«The break-up of socialist Yugoslav federation has been characterised by the mass scale violence against the civilian population. The existing scholarship on the perpetrators of these human rights abuses has focused largely on the role of regular armed forces and the paramilitary organisations. This insightful and meticulously researched book shifts the focus towards the police. Axboe Nielsen shows convincingly that the ethnic cleansing and genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina was spearheaded by the Bosnian Serb police forces. The book relies on the primary data analysis from ICTY and the Bosnian Serb police’s own documentation. Axboe Nielsen explores the key processes through which the police was involved in perpetrating, accommodating or tolerating mass atrocities committed against the non-Serb population. This is an important study that offers a novel interpretation of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.»

Siniša Maleševic, University College Dublin, Ireland

«Based on extensive new documentation and the author’s own expert testimony at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Mass Atrocities and the Police illuminates the sometimes neglected yet seminal role played by the police in the mass atrocity crimes committed during the Bosnian war. Meticulously researched and convincingly argued, the book charts the construction of an ethnic Serb police force in Bosnia and its repurposing by the Bosnian Serb political authorities as a leading vector of ‘ethnic cleansing’, often in collusion with notoriously brutal paramilitary units. Nielsen’s account of the descent of an institution responsible for the protection of the civilian population into mass crime adds a poignant new dimension to the tragedy of the Bosnian conflict, as well as to the story of its fragile peace.»

Jasna Dragovic-Soso, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK