Les Tombes “Srebrenica et Vukovar”

In May 1996 William Haglund, an American forensic anthropologist, along with a team of forensic scientists from 19 countries, was sent by the international war crimes tribunal in the Hague to oversee the investigation into mass graves discovered in the hills around Srebrenica in Bosnia, and at Vukovar in Croatia. What they discovered were some of the worst atrocities since World War II. This book is the account of how, from a hell of mud and decomposing bodies, Haglund began to piece together the victims’ identities and the terrible ways they died. Over 40,000 Muslim refugees were living in and around Srebrenica when it fell to the Serbs, under General Ratko Mladic in July 1995. Of the men who fled or were rounded up by the Serbs, many were never seen again. Stover talks to the surviving families, women and children, including the Women of Srebrenica, still clinging to the hope that their men are alive even as Haglund’s investigations prove otherwise. Mladic has since been charged with crimes of genocide, but Stover identifies lack of political will to arrest the criminals and bring them to trial.