MAN FROM VUKOVAR WHO AVOIDED EXECUTION TESTIFIES AT ICTY

( Editorial: --> 9756 ) THE HAGUE, 5 Feb (Hina)- On Thursday the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia heard a former defender of Vukovar who jumped off a truck that transported men arrested at the Vukovar hospital to the Ovcara farm for mass execution on 20 November 1991. The man testified in the trial of the former mayor of Vukovar Slavko Dokmanovic. The witness, who testified as a protected witness under pseudonym B, was arrested during his escape attempt and transported to Sremska Mitrovica. After a prisoner swap in August 1992, he came to Zagreb, where he gave a statement to the US forensic expert Clyde Snow by the end of the month. Snow was a member of the US organisation Doctors for Human Rights, which conducted exhumation of a mass grave at Ovcara. Slavko Dokmanovic has been charged with "abetting and inciting" JNA troops and Serb paramilitary units that brought wounded troops and civilians from the Vukovar hospital to Ovcara. "At the hangar they first beat us up and then took our names . . by then it was dark. Then they ordered us to board military vehicles in groups of 10 to 15 persons. The capacity of the vehicles was 2 tonnes and they ere covered with tarpaulins". Although they had been told they would be taken to another hangar, when the truck started, one of the men tried to jump off. However, another men convinced him not to do that. Then the witness squeezed under the tarpaulin and jumped. "I turned back to see whether I was being followed and than started running towards the hangar and Vukovar". "After some time I heard a round of fire and some individual shots", said the witness. The witness was later arrested by JNA reserves. They transported him to a police station in the town of Sid, where they questioned him about the war, what he did in Vukovar, whether he knew anything about Ovcara -how many persons were killed and who were they, but he decided he would not talk about that because he assessed that "would be too dangerous". After that the witness spent more than four months at a prison in Sremska Mitrovica and at military investigative prison in Belgrade, where he was charged with armed rebellion and crimes against civilians. (Hina) jn mr 052208 MET feb 98