DUTCH peacekeepers were to blame for the deaths of 300 Bosnian Muslim men in 1995 by handing them over to Bosnian Serb forces, a civil court in The Hague ruled today.

However, Judge Larissa Alwin cleared the Netherlands of liability in the deaths of up to 2,000 Bosnian Muslims slain in what became known as the Srebrenica massacre.

She ordered the Dutch government to pay compensation to the families of the 300 men.

“By co-operating in the deportation of these men, Dutchbat acted unlawfully,” the judge said, referring to the name of the Dutch UN battalion.

Her ruling cleared Dutch troops of complicity in the deaths of thousands of Bosnian Muslim men who fled into the forests around Srebrenica and were later rounded up and murdered by Serb forces.

“Dutchbat cannot be held liable for their fate,” she stated.

“Obviously the court has no sense of justice. How is it possible to divide victims and tell one mother that the Dutch state is responsible for the death of her son on one side of the wire and not for the son on the other side?” asked Munira Subasic, president of the Mothers of Srebrenica group that filed the case.

She said that her organisation would “keep fighting for truth and justice and in the end we will win.”

Despite claims that Srebrenica was a disarmed UN safe haven, it was in fact a Bosnian Muslim military base for hit-and-run attacks against Serbian villages before its capture by the Bosnian Serb army.