HASAN NUHANOVIC STILL SEARCHES FOR MOTHER'S BONES

Hasan Nuhanovic, better known as Elie Wiesel of Bosnia, still searches for the bones of his family. I have known Hasan for many years now; he is a wonderful human being. It deeply saddens me that he hasn't found remains of his mother yet. His father Ibro, mother Nasiha and brother Muhamed were all killed in the Srebrenica genocide.

In a new article titled "Srebrenica: the search for a terrible truth goes on", authored by a respected journalist Duncan Staff and published in the Guardian on October 13, 2009 we learn that some Serbs promised to reveal the location of his mother's remains in exchange for cash.

"'Next week I am going to my hometown, Vlasenica, to meet one of the local Serbs who says he'll show me where my mother is buried. He is jobless and says he wants money – maybe €1,000 – and then he will tell me where she is.' 'So what are you going to do?; I asked. Hasan paused, obviously undecided. 'I think I am going to offer to pay half, and to pay the rest if DNA analysis shows that it really is her.'"

Dutch peacekeepers, known as Dutchbat, refused to allow safe passage for Hasan's family. In fact, they tricked him:

"In an echo of the Holocaust, people were told to hand over possessions on the way out of the factory hall. 'There were Dutch soldiers either side, fully armed, with machine guns. They told the people: 'Empty your wallets, empty your bags, empty your purses.' 'My name was on a list of people who could stay in the base. My parents asked me to do everything I could to save my brother, and for two days I was trying to get his name on the list. They put his name on – maybe just to get rid of me – then erased it at the last moment. I was walking alongside him as he walked out of the base, trying to apologise and saying: 'I am coming with you!' He suddenly turned around and screamed at me: 'You are not coming with me! You will stay here!'... Hasan only survived because Mladic needed a skilled interpreter to translate his orders to the Dutch UN commander, Colonel Tom Karremans."

Secret Intelligence Officer

The article also discusses 'Nick Cameron' - secret British intelligence officer in Srebrenica. He was a member of SAS [The Special Air Service]. SAS roles include intelligence collection in the battlespace. Since I never wrote anything about this individual, I will quote information from Richard Taylor's article, published in 2002 by the Guardian:

"A highly decorated former SAS soldier is being taken to court by the Ministry of Defence after publicly criticising NATO and the UN for the failure to protect 50,000 Muslims from the Serbs in the "safe area" of Srebrenica seven years ago.

The man, who uses the pseudonym, Nick Cameron, was awarded the Military Cross for his actions in Bosnia where he was leader of a three-man patrol secretly infiltrated into Srebrenica to gather intelligence and liaise with an ill-prepared battalion of Dutch soldiers.

Though he signed a confidentiality agreement, he wanted to reveal the failures of western policy and the circumstances surrounding the massacre of some 7,000 Muslim men in Europe's worst war crime since the second world war.

'The military power that could have prevented the catastrophe had been assembled, but it was never used,' he wrote in an article in the Sunday Times this month.

'I was not at liberty to reveal what had really happened because of a confidentiality agreement I was ordered to sign,' he said. "I made up my mind that when I left the army I would write my own account of the unbelievable events of 1995 - censorship or not."

Full articles from the Guardian, read here here:
1. Srebrenica: the search for a terrible truth goes on
2. 'Nick Cameron' - secret intelligence officer sued by MoD over exposé

From the United States Holocaust Museum:
1. Interview with Hasan Nuhanovic
2. Srebrenica genocide video documentaries (compilation)