Hubert Wieland, Personal Representative of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

Hubert Wieland led a team of around 20 investigators  to take evidence from the survivors of Srebrenica gathered at the reception camp set up for them in Tuzla following the fall of Srebrenica to the Bosnian Serb Army.

There were many thousands of survivors in the camp (eventually more than 35,000 were recorded there).  Hubert Wieland and his team spent 5 days taking evidence from anyone with information to give.  They did not find a single eyewitness to an atrocity.  This was reported in the Independent newspaper in the UK.

 

The Electronic Telegraph Monday 24 July 1995 Serb Atrocities In Srebrenica Are Unproved

By Tim Butcher in Tuzla

After five days of interviews the United Nations chief investigator into alleged human rights abuses during the fall of Srebrenica has not found any first‑hand witnesses of atrocities…

….The lack of clear evidence facing Hubert Wieland, personal representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, proved the near‑impossibility of establishing what happened when the Serbs overran the Muslim enclave in eastern Bosnia. ‘Of course the whole ejection of a civilian population is an enormous abuse of human rights, ” Mr Wieland said yesterday. “But we have not found anyone who saw with their own eyes an atrocity taking place. ”

…Mr Wieland travelled to Tuzla, the Bosnian city where almost all of the Srebrenica refugees were taken, with a team of investigators to gather evidence of human rights abuses…

He said his team had spoken to scores of Muslims at the main refugee camp at Tuzla airfield and at other collective centres but no first‑hand witnesses had been found…

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