The Dutch soldiers were responsible and obliged to protect all the residents of the UN safe zone Srebrenica and that was their mandate from the UN, Bosnia's Bosniak Presidency member Sefik Dzaferovic said after the Dutch Supreme Court confirmed on Friday a 2017 ruling which said that the Netherlands is partly responsible for the deaths of 300 victims of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide.

“They are also responsible for all other victims, not just the 350 of them whom they forced out of their camp and handed over to (former Serb army general Ratko) Mladic and (former Republika Srpska entity president Radovan) Karadzic and their butchers. Their responsibility is absolute and cannot be expressed in percentages,” Dzaferovic, who is also a high-ranking official of the strongest Bosniak party, the Democratic Action Party (SDA), said in a written statement.

He added he would continue providing all the support he can to the families of genocide victims and their associations.

The Bosniak leader and the leader of the SDA Bakir Izetbegovic also commented on the verdict saying that it is shameful and distasteful to express responsibility for such an act in any percentage.

The Supreme Court of the Kingdom of the Netherlands confirmed on Friday a 2017 ruling which said that the Netherlands is partly responsible for the deaths of 300 victims of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide.

The court determined that the Dutch battalion could probably not have prevented the Bosnian Serb soldiers from arresting the Bosniak men.

In April 1993 the UN had declared the besieged enclave of the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica a safe zone under the UN protection. However, in July 1995 the Dutch battalion failed to prevent the town's capture by the Bosnian Serb forces and the massacre that followed.

More than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed in the genocide committed in the days after 11 July 1995, and so far the remains of more than 6,600 have been found and buried.