RIJEKA: BELGRADE PATHOLOGIST TESTIFIES AT "GOSPIC GROUP" TRIAL

RIJEKA, Oct 17 (Hina) - The head of Belgrade's School of Military Medicine and Yugoslav Army general, Dr. Zoran Stankovic, testified on Thursday at the trial of the so-called Gospic group at the Rijeka County Court about the autopsy of the bodies of 24 civilians killed at Lipova Glavica outside Gospic, which he performed in December 1991. #L# Stankovic told the panel of judges, presided by judge Ika Saric, that the Croatian Serb forces in Lika had asked him to carry out the autopsy of bodies discovered at Lipova Glavica. Stankovic said he travelled to Lika as a volunteer and not as a member of the army. After he arrived at Udbina airport on 29 December 1991, he was taken to a local Serb Orthodox cemetery in Siroka Kula, where the bodies were waiting. Due to low temperatures and poor weather it was not possible to perform a complete autopsy, Stankovic said, adding that only an external examination had been performed. Most bodies were charred, with gunshot wounds or mechanically inflicted injuries, such as broken bones and skulls. Nineteen persons were identified on the spot with the help of relatives as Serb civilians abducted from Gospic in October 1991. Attorneys for the principal indictee Tihomir Oreskovic, Zeljko Olujic and Bosiljko Misetic, asked the witness provocative questions prompting judge Saric to overrule some of them. Answering a question by Olujic, Stankovic said he had not participated in war operations in Croatia nor had he distributed booklets on war crimes against Croatian Serbs of the Belgrade-based Veritas organisation. Answering a question by Misetic, the witness said he was not in Vukovar at the time of its fall and that he was not at the town hospital at the time its patients were taken to Ovcara for execution. Asked by Misetic why he had examined the bodies without having contacted the legal bodies of authority in Croatia, Stankovic said that he had been called to help identify the killed. He added that he would go wherever assistance in identification was needed. He also dismissed indictee Oreskovic's claim that "Belgrade's medical circles called him the Vukovar butcher" and that he was a member of the Yugoslav intelligence. Stankovic said he had never carried a weapon during the war and that he had performed 5,000 autopsies at the time and was ready to speak about his activities before any court. Indictee Oreskovic said the witness's testimony was partially inauthentic. Oreskovic and Mirko Norac are indicted for ordering while Stjepan Granic is charged with organising and carrying out the murder of 24 Serb civilians at Lipova Glavica. The trial resumes on October 28. Next week, three important witnesses - Zdenko Ropac, Zdenko Bando and Tomislav Oreskovic - will give their testimonies at courts in Germany. They did not want to testify in Croatia for reasons of safety. (hina) rml sb