REPORTERS COVERING SAKIC TRIAL VISIT JASENOVAC

ZAGREB, March 5 (Hina) - A groups of reporters accredited to cover the Dinko Sakic trial visited the Jasenovac memorial site (100km south-east of Zagreb), the location of a concentration camp at the time of the Independent State of Croatia (1941-1945). Dinko Sakic was the commander of the concentration camp during World War II. He has been indicted for war crimes against civilians by the Zagreb County Court and is awaiting trial. The reporters were acquainted with how the camp functioned and with the reconstruction of the monument erected there which was destroyed during the Homeland War. Acting director of the site, Jelka Smreka, informed the reporters that the Jasenovac camp was the only systematically constructed complex in the Independent State of Croatia in which the first inmates arrived on August 21, 1941. Smreka spoke in detail about how the camp functioned and crimes committed in it until April 22, 1945. On that date the inmates tried to break out of the camp. Only 178 of them survived. In an attempt to cover up the crimes they had committed, the Ustashi authorities set fire to the camp which burned to the ground. In memory of those killed in the concentration camp, the location was proclaimed a memorial site on July 1, 1968. The site includes a museum and a central monument called the "stone flower". Smreka said all items and documents from the museum had been stolen during the Homeland War and taken to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. We will request all this to be returned, she stressed. Although more than 160 reporters, photographers and observers have been accredited to follow the Sakic trial, only two foreign and five Croatian reporters, and three photographers went on this organised visit of the location at which war crimes against civilians had been committed, of which Sakic has been indicted. (hina) lml mm