BELGRADE, April 15 (Hina) - Commanders of a local territorial unit are responsible for the crime at Ovcara near eastern Croatia's Vukovar in 1991 and Ovcara was clearly not within the responsibility of former Yugoslav People's Army
(JNA) officer Veselin Sljivancanin's unit, Serbia's Interior Minister Dusan Mihajlovic said on Tuesday.
BELGRADE, April 15 (Hina) - Commanders of a local territorial unit
are responsible for the crime at Ovcara near eastern Croatia's
Vukovar in 1991 and Ovcara was clearly not within the
responsibility of former Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) officer
Veselin Sljivancanin's unit, Serbia's Interior Minister Dusan
Mihajlovic said on Tuesday. #L#
Citing military intelligence data, Mihajlovic told a news
conference he expected the investigation of the Ovcara war crime
would end with charges pressed against those accountable, and that
the several people who committed that massacre and were arrested
recently would be tried in Serbia.
According to Mihajlovic, the investigation's results "shed new
light on Sljivancanin's role in that case" and give him and Miroslav
Radic -- both indicted by the Hague war crimes tribunal -- "a chance
to seize the opportunity and voluntarily surrender to state
bodies".
Mihajlovic said the Serbian government would provide them with all
the necessary guarantees, organise their defence, and extend all-
round assistance "so they can prove they are not responsible for the
war crime in Vukovar".
Sljivancanin, Radic, and Mile Mrksic, all former JNA officers, have
been charged with war crimes committed in Vukovar in 1991. Only
Mrksic has turned himself in to the U.N. court.
Serbia and Montenegro Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic said
recently Serbia's interior ministry had arrested "some people who
could be the direct perpetrators of the Ovcara crime". He announced
they might be put on trial in Serbia since they had not been indicted
by The Hague.
(hina) ha