CROATIAN OFFICIAL FOR DETAINED, MISSING TESTIFIES IN MILOSEVIC TRIAL

THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, March 3 (Hina) - The head of the Croatian government's office for detained and missing persons testified on Monday about years of working on the establishment of the thousands of victims of the war in Croatia, exhumations, and tracing the missing at the trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic before the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague. #L# Lt. Col. Ivan Grujic compiled a report on those killed, detained and gone missing during the war in Croatia which the prosecution entered as evidence. Enclosed were ten records with data on every killed and missing person, the exhumation and identification of victims, and detention facilities. According to the report, which covers the 1991-4 period, 11,834 people were killed in Croatia, 3,052 were filed as missing or abducted -- 1,283 are still listed as missing -- while 168,903 were filed as displaced by mid 1992, Grujic confirmed today. At prosecutor Hildegard Uertz-Retzlaff's urging, he elaborated on the structure of the office has been heading for ten years and cooperation with the International Committee of the Red Cross and commissions for the missing from Yugoslavia and Bosnia. The testimony focused on exhumations of mass graves in Croatia. Grujic mentioned most of the mass crime sites Milosevic is accused of in the indictment for Croatia -- Vukovar, Ovcara, Lovas, Bacin, Dalj, Erdut, Skabrnja, Nadin, Saborsko, and Klisa, as well as the number of exhumed bodies and identified victims. Since 1995 the office has organised the exhumation of 135 mass and 1,200 single graves, identifying 2,746 of 3,356 people, said Grujic. He will be cross-examined by Milosevic tomorrow. (hina) ha sb