THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, July 14 (Hina) - In the trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic before the UN tribunal in The Hague, the prosecution on Monday introduced three witnesses to testify about war crimes committed in
Croatia.
THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, July 14 (Hina) - In the trial of former Yugoslav
president Slobodan Milosevic before the UN tribunal in The Hague,
the prosecution on Monday introduced three witnesses to testify
about war crimes committed in Croatia. #L#
Marko Miljanic testified about a massacre in the village of
Skabrnja, inland from the central Adriatic town of Zadar; Barbara
Nadj spoke of the Serb occupation of the eastern Baranja region,
while the protected witness known as C-1149 described his stay in a
detention camp.
Marko Miljanic, a native of Skabrnja who served in the Yugoslav
People's Army (JNA) as a non-commissioned officer and left in May
1991 to join the Croatian police, described the functioning of
Skabrnja's defence, which involved 240 poorly armed residents.
He said that the JNA attacked Skabrnja on 18 November 1991 for no
reason and during a cease-fire, using 1,000 soldiers, 28 tanks,
aircraft and helicopters.
From the basement of a house in which he took shelter together with
65 civilians, Miljanic heard over a police radio when the then
commander of the JNA Knin Corps, Ratko Mladic, ordered another JNA
officer to proceed with the attack on the village or face execution
by firing squad.
The witness said he had seen four JNA helicopters dropping
parachutists from the southern Serbian city of Nis. During their
advance through the 8.5 km long village, they took civilians out of
basements and killed them, and used others as human shields.
Miljanic went on to say that 42 villagers had been killed and 80
percent of 500 Croatian houses had been completely destroyed during
the attack and after the occupation of the village. Among the
victims was his father, who was killed in front of his wife, with his
hands tied up with a piece of wire while on his knees.
The indictment, which charges Milosevic with crimes against
humanity in Croatia, says that Serbian forces killed 38 Croatian
civilians in the attack on Skabrnja and that another four civilians
were killed in February 1992.
During the cross-examination, Milosevic claimed that the crimes
had been committed by local Serb paramilitary forces after the JNA
had passed through the village. The witness denied the claim,
saying that "they worked together".
Milosevic also said that Skabrnja had strategic importance, which
the witness denied saying that the JNA had regarded it as a
"cleronationalist and Ustasha village."
Witness Barbara Nadj, an ethnic Hungarian from the village of
Brestovac in the Baranja region of eastern Croatia, described how
in May 1992 her husband was taken for questioning by three persons,
one of whom was in a JNA uniform, and never returned. His body was
found six years later at a cemetery in Beli Manastir, his skull
smashed.
Nadj asked the rebel Serb police about the fate of her husband, but
to no avail. Later on, she found out that he had been killed and
buried in Kopacki Rit along with five more local residents.
During the cross-examination of the visibly shaken witness,
Milosevic enumerated alleged killings of Serbs from Baranja that
preceded the August 1991 occupation of the region. Nadj said she did
not know of them.
The accused said that the witness could not be sure that her husband
had been killed by JNA personnel.
Nadj described how the remaining small number of Croats and
Hungarians had been discriminated against in the occupied region,
citing expulsions and bans to maintain contact.
Protected witness C-1149, who was born in a foreign country and
worked as a doctor in the Vukovar area, was taken prisoner by the JNA
in Vukovar in 1991 and transferred to the Stajicevo detention camp
near the Serbian city of Zrenjanin.
He said that he was captured by JNA military police and paramilitary
forces on 19 November 1991 and taken by bus to a farm at Stajicevo
along with about 1,700 other men. He said that the prisoners were
beaten daily and that there was not enough food and running water.
C-1149 said that several inmates had been severely injured in the
camp and denied medical assistance at the hospital in Zrenjanin,
where doctors said that "Serbia will not treat the Ustasha." One
prisoner was killed during an alleged attempt to escape.
During the cross-examination by Milosevic, the witness said that
among the prisoners there were about 300 members of the Croatian
National Guard in uniforms and that about 10 percent more of them
were in civilian clothes.
The protected witness acknowledged that the Croatian detainees had
been maltreated although they had prisoner-of-war status. He
rejected claims by the accused that the Serbs of Vukovar had been
subjected to violence and attacks by Croatian paramilitaries,
saying that people lived in peace and that there were 15 Serb
families in shelters during three months of attacks.
(hina) vm