THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, Aug 28 (Hina) - The prosecution in the trial of ex-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic at the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague on Thursday called to the witness stand five eye-witnesses to war crimes committed
by Serbs in the Croatian towns of Dalj, Vukovar, Erdut, Saborsko and Hrvatska Dubica.
THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, Aug 28 (Hina) - The prosecution in the trial of
ex-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic at the UN war crimes
tribunal in The Hague on Thursday called to the witness stand five
eye-witnesses to war crimes committed by Serbs in the Croatian
towns of Dalj, Vukovar, Erdut, Saborsko and Hrvatska Dubica. #L#
Prior to their testimonies, the prosecution ended examining a
protected witness, registered as C-1175, who was a member of the
Serb 'Territorial Defence' (TO) paratroops in Dalj. The witness
spoke about the Serb beatings and executions of Croats and
Hungarians they had imprisoned at the TO headquarters and the Dalj
police station.
The prosecution then called the five witnesses: protected witness
C-1071 from Vukovar, Ana Bicanic from Saborsko, Luka Sutalo from
Erdut and Josip Josipovic from Hrvastka Dubica.
Witness C-1071, a Croatian Serb, testified about how her family had
spent 86 days in the basement during Yugoslav People's Army (JNA)
attacks on Vukovar. Shortly before Serb troops overran his eastern
Croatian city on November 11, 1991, the witness, her husband and two
children were escorted by the JNA to Luzac where they were
separated. She told the court that was the last time she saw her
husband. She found out later that he had been killed by a group of
armed civilians in Dalj and that the JNA had handed him to the said
group. His body was found in a mass grave on the Lovas farm, also in
eastern Slavonia.
Milosevic tried to get the witness to corroborate his theses that
Vukovar Serbs had been endangered before the JNA attacks, naming
alleged detention centres and locations for the execution of
Serbs.
She said she "heard stories about this, but these were unconfirmed
pieces of information", adding that personally, she never saw "any
victims".
In response to Milosevic's claim about Serb children being killed
in an atomic shelter in Vukovar, the witness said the children were
killed by shells that had been launched by Serbs on the city.
Ana Bicanic, a 68-year-old housewife from Saborsko, described how
Serb troops shelled her town in the Lika region for three months,
occupied it in November 1991 and levelled it to the ground.
After the town was occupied on November 12, the witness, her husband
and about a score villagers came out of the basement in a house they
had been hiding in, wielding a white flag.
Two soldiers in camouflage uniforms with a Serb accent separated
seven men from the group, including her husband, and shot them dead,
she said, adding they ordered the women to leave the village within
half an hour.
Bicanic also spoke about her return to Saborsko after it was
liberated by the Croatian army on August 25, 1995. She said she
could not recognise her home village, which had been razed to the
ground and burnt. Her husband's body was found in a mass grave in
Saborsko.
Luka Sutalo, 77, from Erdut spoke about JNA attacks on the town on
August 1, 1991, when 150 tanks crossed the Erdut bridge on the
Danube River from Serbia.
He described how he had been arrested and taken to Dalj, as well as
his subsequent life under Serb occupation in Erdut, in which there
were racial laws, curfews and labour brigades for Croats and
Hungarians who chopped wood, cleaned barns and picked corn for the
Serbs.
Sutalo testified about how the physical abuse of detainees, threats
against and the killings of Croats because of which he had decided
to leave Erdut. But before he left, he was forced to convey his
property to the Serb authorities, he said.
Josip Josipovic described the destruction of Croat villages of
Cerovljani, Predora and Bacin in the Una River's valley, which Serb
troops, assisted by the JNA, occupied in September 1991 and
executed a whole slew of residents.
Josipovic described the suffering he had been subjected to as a
member of the Croatian National Guard corps in a Serb prison in
Dubica, as well as the beatings with metal bars, torture and the
killing of prisoners whose bodies were then thrown into the Una
River.
(hina) lml