ZAGREB, Jan 29 (Hina) - The Republic of Croatia was still searching for 2810 persons who had gone missing during the Serb aggression on Croatia, a report by the Government Commission for Missing and Imprisoned said. The report is soon
to be discussed in the Croatian Parliament.
ZAGREB, Jan 29 (Hina) - The Republic of Croatia was still searching
for 2810 persons who had gone missing during the Serb aggression on
Croatia, a report by the Government Commission for Missing and
Imprisoned said. The report is soon to be discussed in the Croatian
Parliament. #L#
The Commission, which was established by the Government's
regulation of 17 May 1993, arrived at the number after it had
examined and compared all search requests, sent to the Government
or the Red Cross by the families of missing Croatian soldiers and
civilians. #L#
Since the beginning of the aggression on Croatia until January
1, 1996, Croatian representatives had negotiated the release of
prisoners with the Serb side 190 times. Seventy-one meetings were
held on the state level and 119 were held on the local level.
The report also describes the course of those meetings -
representatives of the self-proclaimed Serb authorities from the
occupied Croatian territories, Bosnian Serb representatives and
representatives from the so-called Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
obstructed the negotiations by transferring responsibility from one
to another, by not allowing representatives of the International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to make lists of prisoners and by
obstructing the exchange of prisoners in various ways.
Despite that, the Serb side had released 6705 prisoners in 80
exchanges since the beginning of the aggression.
In the area of central and southern Croatia, liberated last
summer, 51 mass graves had been discovered. Most of the graves had
been discovered in Sisak County (southeast of Zagreb, central
Croatia). At least 600 persons had been buried in those graves.
More than 300 individual graves had been found so far, the report
said.
According to the report, 135 bodies had been exhumed. Out of
those 135, 110 had been identified and 76 of them had been
registered missing.
At the request of The Hague Tribunal, 19 bodies had been
exhumed from the area of Pakracka Poljana. There was still no back
information on the identification of the bodies.
(hina) rm jn
291402 MET jan 96