Witness Kresovic, who in the war-time Vukovar was "commander of the Negoslavci Bridgade of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) Mitrovica Battalion", said he was at Ovcara "on the day of liberation of Vukovar on November 18, or the day after" to look for his mother who had been hiding in a basement during the fighting. He also saw white buses in front of the hangar at Ovcara, with people getting out of a bus that was last in a line of buses.
"They ran the gauntlet, with a dozen men lined up on each side, there were many military and civilian vehicles there, a hundred people in different uniforms in front of the hangar, and soldiers at the entrance to the hangar. The soldiers would not let us into the hangar, but I took a look inside and saw some people standing with their backs to the wall, and a table that prisoners were approaching to identify themselves to the soldiers," the witness said, adding that he saw "(Croatian reporter) Sinisa Glavasevic, whom I had met at a youth work drive, at the moment he was standing at the registrar's desk".
After a while, not having found his mother, the witness left Ovcara, but he returned there in May the following year, when the location was under the control of a Russian UNPROFOR battalion, when he learned that the Russian soldiers had discovered three bodies at Ovcara. He heard about the crime "a month, two or three months later, because the town was plagued by other problems", the witness said, although during the investigation he said that he had heard about the massacre "the next day, but could not believe it happened".
Predrag Sapic in 1991 was a 21-year-old member of a military police unit of the JNA 80th motorised brigade and guarded the entrance to the hangar at Ovcara with his colleague Novica Trifunovic, after the prisoners were brought there. He, too, could not remember any of his statements made previously, but he dismissed the possibility of having received threats before coming to Belgrade to testify. Nevertheless, he confirmed his initial statement which the president of the trial chamber, Judge Vesko Krstajic, showed him.
Sapic said that he and Trifunovic had received the order to go from Negoslavci to Ovcara from his commander, Captain Dragan Vezmarevic, "because something was going on there". During the investigation, he gave a more detailed statement saying that they had been told "that there were prisoners there and that members of the Territorial Defence were abusing them".
"I was frightened by the way the people in front of the hangar looked. I saw some senior JNA officers and military police officers and people in uniforms. One member of the Territorial Defence with a leather hat approached my captain, Drago Vukosavljevic, or Lieutenant Colonel Vojnovic, pushed him away and said: "Old man, don't tell me you captured them?", the witness said. He and Trifunovic were then told to stand guard at the entrance to the hangar, but soon an order came for all members of the army and the Territorial Defence to leave the hangar, and they were withdrawn as well and transferred to a nearby house, from where they heard and saw a trailer tractor and prisoners being ordered onto the trailer; the tractor left and returned several times during the night.
"Every time the tractor left, several minutes later we heard shooting and this went on for the next two to three hours that night. In the morning, when we came to the hangar, there was nobody there, but in a trench near the hangar I saw a leg in a yellow boot sticking out of a freshly dug mound," the witness said during the investigation, which he confirmed today.
The trial continues tomorrow with new witness testimonies.