TRIAL AGAINST DOKMANOVIC BEGINS IN HAGUE

( Editorial: --> 5555 ) THE HAGUE, Jan 19 (Hina) - The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia Monday began a trial against Slavko Dokmanovic, charged with war crimes in Croatia. Dokmanovic is on a bill of indictment together with three officers of the JNA, the former Yugoslav People's Army, Mile Mrksic, Miroslav Radic and Veselin Sljivancanin, whom the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia refuses to surrender to the ICTY. Dokmanovic is charged with severe breaches of Geneva conventions, violation of the law of war and customs of war, and crimes against humanity. In three clauses of the bill of indictment he is charged with beating people protected under Geneva conventions, and in the other three with participation in the mass murder at Ovcara, near Vukovar in eastern Croatia. The trial began with an introduction by prosecutor Grant Niemann. Dokmanovic is personally responsible for planning, inciting, preparing and executing the crime at Ovcara in November 1991, said Niemann. The prosecutor then outlined the events in the second half of 1991, when the JNA was systematically attacking Vukovar, backed by Serb paramilitary units. The town eventually fell into Serb hands after less than three months of resistance. After the fall of Vukovar, JNA units entered the town's hospital in which at the time were several hundreds people, including wounded patients, hospital staff, soldiers who defended the town, Croatian political activists and other civilians who, according to Neimann, offered no resistance to the break in. JNA Major Sljivancanin called the hospital staff for a conference during which JNA soldiers, on Sljivancanin's order, led 300 people out of the hospital, boarded them on buses and took them to the front of a barracks in southern Vukovar, where they left a number of them. The rest were taken to Ovcara, a farm five kilometres south east of Vukovar, where soldiers of the JNA and Serb paramilitary units forced them out of the bus between two lines of soldiers who beat them, killing at least two in the process. They continued to beat the rest for several hours in a nearby hangar. According to the prosecutor, Dokmanovic, at the time mayor of Vukovar, was present at the brutal beatings in the hangar. He even singled out some people for additional harassment, Niemann said. The victims were then taken in trucks to the site of a previously dug grave nearby. In the evening of 20 November 1991, soldiers of the JNA and Serb paramilitary units killed at least 198 men and two women, later using bulldozers to bury their bodies in the mass grave. Of the 300 or more people who on the morning of 20 November 1991 were taken from the Vukovar hospital, at least 200 were killed at Ovcara, while more than 50 men are still listed as missing. The prosecutor said that Dokmanovic had actively taken part in the events leading to the death of those people. That crime was part of a systematic and well organised attack on the Croat and non-Serb population of Vukovar, Niemann said. He announced testimonies by several people who survived the massacre. The trial against Dokmanovic is being conducted before a three- member trial chamber chaired by Antonio Cassese from Italy, and also includes British judge Richard May and Zambian judge Florence Ndepele Mwachanda Mumba. The prosecution includes Grant Niemann from Australia, Clint Williamson from the U.S. and Stefan Waespi from Switzerland. The defence is composed of Toma Fila and Vladimir Petrovic from Belgrade. (hina) ha jn 191836 MET jan 98