On Wednesday, Carla del Ponte, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), requested that the trial of the three former Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) officers, known as the Vukovar Three, who are indicted for the 1991 Ovcara massacre, be referred to courts in Croatia or Serbia and Montenegro.
Representatives of the families, who are in Belgrade monitoring the trial of former members of the so-called Territorial Defence and former Serbian paramilitaries accused of the 1991 Ovcara massacre, told reporters that they saw the ongoing trial before the Belgrade special court for war crimes as a farce, although they were satisfied with the way in which the head of the panel of judges was conducting the trial and with the work of the special prosecution for war crimes in this case.
"We are dissatisfied with testimonies of witnesses who lie and who are obviously intimidated. What hurts us most is that the full truth about the crime in Vukovar will never be established," said the families's members, although they fear that witnesses would probably lie before Croatian courts.
The families of the Ovcara massacre victims who have been monitoring the Belgrade trial since March 2004 sit in the gallery during the main hearings. They were separated from the families of the accused after several minor incidents and acts of provocation. The latter families sit behind the defendants, divided by bullet-proof glass.