POLICE INVESTIGATION IN PAULIN DVOR CRIME NEAR COMPLETION

ZAGREB, Sept 13 (Hina) - The Croatian Interior Ministry on Friday issued a statement that the police processing of the war crimes in Paulin Dvor (outside Osijek) when 19 civilians had been killed in 1991, was nearing completion. #L# According to the brief statement, the police in Osijek-Baranja County police and military police in co-ordination with the interior ministry's relevant departments and the State Prosecution's Office and other relevant bodies, have been carrying out the intensive processing in order to shed more light on the circumstances under which the 19 civilians were killed in Paulin Dvor in December 1991. At the final stage of this process, several people have been interrogated. According to sources close to the interior ministry, on Friday local police in Osijek were questioning a dozen persons believed to be connected to the war crime in Paulin Dvor. According to the same source, investigators of the Hague-based UN war crimes tribunal, will not come in Croatia because of this case, as the ICTY's prosecution left it to the Croatian judiciary. The police and the state prosecution started an intensive investigation after this May the Hague Tribunal's investigators had discovered corpses of 18 civilians from Paulin Dvor in a mass grave near Gospic (central Croatia) and established their identity on the basis of documents found with them. Ethnic Serb civilians were killed in the night between 11 and 12 December 1991 in Pualin Dvor, a village which had from time to time been occupied by Serb rebels and from time to time controlled by Croatian forces until the peaceful reintegration of eastern Slavonia. There are suspicions that 18 corpses were secretly transferred into the grave at Rizvanusa near Gospic in 1997, while one corpse was found in Paulin Dvor. The media have speculated that the Croatian army transferred bodies in a bid to cover up the crime committed by some individuals from the army ranks. (hina) ms