TESTIMONIES OF FIVE WITNESSES READ AT SAKIC TRIAL

ZAGREB, May 17 (Hina) - The trial of Dinko Sakic, a former commander of the Ustashi concentration camp in Jasenovac resumed at the Zagreb County Court on Monday with the reading of testimonies of witnesses who will not appear during the main hearing. At a proposal of the county state attorney, the head oF the panel of judges, read statements of witnesses - Slavko Mikulic, Mirko Persen and Nedjeljko Bartulovic - who cannot come in court due to illnesses. He also read a statement of Cecilija Cokljat, who is now unavailable to the court and of Anton Milkovic who died this January. All of them gave testimonies during the investigation. Anton Milkovic was a prisoner in the Jasenovac camp from November 1941 to February 1994 when he was swapped for a German officer in Pisarovina. Milkovic saw several times Sakic going in and out the Ustashi command office. According this witness, Sakic was an assistant or deputy commander of the camp. Milkovic had no knowledge of Sakic's command over the camp. Milkovic said he had been personally present at a muster when Ustashi separated every third of fifth inmate. These separated prisoners were tied by wire and taken to Gradina (a site by the Sava River) for executions. According to Milkovic's testimony, prisoners were abused, tortured and killed, what he could conclude from corpses he used to see in the camp while going to work in the repair shop. New prisoners were continuously coming in the camp, and overnight some of inmates would "disappear". He personally saw several times inmates tied by wire staying in front to the exit of the camp at dusk. Milkovic believed that they used to be taken to Gradina by ferry where "their last destination was". Slavko Mikulic was in the Jasenovac camp since the beginning of June 1942. According to Mikulic's statement, he remembers several musters during which inmates were separated and whom nobody would see later. Mikulic can remember when some 300 prisoners were taken for alleged transfer in Germany where they should have worked. Subsequently other inmates learnt that they had been taken to Gradina and executed. Some inmates, who had been sent to Jasenovac, never entered this camp but were taken to Germany for forced labour or in the camp of Stara Gradiska. Romany would be immediately taken to Gradina for executions, Mikulic said in his statement. Another witness Nedjeljko Bartulovic told the investigation judge that he had no knowledge of Sakic. Bartulovic was taken to the Jasenovac camp in July 1943 and returned to Stara Gradiska after fifty days, i.e. after the completion of the farm labour. At the end of April, 1944, he was amnestied and released. He saw killings of 20 to 30 inmates who worked outside the camp. Cecilija Cokljat was arrested in May 1943 in Osijek and one month after her apprehension she was transferred to the camp in Stara Gradiska, from where she was taken to Jasenovac in October 1944.She remembers that several times, upon their return from works on the farm, a few women would be separated and then taken into the direction unknown. Cokljat stressed she had been trying to erase all events in the camp from her memory. Mirko Persen was imprisoned in the Stara Gradiska camp from the end of June 1943 to November 1944. In June 1944 he was amnestied by Pavelic's decree but he was not immediately released from the camp. Out of many events he could remember, Persen pointed to the separation of over 200 inmates who are believed to have been executed. A witness, Adolf Friedrich, could not come at Monday's hearing due to his illness. He forwarded to the court doctors' confirmations and his medical records to justify his failure to come today. The panel of judges ruled that Friedrich and Katarina Hrvojic be interrogated outside the main hearing in their flats. After that their testimonies will be read during the trial. The accused Sakic will not be present while they are questioned. In case witness from Yugoslavia (Serbia/Montengro) - Eduard Sajer and Jovan Stjepanovic - and a witness from Israel, Ervin Rosenberg fail to come in court, it will be possible for the court to give up their testimonies, the county state attorney, Radovan Santek announced today. It will be decided later whether to hear witnesses Dragica Bradovski and Renata Terzijan, who have not been questioned during the investigation and who are in a poor health condition. After being warned that certain individuals in the audience greeted Sakic's entrance into the courtroom by raising their right hands, i.e. by the Nazi salute, the head of the panel of judges, Drazen Tripalo, stressed at the beginning of today's resumption of the trial that "the courtroom is not a place for expressing one's own political and ideological views." The main hearing is to resume on May 20. (hina) jn ms