The witness, who was 17 when he joined the Croatian National Guard in the defence of the Danube river town in eastern Croatia, said that he had been taken prisoner on 19 November 1991 along with a group of his comrades-in-arms and taken to the Velepromet wholesale trading company's building.
"When we arrived at Velepromet, we were searched, beaten a little and then thrown into the 'death room' where 50-60 people were being held," P-026 said. When asked by Prosecutor Aga Khan why the room was called a "death room" and what happened to the prisoners being held there, the witness said that "those who left the room never returned."
P-026 said that on 20 November 1991 he and the remaining group of inmates had been transferred to a detention camp in Sremska Mitrovica, Serbia, where he stayed four and a half months and was frequently subjected to beating, maltreatment and threats and forced to write false confessions. He was exchanged in April 1992.
Former JNA officers Mile Mrksic, Veselin Sljivancanin and Miroslav Radic, who are also known as the Vukovar Three, are on trial for their responsibility for the execution of at least 264 wounded Croats and civilians from the town hospital, which was committed on the Ovcara farm outside Vukovar on 20 November 1991.
The indictment says that in the evening of 19 November 1991 Mrksic and Sljivancanin received reports of some members of the Serb Territorial Defence, volunteer and paramilitary units torturing and killing non-Serb prisoners in the Velepromet warehouse.