DOKMANOVIC'S DEFENCE REPEATS REQUEST FOR HIS RELEASE ( Editorial: --> 8030 )

( Editorial: --> 8030 ) THE HAGUE, Nov 4 (Hina) - The defence team of a former Vukovar mayor, Slavko Dokmanovic, filed an appeal on 31 October to the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), hoping to overturn the Tribunal's decision refusing Dokmanovic to be released from detention. ICTY investigators with the cooperation of the UN Transitional Administration for the Danubian area (UNTAES) apprehended Dokmanovic in this eastern Croatian region this summer. The Tribunal indicted him for war crimes committed on Ovcara, a farm near Vukovar, in November 1991. Dokmanovic's defence team requested that he be released and returned to Sombor in Yugoslavia, claiming that Vukovar's former mayor had been arrested illegally. The defence said that statements by witnesses for the prosecution during preliminary hearings on 8 September 1997 had been incorrect, contradictory and "not credible". The defence said the court's decision was based on the wrong assumption that Yugoslavia would not have apprehended Dokmanovic, adding that the Yugoslav Constitution prohibited the extradition of only those persons who were the citizens of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which Dokmanovic was not. Furthermore, the defence said, the Tribunal had incorrectly interpreted UNTAES's mandate, for UNTAES's mandate was not to "apprehend and abduct any person". (hina) lm jn 041356 MET nov 97