Thomas Karremans

Colonel Thomas Jakob Peter Karremans (born 29 December 1948) was the commander of Dutchbat troops in Srebrenica at the time of the Srebrenica massacre during Bosnian War. Dutchbat had been assigned to defend the Bosniak enclave made the U.N. "safe area", but it failed to prevent the Serbs from rounding up and killing 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in 1995.

Karremans followed his military training at the Royal Military Academy in the Netherlands, and subsequently he was part of the 1979-1980 UNIFIL peacekeepers in Lebanon. In the eighties he was stationed at the NATO Headquarters SHAPE in Mons (Belgium), where he was involved in the subject of arms control. In 1991, Karremans had his first experience in Bosnia as liaison officer to the EC observation committee. He then became commander of an infantry battalion in Assen.

In 1994 Karremans was appointed as commander of Dutchbat III battalion that was deployed to the Srebrenica enclave as a part of the peacekeeping mission, under command of the United Nations in operation United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR).

On 11, 12 and 13 July, the enclave was captured by Serb soldiers, while the Dutch battalion was stationed there. Karremans requested NATO air support to defend the enclave, as the Dutch were more and more driven into the narrow enclave. (Karremans requested air strikes several times, in particular of the french- which was witnessed from neutral Switzerland, but they were first denied, then delayed, and later granted by UN General Bernard Janvier.) However the NATO air support arrived was too little and too late to stop the Serbian advance.

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