The court attempted to establish who ordered the withdrawal of the army from Ovcara and leaving prisoners from the Vukovar General Hospital to the Territorial Defence (TO).
Witness Borivoj Tesic, in 1991 commander of the First Guard Battalion in Vukovar and now a senior Serbian Interior Ministry official, said that until Vukovar's fall on 18 November 1991 the TO answered to the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) Guard Brigade. He added that on November 19 or 20 General Mile Mrksic issued a verbal, and on the 21st a written order, that the command of the TO be left to the 80th Motorised Brigade from Kragujevac, Serbia.
"After the fighting in Vukovar stopped the TO was no longer under my command and I didn't engage it anywhere. You have to ask General Mrksic under whose command the TO was between November 18 and 21," said the witness.
He confirmed he knew three indictees, Miroljub Vujovic, Stanko Vujanovic and Milan Lancuzanin. All three previously claimed that Vukovar's TO had never existed and that as civilians, they only served as "guides" helping the JNA find their way around in the eastern Croatian town.
The witness said he had never been at Ovcara and that he heard of the crime only two years after it happened from General Zoran Stankovic, incumbent head of the Military Medical Academy in Belgrade.
The trial against 17 defendants accused of the killing of at least 192 prisoners of war resumes tomorrow with the testimonies of former JNA members.