When I asked him what had happened there, he told me that in Vukovar there were many graves and that bodies had to be buried somewhere, Hartmann told the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the trial of Sljivancanin, Mile Mrksic and Miroslav Radic, indicted for the 1991 massacre at the Ovcara farm.
In late 1991, Hartmann was a Le Monde correspondent from eastern Croatia.
Hartmann, who took the witness stand today, said that she had talked with Sljivancanin about this topic at the Vukovar cemetery on 18 November 1992, exactly a year after Vukovar fell into the hands of Serb rebels supported by the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA).
She added that she had not mentioned his statement in her article published by Le Monde the following day because she had no evidence about the 1991 massacre of the civilians and wounded Croatian soldiers from the Vukovar hospital.
She however ''insinuated'' that the JNA was responsible for the massacre.
In August 1992, the UN office in Zagreb and British pathologist Clyde Snow confirmed the existence of the grave but without specifying its exact location, Hartmann said today, adding that she managed to locate the Ovcara mass grave following information from a statement by a survivor of the massacre, who gave an interview for the Croatian daily Vjesnik in early August 1992.
In late 1991 Mrksic, Sljivancanin and Radic were senior officers of the JNA in Vukovar. They are charged with the killing of at least 264 Croatian soldiers and civilians at Ovcara on 20 November 1991, which qualifies as crime against humanity.