Mercenaries, directed by Bosnia’s Muslim leaders and French spies, carried out the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in order to make the world hate the Serbs, Slobodan Milosevic said on Friday. The former Serb leader is on trial for genocide and one count relates to Srebrenica, Europe’s worst atrocity since World War Two in which up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed after Serb forces overran the UN ‘‘safe area’’ in Bosnia. The former Yugoslav President, in opening arguments at the key Bosnia and Croatia section of his landmark war crimes trial, claimed Serbs were simply the scapegoats and were not to blame. ‘‘I want the truth to be revealed for this insane crime — in the interest of justice it has to be explained before the world public,’’ he declared. ‘‘As a pretext for military engagement, genocide carried out by Serbs will be made up.by making it appear a genocide was carried out, an anathema will be placed on the heads of Serbs and measures will be carried out,’’ was how Milosevic summarised the thinking he said lay behind Srebrenica. Milosevic told the UN International Criminal Tribunal that the massacre plot was hatched at a meeting in July 1995 — just days before the killings — at a Muslim municipal official’s home.
