VUKOVAR VUKOVAR, Feb 24 (Hina) - The Vukovar County Prosecutor's Office on Monday presented an indictment issued last week against ten persons from the former Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) leadership, Serb paramilitary units and the
civil authorities of the so-called Srpska Krajina, the first indictee being General Veljko Kadijevic.
VUKOVAR, Feb 24 (Hina) - The Vukovar County Prosecutor's Office on
Monday presented an indictment issued last week against ten persons
from the former Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) leadership, Serb
paramilitary units and the civil authorities of the so-called
Srpska Krajina, the first indictee being General Veljko Kadijevic.
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Former JNA generals Veljko Kadijevic, Blagoje Adzic, Zvonko
Jurjevic, Bozidar Stevanovic and Zivota Panic, Lieutenant Colonel
Mile Mrksic, Major Veselin Sljivancanin, Captain Miroslav Radic,
the commander of the Serb paramilitary units "White Eagles",
Vojislav Seselj, and the premier of the so-called Serb Autonomous
Region of Krajina, Goran Hadzic, are charged with crimes committed
in Vukovar between August 1991 and November 18, 1991 - war crimes
against civilians, the wounded, the sick and POWs, and with the
destruction of cultural and historical monuments.
County Prosecutor Bozidar Piljic said the ten indictees, for whom
arrest warrants would be issued in the next several days, would be
tried in absence.
Speaking about the charges, Piljic said that at the time of the
armed aggression of the former JNA on Vukovar, the indictees had
ordered "military activities with the purpose of occupying the
town, in which process the town, with around 50,000 civilian
resident, was shelled systematically and randomly with several
hundred thousand projectiles and bombed from planes and the river
fleet ships, which caused the death of 966 persons and the
destruction of numerous cultural, historical, religious and
business facilities and apartment buildings."
The ten are also charged with the death of 263 persons killed at
Ovcara outside the town and the taking of imprisoned Croatian
soldiers and civilians to Serb concentration camps.
The collection of evidence supporting the indictment took several
years. The indictment originally contained the names of 198
persons, Piljic said, adding that an investigation had shown that
most of those persons had committed the act of armed rebellion and
were granted pardon under the Amnesty Law.
The investigation process included the questioning of some 200
witnesses. The evidence also includes protocols on 938 persons
exhumed in 1998 from a mass grave at Vukovar's New Cemetery.
Since 1997 the Vukovar County Prosecution has conducted
investigations against 480 persons indicted for war crimes. Last
year investigations were conducted against 13 persons. Charges
were dropped in four cases and the prosecution proposed issuing
indictments against the other nine.
Around 1,000 soldiers and civilians were killed in the attacks on
Vukovar, 22,000 Croats and other non-Serbs were expelled from the
town and around 8,000 prisoners ended up in Serb concentration
camps.
(hina) rml