Nineteen minutes of horror: Insights from the Scorpions execution video

Abstract

After the fall of Srebrenica in summer of 1995, the Scorpions unit, dispatched to support the Bosnian Serb Army as it took over the enclave, shot six men in Trnovo. The men, three of whom were underage, were some of thousands of Bosnian Muslims that fell into the hands of Bosnian Serb troops, and that were executed in the days and weeks following July 11th. A member of the unit filmed the execution. Fragments of the video were first shown during the Slobodan Milosevic trial, and multiple times in the years after, in the courtrooms in The Hague and Belgrade. The video provides unique insights into the nature of the crime, as well as the behavior of the perpetrators, and this article will discuss them in detail, contributing to what we know about Srebrenica, and how individuals are held accountable for mass atrocity crimes. This article is part of a special issue of the journal, titled 'Images and Collective Violence: Function, Use and Memory'.