More than 100 veterans of the Dutchbat III battalion which stood guard in Srebrenica during the 1995 massacre are planning to sue the Dutch state for sending them on an ‘impossible mission’.

Lawyers Michael Ruperti and Klaas Arjen Krikke told AD that senior commanders were among those claiming compensation. It follows the announcement in July that 12 Dutchbat veterans were launching a claim against the government, which they say has never fully acknowledged that the mission was doomed to fail.

Nearly 8,400 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed by Bosnian forces at Srebrenica, which had been designated a UN safe haven, in July 1995. The International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague declared it an act of genocide in 2004 and UN secretary-general Kofi Annan called it the worst crime to be committed on European soil since the end of the Second World War.

The lawyers said that the veterans had suffered irreparable social, emotional and financial harm as a result of their participation in the Srebrenica mission. They also argued that the ministry of defence’s internal compensation procedures are inadequate.

Dutchbat has been found guilty in the Dutch courts of failing to protect some of the Bosniak refugees in the safe area, and in 2013 the Supreme Court ruled that the Netherlands was responsible for the deaths of three men who were expelled from the compound. The UN has also admitted it made ‘serious errors of judgment, rooted in a philosophy of impartiality’.