THE HAGUE, Oct 15 (Hina) - During his trial before the U.N. war crimes tribunal at The Hague, former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic on Tuesday accused the then local Croatian authorities in Vukovar of the war tragedy of
Vukovar, and claimed that they had organised the persecution of local Serbs.
THE HAGUE, Oct 15 (Hina) - During his trial before the U.N. war
crimes tribunal at The Hague, former Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic on Tuesday accused the then local Croatian authorities in
Vukovar of the war tragedy of Vukovar, and claimed that they had
organised the persecution of local Serbs. #L#
"Have you heard of the conclusions which authorities made in March
1991 ... that all Serbs be sacked, that pressure be exerted on them
to leave, and if they didn't leave that this be accomplished through
apprehensions and killings," Milosevic asked a Belgrade reporter,
Dejan Anastasijevic, who testified about what he had seen in
Vukovar in late 1991.
During the cross-examination of this witness of the prosecution,
Milosevic pointed to Tomislav Mercep and Branimir Glavas as main
organisers of the persecution.
Anastasijevic replied that he read about this subsequently in the
Croatian press.
The witness described how the then Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) had
provided the logistic assistance to Serb paramilitary units which
had been attacking Vukovar and that during the last days of the
siege, the JNA supported them with its artillery as well.
He added that in the surroundings of Vukovar he had seen the
situation quite different from what the state-run Serbian media had
reported. While being in Belgrade, he listened to reports on fierce
attacks of Croatian forces, but on the ground he saw that mainly
Croatian villages had been destroyed, while the Serb-populated
villages remained more or less untouched.
Asked whether he himself saw crimes, the witness said that several
times he saw Serb volunteers taking Croatian soldiers behind houses
and then he would hear shots being fired from machine-guns. He added
that he saw that nobody had prevented the plunder in the Vukovar
area.
During the cross-examination, Milosevic ascribed the massacre of
200 captured Croatians, who were taken from the Vukovar hospital
and killed at Ovcara, to the "local show-down".
Anastasijevic challenged this claim with the statement of the head
of the JNA counter-intelligence service, Aleksandar Vasiljevic,
who confirmed to him that JNA troops had been involved in the
massacre.
The witness said Vojislav Seselj, who gave an interview to him, said
that the then head of the State Security Service, Jovica Stanisic,
charged him with the task to enrol volunteers for the Vukovar
battlefield.
After Anastasijevic, the prosecution called another witness, whose
identity was protected. This witness, a Croatian Serb, is expected
to testify about the organisation of the attacks conducted by Serb
rebels' leader, Milan Martic, on Croatian targets in 1991 and
1992.
(hina) ms sb