DINKO SAKIC FEATURED ON CBS NETWORK

WASHINGTON, June 17 (Hina) - American television network CBS on Wednesday night aired a feature in its programme "60 Minutes" about the trial against Dinko Sakic, a former commander of the Jasenovac concentration camp during World war II. In the feature headlined "Commander", reporter Peter van Saint included some documentary footage from the period of World war II, which he said were from Yugoslav film archives. Three witnesses spoke about Sakic and crimes in Jasenovac, former prisoners of the camp, Dragan Roler, Mihajlo Maric and Josip Erlih. They said they had personally seen the killings of prisoners, including Sakic himself killing a prisoner Milo Boskovic. During the ten minutes of the feature, the network showed some footage from Argentine television in which Sakic had confirmed he had been the commander of Jasenovac, as well as his arrest and extradition to Croatia. The reporter failed to use documents from the Croatian state archives, nor had taken any statements from witnesses in Croatia beside Dragan Roler. Speaking for 60 Minutes was also the director of the Belgrade's Museum of Holocaust, Milan Bulajic. The CBS reported did notice great discrepancies in the number of victims of the Jasenovac camp, from, as he said, Croatian information of about 20,000 to Serb information of about 700,000 people. Eli Rosenbaum, director of the US Justice Department special investigations sector also spoke about Sakic. He was convinced Sakic, as a commander of the Jasenovac concentration camp, must be held accountable for crimes committed there. The cruelty of camp guards and Ustashi was, according to him, the result of a permanent hatred between Croats and Serbs whcih, as he put it, was even greater than that between the Palestine and Jews or Ireland and England. (hina) lml