Zvornik, 2 March 2012
Almir Alić from the Tribunal’s Outreach office in Bosnian and Herzegovina today gave a presentation on the ICTY’s work and achievements to a group of 16 fourth-grade students at the ‘Petar Kočić' high school in Zvornik.
Zvornik is a municipality and border town with Serbia on the Drina river in north-eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. The town was the site of a number of massacres during the 1992-1995 conflict, perhaps most notioursly in July 1995, when several hundred Bosnian Muslim men from nearby Srebrenica and Potočari were transferred to the collective farm in Pilica and other detention facilities in the Zvornik municipality, where they were mistreated, abused, beaten and murdered by Serbian forces.
The two-hour multi-media presentation was followed by a lively discussion on a number of issues related to Tribunal’s mandate and procedures, including the rights of the accused before the ICTY and the conditions in the UN Detention Unit. In addition, the students were understandably very keen to discuss cases related to crimes committed in the wider area of Srebrenica.
As they headed to their next lesson, Almir provided the students with various handouts and encouraged them to consult the ICTY’s website and social media pages to learn more about daily work of the Tribunal.