by Studio B, and confronted
Petrovic with the omissions.
I will be examining the use of intelligence in genocide
prevention, and posting other reconnaissance imagery, in future posts.
International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia
.... what was the point of all this, again? To rend garments over yet another massacre "we could have prevented"? And how, pray tell, could we "prevent" these without being accused yet again of "Yankee cultural imperialism," assuming that matters?
"...analyzed for many weeks...."? Analysis, baloney. Dobbs's sources took many weeks to package the hoax. Cramming a warehouse with hundreds of prisoners, killing them indoors, not at a prepared grave (as at Babi Yar), dragging out hundreds of corpses, piling them neatly outside, loading those cold bodies on buses, carrying all those dead bodies off the buses etc. -- is this an ethnic joke? No, it's Munchausen-Dobbs on steroids. A massacre in mid-July 1995 by Serb forces of 7000-8000 Muslim "men and boys" was first claimed months after the purported event, right after Croatia's MPRI Blitkzrieg (Oluja) against Krajina Serbs in August- September 1995. Nicholas Burns, in a US StateDept briefing answered a journalist's question about Srebrenica. Burns" We don't know what happened." Dobbs for the Tonkin Gulf Resolution award!
Usually, when we get salvos of anti-Serbian propaganda regurgitated (ad nauseum) again and again by the mainstream corporate-controlled "free and fair" media (just as in Michael Dobb's fanatical pieces), there is something up where the powers that be (Council on Foreign Relations, US State Department, German BND, usually) need to yet again "drum up" racist anti-Serbian feelings amidst the unsuspecting Western public to support their barbaric, illegal and anti-Serbian agendas that have destroyed any semblance of international law, the concept of justice (i.e. really victor's "justice"), and have made the world a very dangerous place as the laws of the jungle are currently in force (might makes right). My guess is that the trial against Mladic isn't going well for the Western imperialists just as it didn't go very well for them when they sought to pin blame for the Yugoslav civil wars (along with every other bad action that occurred in the world since) on Slobodan Milosevic - the Western "bogeyman," despite the overwhelming preponderance of bogus "anonymous" "witnesses," heresay, and distorted "facts." Thus, Milosevic was likely assassinated like many of the other Serbs at the Hague because they just couldn't prove much against him except that he was a poor and not highly intelligent leader. So, yet again, we see a desperate effort to prove that war is hell and bad things are done by bad people, Serbs, Croats, Bosnian Muslims, Albanians alike. The only problem is that Westerners (courtesy of anti-Serbian fanatics such as Mr. Dobbs) had not seen the other side of the story, hearing only crimes allegedly committed by Serbians, so they see only black vs. white, in a world where white is black and black is white. The fact is that most Westerners never understood the Balkans as the puppet show is being driven by Western "elites" eager to destroy the last vestiges of resistance to the "New" World Order - the Serbs (Americans next). Fortunately, the more of these lies told, the more that Westerners become numb to the efforts to brainwash them and slowly, as the truth is emerging, they are realizing that there is much more to this story than Mr. Dobbs will tell you which implicates many Western leaders who themselves should face justice for the tragic mess they have created in the Balkans.
"Bodies piled up inside"? Do machine gunning and grenade blasts "pile up" the bodies? Hand grenades dismember; were severed arms, legs and heads found in the gore? The stacked bodies look whole. "WE now know that the CIA had additional imagery of the Kravica events that was captured in real time, but not analyzed for many weeks." Dobbs and who else? Why lept secret? Let's see the pics. --Who is WE? Don't hold back. -- How many "weeks" of analysis was that? Who were the "analysts"? We heard of Pearl Harbor immediately. Reporters actually present in Srebrenica in mid-July said they saw no slaughter and reported. Thousands of armed Muslim fighters, having abanded their women, children and old, "slipped" through Serb lines. Stealth battalions. Hedges, Pomfret, Pumphrey...When is/was "now"? How long did the "analysis" take? Who, what agency, functionary or PR hack informed Balkanologist Dobbs of the "analysis"? Didja get the license plate numbers on those buses? SIGINTEL not released by CIA? Muslim president Alija Izetbegovic made a radio broadcast in clear text announcing that the Muslim garrison had successfully withdrawn from Srebrenica in mid-July and been redeployed to the Bihac front. Stay tuned for the next Dobbs 1995 to 2012 is a long time for newshound Dobbs to come forth with the fruits of his investgation.-I heard that U-2 aerial recon photos can count the freckles on a redneck's neck.
Dobbs seems to be suggesting that what we see in the footage are the Kravica warehouse and dead bodies piled up outside. Then he points to a satellite photograph of a building, which he says is the Kravica warehouse, taken three hours earlier. Dobbs then points to a photograph taken in 1996 of the same building, namely the Kravica warehouse. I'm not quite sure what it's all supposed to prove. Cursory examination would suggest that the building in the footage is not the Kravica warehouse. In the footage there appear to be trees near the buses. In the satellite photos there are no trees near the buses.
Also, the reporter from the Independent, whom Dobbs quotes at length as if he were an eyewitness, saw nothing more than the footage that we see. His conclusions are merely the opinions of an untrained observer. Significantly, however, in his report, the journalist from the Independent said that the building he was looking at was in the town of Srebrenica. He did not say that this was the Kravica warehouse.
If the building was in Srebrenica and if what we are looking at are dead bodies piled up outside then the presence of the buses doesn't make a whole lot of sense. There's no reason for buses other than to ship people out. But if the people are already dead then there doesn't seem to be much point in putting them on the bus.
it might have been possible to forestall further rounds of killing in the Srebrenica area had the analysts got to work immediately. NIce Article,,nice information,,,thx
"Analysts" not on the job in mid-July1995? The worldly wise would presume that Recon analysts were in fact hot on the job and that they simply had nothing to report. In August 1995 Madeleine Albright went to the UN to lie for her country. Which is the duty of ambassadors, as Wotton wrote in the 1600s. In the middle of the US-executed Oluja (Storm) offensive against the land and people of Serb Krajina, Albright, having previously lied for Liar-Fellator in Chief Clinton, laid down a smoke screen to cover America's dirty war. The faked photos she waved about were not released to the public. What can safely be assumed is that Mr Dobbs never wrote -- or even read -- a line about a "massacre by Mladic of 8k Muslim men and boys at Srebremnica in mid-July 1995. If a massacre took place and if Mr Dobbs didnot not immediately blog about it, he -- not his unidentified "analysts" -- was asleep at the keyboard. So was ERIR1...
Mr Dobbs. Critical observers will be interested in the identity of the journalists you say wrote the "first rough draft of history" in the immediate aftermath of the worst massacre in Europe since World War II." The Nobel Committee will need the proper addresses to send the prize to. Who wrote the fianl polished spin? Pease tell us the names of those journalists. State Dept news-spinners like John Shattuck in one widely circulated remark referred to "grenades". The English-speaking (only) will (mis)understand that word to mean HAND GRENADES, but Shattuck's Muslim Bosnian source certainly meant something else. The word GRANATA in "Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian" correctly translated is an artillery projectile. Oh, yes, intrerested parties should google to see Shattuck's encomium of the now vanished, maybe banished, Samantha Power, or does she still hold a high post in the Obama War Room? She wrote in her eulogy of Elizabeth Neuffer that she (Samantha) had never written anything about Bosnia except a chronology of newspaper articles. Morton Abramowitz was her Mentor and in Sam's own words, she was his "mentee". Neuffer had thanked Samantha for saving her butt when assignbed to "cover" Bosnia. -- With what?
Mr Szamuely, the trees that do in fact appear on the satellite image are rather small. The Petrovic film footage allows you to gauge their size by comparing the first of them his car passes with the soldier close by.
Did the reporter say that he saw the bodies in Srebrenica? What I read in the quote was that he was describing "the horror of Srebrenica". As you know, we refer to the Srebrenica genocide even though some of the captives were bussed a long way north of the town in order to be executed and their bodies disposed of away from the immediate vicinity of the town. The purpose of the killings was to eliminate the enclave and the killings were not meant to take place where they would provide evidence of intent.
So take another look at the footage and read Mr Dobbs's article again. When you watch the footage again you might also note how it opens with Petrovic's film of a large group of prisoners under guard - non-combatants - who were never seen alive again.
East: "" captives bussed a long way north of the town...to eliminate the enclave and the killings were not meant to take place where they would provide evidence of intent...prisoners - non-combatants - never seen alive again." East is a Psychic... His balls must be crystal
"reporter say[s] that he saw the bodies in Srebrenica? What I read in the quote was that he was describing "the horror of Srebrenica"." Me so dumb I can't make sense out of "East's" word dump.
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The purpose of the killings was to eliminate the enclave and the killings were not meant to take place where they would provide evidence of intent.So take another unibet look at the footage and read Mr Dobbs's article again. When you watch the footage again you might also note how it opens with Petrovic's film of a large group of prisoners under guard - non-combatants - who were never seen alive again.
The reporter from the Independent, whom Dobbs quotes at length as if he were an eyewitness, saw nothing more than the footage that we see. His conclusions are merely the opinions of an untrained observer. Significantly, however, in his report, the journalist from realestate the Independent said that the building he was looking at was in the town of Srebrenica. He did not say that this was the Kravica warehouse.
The purpose of the killings was to eliminate the enclave and the killings were not meant to take place where they would provide evidence of intent.So take another betway bonus look at the footage and read Mr Dobbs's article again. When you watch the footage again you might also note how it opens with Petrovic's film of a large group of prisoners under guard - non-combatants
Ratko Mladic has been described as "one of those lethal combinations that history thrusts up occasionally-a charismatic murderer." What drove the Bosnian Serb military commander to order Europe's deadliest massacre since World War II? Could it have been prevented? Michael Dobbs, a U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum fellow, investigates.
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