ICTY president and Nazi camp survivor visits Bosnian mass grave

The president of the UN war crimes tribunal and himself a Nazi camp survivor on Monday said he was "face to face with horror" on a visit to possibly the largest mass grave in Bosnia from its 1992-1995 war. "I stand humbled by this mass grave and I'm honored to be able to pay my respect to victims and to meet with family members," a visibly emotional Theodor Meron said in Tomasica, a disused mine in the northeastern region of Prijedor. Forensic experts have exhumed 430 bodies from the mass grave discovered in September. The bodies are believed to be those of Muslims and Croats tortured and killed by Bosnian Serb forces at the beginning of the inter-ethnic war. "It is very difficult for me to speak at this place where one stands face to face with the horror that men can do to other men," said Meron, who was held in a Nazi camp in Poland during World War II. "This place has a very, very special resonance for me personally, because it looks a little bit like a place in a quarry, not far from a city where I spent my war years, in the city of Czestochowa in Poland, where my mother was killed," he added. "So, this means more for me than a theory of international law," said Meron of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The institute for missing persons in Bosnia is still searching for 1,200 people from the 3,000 who went missing in the area during the three-and-a-half-year war, which left 100,000 dead. The former Bosnian Serb political and military chiefs, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, are currently on trial before The Hague-based tribunal. They have been charged with genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity over their roles during the war, including the crimes committed in the region of Prijedor.