Screbrenica Anniversay.

Today, July 11th (11/7/12) is the 17th anniversary of the Screbrenica massacre which saw more then 8000 Muslim men and boys killed during the Bosnian war. As they do every year survivors and relatives of those killed gathered at the Potocari cemetery to mourn the dead and bury the remains of victims who have been discovered and identified over the past year. This year they buried a further 548 people.

The trial of the man accused of masterminding the atrocity, Ratko Mladic re-started at the International Criminal Court (ICC) inthe Hague, Netherlands on Monday (9/7/12). The trial had been delayed since May 17th (17/6/12) after it emerged that prosecutors had failed to disclose large amounts of evidence to the defence. The Judges though ruled that the defence had been given sufficient time to study that new evidence and the first witness, Elvedin Pasic appeared before the court on Monday.

Personally I would have liked to have seen the trial delayed until after the Olympic games. However the main problems with the timing of the trial were the finals of the Euro2012 football tournament that took place in Poland and Ukraine in June, the Eurovision Song Contest that took place in May and the inauguration of Fatou Bensouda as the ICC's new Chief Prosecutor. Those things have all now taken place without major incident and the general feeling was that after 17 years the trial needed to start sooner rather then later especially as it's quite likely the trial will still be going on by the time of the 18th anniversary.