ONE of the first UN forensics investigators to arrive at Srebrenica, Robert McNeil, found the horror haunted him until he discovered a personal release through creating artworks of his experience.
The former Glasgow mortuaries manager, who travelled to the war-torn region to face a gruelling task of unearthing the mass graves, said he hoped the verdict against the Butcher of Bosnia would bring closure for victims' families.
However, the move by The Hague to find Ratko Mladic guilty of ten of 11 counts of genocide and crimes against humanity left a question mark over the one genocide charge of which he was not found guilty and which related to genocide in other Bosnian municipalities.
READ MORE: Scots' forensic expert evidence Srebrenica war crimes verdict
Mr McNeil, 70, said that "whilst there will will be some people who may feel that just has been done there will be others who will feel let down perhaps".
He described the scene. Bosnian Serbs "had re-entered the graves and moved the bodies using mechanical diggers and moved them into secondary graves to obfuscate the crime in the belief that forensic teams would never be able to establish how they died and that we could put them back together again and they were proved wrong on both counts".
"We have figures to say that of the 8,000-plus men and boys that were killed at Srebrenica almost 6,500 have been positively identified and buried respectfully in graves.
"From a forensic point of view it was success in the sense that the perpetrators who thought they could get away with it were caught."
He said: "What surprised and shocked us was the level of cruelty that was perpetrated against the victims before and after their death.
"I recognised almost immediately that this wasn’t gong to be a quick job, in fact it is still going on to this day.
"Many of the victims had been badly beaten before they were taken to their place of execution.
"What disturbed us was that many of the early victims had been blindfolded and had their hands tied behind their back with wire.
"It was very deliberate where they took victims in bus loads of about 30 at a time to the killing fields."
READ MORE: Scots who worked to identify ethnic cleansing victims
Although a forensic expert, the experience took its toll on Mr McNeil who was supported by the charity Remembering Srebrenica as he carved a new career as an artist.
He said: "I was having these bad dreams and apparently I was crying out at night and that concerned my wife.
"I took up painting as a form of therapy and instead of painting flowers and vases I felt obliged to paint some of those images that I had during the night.
"The nightmares slowly dissipated."
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