WITNESS IVAN PALCEC TESTIFIES IN SAKIC TRIAL

ZAGREB, Apr 19 (Hina) - The main hearing in the trial of war crimes suspect Dinko Sakic resumed at the Zagreb County Court on Monday with the testimony of Ivan Palcec, aged 77. Palcec was arrested in Zagreb towards the end of August 1942, on suspicion that he collaborated with the Partisans. He was taken to the concentration camp in Stara Gradiska after a month, and transferred to the camp in Jasenovac in September of 1944. He was released in December of the same year. After his arrest and police interrogation in Zagreb, Palcec was sentenced to one year of camp imprisonment. He told the court he never saw a written ruling. At the Stara Gradiska camp, he was placed in solitary confinement with three other inmates. Palcec told the court he did not know why he was placed in solitary confinement, where he was kept for a month, sleeping on a concrete floor and receiving one meal a day. Palcec's first camp muster took place a few days after he was taken out of solitary confinement. At the muster, Lt. Gadzic selected several inmates and took them to be executed. "The day after I heard they were killed without any reason," Palcec said. The witness' second muster took place on the eve of Christmas 1942, when camp commander Miroslav Filipovic-Majstorovic selected nine inmates and shot them dead. Palcec remembered Majstorovic said the inmates had been sentenced to death in retaliation for the escape of an inmate who had killed an Ustashi. There were changes at the camp starting December 1942. "We were allowed to write home once a month and receive packages," he said, adding the situation at the camp was bearable between January of 1943 and Italy's capitulation. "Inmates were still being taken away in the night and killed, but there were no mass and public killings like in the period before", which he called a "live slaughter- house". Palcec stressed inmates at Stara Gradiska were not allowed to introduce themselves by nationality, but religion. "I wasn't allowed to say I was a Croat, but a Catholic," he said, and added he was a member of a camp resistance organised by the communist party. Palcec was transferred to the Jasenovac camp, at one time commanded by the defendant, in September of 1944, as part of a second group of some 500 other Stara Gradiska inmates. "The first group was transferred to Jasenovac on foot the week before. I heard that many inmates were killed on that 'bloody path'," the witness said, adding on that occasion, the Ustashi "separated several hundreds of Orthodox believers whom nobody saw ever again. Their clothes were taken to the camp." Palcec recalled that one Jew inmate told him about the arrest of resistance members Rebac, Pejnovic, Dr Boskovic, whom he knew from the Stara Gradiska camp, and several other inmates. A muster was ordered several days after their arrest in October of 1944. The witness remembered there was a wood "stage" with gallows and five inmates with nooses around their necks. "There was an official standing by the stage. Then I saw that one inmate and that official had begun talking. The official then hit the inmate with something in the chest and the inmate collapsed with the noose around his neck. At that moment one of the other inmates said 'Hi, comrades'. They were all hanged afterwards." Palcec said an inmate from his dormitory told him the official was camp commander Dinko Sakic who, the witness had also heard, had on that occasion also killed Dr Boskovic. The witness never saw the defendant after the hanging. Panel of judges chairman Drazen Tripalo then put forward the investigation minutes in which the witness had stated that four inmates were hanged and one was shot. Palcec said the investigating judge must have misunderstood him and that today's testimony was the correct one. He remembered no shot and was unable to precisely say the period of time when Sakic commanded the Jasenovac camp. Palcec said the hardest time at Jasenovac was during labour at the bank of the Sava river and in early December of 1944, when some 30 inmates would be killed per roll call. Speaking about the differences between the Jasenovac and Stara Gradiska camps, Palcec said inmates were never beaten at Jasenovac, while at Stara Gradiska he would be "beaten till I bled." "Gradiska was purgatory in comparison to the hell of Jasenovac," he said. Describing his exit from the camp, Palcec said he and a group of Croats were thrown into two cargo carriages. Three inmates died on the two-day 75km journey to Zagreb. In Zagreb, Ustashi Maks Luburic came to see them. They spent the night in prison and were released with discharge certificates the day after. "When I arrived home, I said 'Mother, I come from hell'," Palcec said. His wife had been imprisoned at the women's section of the Stara Gradiska camp, where she gave birth to a son who died 17 months old. Asked whether he had any problems on account of his testimony, Palcec said he had "suppressed those dark days" until now, but pointed out that since the Sakic trial began he had been "increasingly haunted by memories". He has lost weight and his condition has deteriorated. Present at today's main hearing were also the United States President's special envoy for the implementation of the Dayton peace agreement, Robert Gelbard, and U.S. Ambassador to Croatia William Montgomery. The trial continues on Tuesday. (hina) ha