SECOND ROUND OF DOKMANOVIC TRIAL ENDS

( Editorial: --> 1129 ) THE HAGUE, Feb 11 (Hina) - The second round of the trial of former Vukovar mayor Slavko Dokmanovic before the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) ended on Wednesday with a testimony by Peter Kypr, former member of the European Community Monitoring Mission (ECMM) in Croatia. Kypr is a Czech national. He worked as an ECMM observer in the second half of 1991. In October 1991 he witnessed the events in Ilok, and was in Vukovar during November the same year. Before the fall of Vukovar, the ECMM was "notified verbally and by fax about the agreement between the JNA (Yugoslav People's Army) and the Croatian side about the evacuation of citizens", Kypr said. The witness said he had been notified that the evacuation would start at 8am on 20 November. "At 8am, Major Veselin Sljivancanin held a briefing for us in Vukovar," Kypr said, adding the ECMM then set out towards the Vukovar Hospital, but was held up on a bridge across the river Vuka until 10:30 or 10:45. "At the hospital patients and staff told us that some patients and doctors had already been taken from the hospital," Kypr said. "We were told that the people the JNA suspected were soldiers had been abducted," he said. Kypr said he had seen two heaps of sharp objects, mostly pocket knives and scissors near the hospital building. In earlier testimonies in the Dokmanovic case, witnesses said that on the morning of 20 November they had been lined up in front of the hospital building, where all sharp objects had been taken away from them before they were transported to a JNA barracks and later to Ovcara. Once in the hospital Kypr asked a liaison officer for the JNA about the whereabouts of those who had been evacuated earlier, but did not learn anything. Answering a question by the defence, Kypr said he had heard that there were Croatian soldiers in the hospital as well. "It was understandable, considering the fact that Vukovar was on the very line of conflict," he added. The next round of Dokmanovic's trial will start on 16 March and last until 20 March. During the second round of the trial, which lasted from 2 to 11 February, the prosecution called 25 witnesses. According to the testimonies of two witnesses, Dokmanovic was seen on 20 November 1991 in a hangar in Ovcara, where prisoners were brutally beaten up. The prosecution announced testimonies on the exhumation of the Ovcara mass grave for March. (hina) mm rm 111837 MET feb 98