TRIAL OF WAR CRIMINALS BEFORE VUKOVAR COUNTY COURT RESUMES

VUKOVAR, June 2 (Hina) - After it had been discontinued on May 27, the trial of 22 Serbs charged with genocide and war crimes against civilians during the occupation of Vukovar resumed before the Vukovar County Court with the testimony of witness Ana Horvatinec. Stevan Curnic is the only indictee present at the trial while others are at large and are being tried in absentia. According to the witness, during the Serb attacks on Vukovar, she was a member of the 204th Croatian Army Brigade, and was in charge of care for the elderly and feeble. After the Serb forces entered Vukovar on November 18, 1991, together with other imprisoned Croatian soldiers and civilians Horvatinec was taken to a 'Velepromet' warehouse. There she was interrogated and beaten by 'the locals'. Along with Stevan Curnic, Nenad Zigic, who interrogated her, and Mirko Vojnovic, she saw there some other indictees. "I saw when Jakovljevic, called "Fridge", cut off with a knife the head of Goran Kovacevic and stuck it on a post. We were taken out and lined up to watch what they were doing because, as they told us, the same was going to happen to us. I remember one time when Pedja Marusinac, Simo Samardzija, Jakovljevic and Milan Vojnovic took out a young man, a soldier from Zagreb, put him on a circular saw and cut him in two", Horvatinec said. She also witnessed the execution of a group of prisoners, and saw a large number of bodies in the brickworks near the railway track. From the 'Velepromet' warehouse, where she spent four to five days, Horvatinec was transferred to a prison in Sremska Mitrovica, Serbia. There she was tried for crimes she had allegedly committed against Vukovar Serbs and was sentenced to 20 years of close arrest. The witness was exchanged shortly before Christmas in 1991. Upon her arrival in Zagreb, she had to receive treatment due to traumas she had suffered. She now lives in Petrinja (some 50 km south-east of Zagreb). Horvatinec said she was not under the influence of any medication during today's testimony. Another witness, Damir Lili, was also to have testified today but he failed to appear before the court. The indicted in this trial, which has been conducted before the Vukovar County Court since May 25, are charged with active participation in the attempted ethnic cleansing of eastern Croatia and the creation of Great Serbia during the Serb occupation of Vukovar. (hina) jn rml