Former JNA officers Mile Mrksic, Veselin Sljivancanin and Miroslav Radic, who are currently in the custody of the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, will not give testimony on January 25 as announced for technical reasons, because the Hague tribunal has no available courtroom from which they could testify via video link, said Judge Vesko Krstajic of the Special War Crimes Court in Belgrade.
Citing a brief filed by defence counsel, Krstajic said that the three accused did not agree to give testimony because they were charged by the Hague tribunal's prosecution with this and other crimes.
Two witnesses gave testimony on Monday in the continuation of the trial of 17 persons in the Ovcara massacre case -- Jovan Novkovic, of Kragujevac, who served as a member of the JNA 80th Motorised Brigade in 1991, and Marko Crevar, who was a police officer in Vukovar from 1989 to 1997.
Novkovic could not remember many of the details provided during the investigation, saying that this was due to "alcoholic amnesia".
He confirmed that he was near a hangar in Ovcara when buses with prisoners arrived, and that he saw a large number of soldiers and men "who presented an unsoldierly appearance, who were mainly under the influence of alcohol, holding a rifle in one hand and a bottle in the other".
"They looked like Chetniks from Partisan movies to me," the witness said, recalling that prisoners were insulted, cursed and slapped around. He said that members of the Serb Territorial Defence dispossessed the prisoners of their belongings, but downplayed his statement by remarking: "I don't know anymore what I saw, what I heard from others, and what I saw on television."
The other witness also could not remember many of the details he had given during the investigation.
Crevar, however, did confirm that the Territorial Defence, of which he was a member, was under JNA command, and that the first defendant Miroljub Vujovic and the second defendant Stanko Vujanovic had appointed Territorial Defence commanders before the fall of Vukovar to the besieging Serb-led JNA forces in late November 1991.
Vujovic and Vujanovic have denied the Vukovar Territorial Defence ever existed.
Crevar denied accusations that he himself had been involved in ill-treating the prisoners.
In 1999 the Vukovar County Court sentenced Crevar in absence to three years in prison under an indictment against 22 persons charged with genocide and war crimes against civilians. Several of these persons stand accused before the Belgrade court.