Court ruling · ICTY + ICJ Srebrenica 1995 — Genocide in a UN "Safe Area"

In July 1995, during the Bosnian war, Bosnian Serb forces (the VRS) overran the town of Srebrenica — a UN-designated "safe area" — and over roughly three days murdered between 7,000 and 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys, burying them in mass graves later dug up and scattered to hide the crime. It is the worst atrocity on European soil since the Holocaust. Highest evidentiary tier, confirmed by two international courts. In 2001 the ICTY convicted General Radislav Krstić of genocide; its Appeals Chamber upheld the genocide finding in 2004, ruling the killings were carried out with intent to destroy the group in part. Sixteen people, including Ratko Mladić and Radovan Karadžić, were ultimately convicted for Srebrenica crimes. Then in 2007 the International Court of Justice ruled — in the first genocide case between states — that the Srebrenica massacre constituted genocide. A precise note the ICJ itself drew: it found genocide only at Srebrenica, not across the wider Bosnian war, because the specific intent required for genocide was conclusively established there and not elsewhere. That precision is part of why the ruling holds.