WITNESS AT MILOSEVIC TRIAL SPEAKS ABOUT EXECUTION OF CROATS

THE HAGUE, Oct 18 (Hina) - The prosecution of the Hague-based international war crimes tribunal on Friday brought out a new witness in the trial against former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. The witness is a Croatian Serb from Dubica who described how the police from the self-proclaimed Serb Autonomous Province (SAO) of Krajina in 1991 gathered local residents, mostly Croats, detaining them in a fire-fighting station. Later, they executed most of the Croats near Bacin. #L# The protected witness, registered as C-1141, a teacher who was released from the fire station by a former student, described how members of Martic's militia in the morning of October 20, 1991, took away people from their homes, saying that they were taking them to a meeting at the fire station. The militia then crammed them into a truck and took them to the fire station where they were guarded. Of the total 53 people imprisoned at the fire station, ten were released, mostly thanks to the fact that persons they knew helped them get out, while the remaining 43, mostly elderly, were crammed into busses the next morning, taken to Bacin and killed by the river, the witness said. The witness said he had heard about the event from residents of a neighbouring Bosnian village across the Sava which is located about a kilometre from the crime scene. They heard gun shots and screaming. The bodies of 43 people, of whom 41 were Croats and two Serbs, were exhumed in the spring of 1997. Asked to explain how he himself, a Serb, had been among the imprisoned group, the witness said that he had refused to become involved in the political actions of the Serb Democratic Party. Milosevic will cross-examine the witness on Monday. (hina) lml sb