VUKOVAR HOSPITAL PHYSICIAN AND NURSE TESTIFY AT ICTY

( Editorial: --> 8945 ) THE HAGUE, Feb 2 (Hina) - A Vukovar hospital physician and nurse testified on Monday at the trial against former Vukovar mayor Slavko Dokmanovic before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Their testimony followed that of Vukovar hospital director Vesna Bosanac. Dokmanovic is charged with active participation in the November 1991 events following the seizure of the eastern Croatian town of Vukovar by the former Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), which resulted in the killing of people abducted from the Vukovar hospital. According to the prosecution, Dokmanovic was present at a hangar in Ovcara, near Vukovar, where men from the hospital were brought and submitted to long beatings. Doctor Striber, who testified with her face and voice protected, and the former head nurse of the Vukovar hospital, known as "witness M", spoke about the situation in the hospital during the month-long attacks on the town and the JNA's entry into the hospital on 19 November 1991. Dokmanovic's defence requested Striber to read a written statement in which she said that after the fall of Vukovar, soldiers who defended the town changed their clothes and put on bandages or casts. The defence requested the witness to answer whether the fake patients were civilians or soldiers. Striber stressed that nobody who came to the hospital was carrying any weapons. Fake wounds enabled us to save lives, she said. "For three months we watched people around us die. As a human being, it is difficult (...) and you have a great responsibility on your soul. If someone asked for help, I didn't ask the reason, I was a human being helping others," said Striber. She confirmed that, regardless of the defenders' fake wounds, the fact remained that armed JNA soldiers were taking unarmed people from the hospital. Asked by Dokmanovic's defence whether Mile Mladjenovic, whom she replaced at the hospital, had left the hospital after feeling endangered, Striber said Mladjenovic had nothing to fear and that other Serbs had stayed to work at the hospital. Head nurse "M" said the hospital accommodated 450 wounded of various nationalities at the time of the fall of Vukovar. Members of the JNA even received better treatment than the others, she said, "to avoid complaints". "M" confirmed that at the time of the shellings the hospital did not have special protection and that no soldiers were inside. The Red Cross insignia on the hospital however was clear and visible, she added. On 20 November 1991 all wounded who could walk were ordered out of the hospital, "M" said. She did not know how many people had got out, but knew that in the yard, JNA soldiers separated the men from the women and took them somewhere. (hina) ha jn 022227 MET feb 98