FAMILY MEMBERS OF OVCARA VICTIMS TESTIFY AT DOKMANOVIC TRIAL

( Editorial: --> 9965 ) THE HAGUE, Feb 6 (Hina) - Prosecutors of The Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on Friday brought to the witness stand four people who last saw members of their families at the Vukovar general hospital on 19 or 20 November 1991. They testified at the trial against Slavko Dokmanovic, former mayor of Vukovar, a town in the Danube river region of eastern Croatia. Vladimir Leopold Veber, Ljubica Dosen, Tanja Dosen and Katica Zero gave their testimonies today, at moments on the verge of tears. Vladimir Veber of Vukovar spoke about the disappearance of his son Sinisa, born in 1969, whom he last saw on 19 November 1991 at the Vukovar general hospital, where he was being treated for a wound. After several days in a Vukovar warehouse, the witness was taken to Sremska Mitrovica, a town in Serbia, where 1,200 residents of Vukovar were situated, including Emil Cakalic and Drago Berghofer, who told him they had seen his son in Ovcara. "Just by looking at them I saw something was wrong," said Veber. "Until February 1997 I hoped my son might still be detained in some mine in Serbia," said the witness, but last February, he added, he identified the remains of his son, exhumed from the mass grave in Ovcara, by shreds of the boy's vest and teeth fillings. Ljubica Dosen, 48, and her 21-year-old daughter Tanja last saw their husband and father on 20 November 1991, also at the Vukovar general hospital. Martin Dosen, a fisherman from Vukovar, was a defender of his hometown. He was disabled in mid-November 1991. "Father was sliding down the building by rope, as two floors were destroyed but, since one of his arms was already broken, he fell and became disabled," Tanja told the tribunal. On 20 November 1991, Major Veselin Sljivancanin of the former Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) ordered that Martin be boarded onto a bus in front of the hospital. Martin's wife Ljubica spoke to the Major, who told her Martin had to get on the bus and that he would no longer need clothing. Naming cousins and acquaintances who were on board the buses in front of the hospital, Ljubica said her five-month-pregnant cousin Ruzica Markobasic was among them. "They shouted she was an Ustasha whore," she said, adding one soldier shoved money in her (Ljubica's) hand, saying Ruzica would not need it anymore. When she inquired about the fate of the people in the buses, Major Sljivancanin told Ljubica: "The night will eat them in broad daylight." "European parliamentarians arrived at the hospital on 20 November 1991, at about 11am, when the remaining wounded were registered. They left the hospital in a convoy with us," Ljubica told the tribunal. Katica Zero, 38, spoke about her last meeting with her husband Mihajlo in the yard of the Vukovar general hospital on 20 November 1991. She had been at the hospital since September, receiving insulin. Her husband worked as a hospital driver. On the morning of 20 November, Sljivancanin ordered that men and women separate in front of the hospital, Zero said. "My husband headed towards me to wish me happy birthday, but we were separated and I never saw him again," she told the tribunal. Slavko Dokmanovic is charged with assisting the JNA and Serb paramilitary units which on 20 November 1991 took at least 200 men from the Vukovar general hospital to Ovcara, a nearby farm, where they were all executed. During cross-examination, Dokmanovic's defence Toma Fila put only a few brief questions to the three witnesses. He said he did not dispute the claims in the bill of indictment stating an armed conflict and mass murder had taken place after the fall of Vukovar, but did dispute that an international conflict had taken place. He was trying to determine who was among those killed in Ovcara, he said. (hina) ha jn 061740 MET feb 98