They said that the first group of some 200 prisoners of war, taken from Vukovar and kept by the military police of the 80th motorised brigade, were transferred from the Ovcara farm outside Vukovar to the Serbian town of Sremska Mitrovica after the group spent a night in the hangar at Ovcara after the town fell to besieging Serb forces in November 1991.
According to the witnesses, on the second day after the Serb paramilitaries and the Serb Territorial Defence, supported by the then JNA, overran the town, POWs, notably the wounded from the Vukovar hospital, were taken to the Ovcara hangar. The military police were then withdrawn from the site under the explanation that the prisoners would be placed in the custody of the Territorial Defence (TO).
Military policeman Trifunovic told the Belgrade court that then "the situation in the hangar was chaotic, TO troops were beating the detainees".
Trifunovic said, among other things, that on the morning of the third day after the fall of Vukovar, when he returned to Ovcara, the hangar was empty. He noticed freshly-dug soil in the vicinity, and concluded that at one spot a corpse might have been buried underneath.
The trial of the 17 persons, accused of the massacre of about 200 wounded at the Ovcara farm in late November 1991, is adjourned until 22 November when new prosecution witnesses will take the stand before the Special War Crimes Tribunal in Belgrade.