WORLD LEARNS ABOUT OVCARA MASS GRAVE TEN YEARS AGO TODAY

ZAGREB, Oct 29 (Hina) - Ten years ago today the world learned about the mass grave at Ovcara, a farm near Vukovar in eastern Croatia where wounded Croats from a Vukovar hospital, who had been killed by Serb paramilitary units with the help of the former Yugoslav army, were buried. #L# The news about the discovery of the mass grave was released by Clyde Snow, a UN expert on forensic medicine. He visited the Ovcara area in October of 1992, discovering several human skeletons in a mass grave. The discovery corroborated statements by witnesses about the disappearance of people during an evacauation of wounded Croatian soldiers and patients from the Vukovar hospital. After occupying the eastern Croatian town, Serb paramilitary units and the former JNA killed the wounded, the hospital staff and civilians at Ovcara on 20 November 1991. Exhumations, however, began only on 1 September 1996, due to obstruction by the puppet Serb authorities in the area. Over the following 40 days, experts of the Hague-based UN war crimes tribunal and the Doctors for Human Rights organisations exhumed the remains of 200 victims. Among them was the body of Sinisa Glavasevic, an eminent Vukovar Radio journalist who had reported about the heroic resistance of Croatian soldiers and the suffering of Vukovar's residents in the Serb aggression. Although the discovery of the Ovcara mass grave was the first complete proof of war crimes committed during the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, the Hague tribunal has not yet convicted anyone of those accused of it. A Serb leader at the time of the occupation of Vukovar, Slavko Dokmanovic, took his own life at the Hague tribunal's prison before sentencing. The trial of Mile Mrksic has virtually not begun, given that he has only been arraigned, while Veselin Sljivancanin and Miroslav Radic have not been extradited yet, despite having been indicted seven years ago. (hina) ha