Hadzic was the former president of the self-proclaimed Serbian Autonomous District Slavonia, Baranja and Western Srijem (SAO SBZS) and subsequently of the Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK).
Prosecutor Douglas Stringer said the former Yugoslav army (JNA) seized the hospital in Vukovar on November 19th, 1991, evacuating it the following day, with the men being separated from the women and children. About 200 people were taken aboard five buses to a JNA barracks, while a sixth one arrived later. At the same time, at a meeting with Arkan at the Velepromet company, Hadzic was deciding on the fate of the Croats.
Hadzic strongly opposed transferring POWs from SAO SBZS to prisons in Serbia and insisted that those Ustasha be tried by this people from SAO SBZS, the prosecutor said, quoting Hadzic's words from an interview to the Serbian media.
Hadzic played a key role in the staying of POWs in camps near Vukovar, he assumed responsibility for them and the evidence will show that there was no doubt as to their fate, Stringer said, recalling Hadzic's statement that he made it his job to bring back the POWs who had been transferred to Serbia.
After the meeting at Velepromet, the POWs were taken to the Ovcara farm and placed in a hangar. Coming out of the buses, they had to pass through two rows of members of the territorial defence and paramilitaries who hit and kicked them, the prosecutor said, adding that the beatings continued in the hangar through the night, resulting in the deaths of at least two POWs.
After midnight, until the morning of 21 November 1991, the POWs were taken out of the hangar, lined up by a pit and executed, the prosecutor said, adding that 260 people were killed, with the remains of 194 found in a mass grave in 2006. He said 35 people were killed at a farm in Lovas and in Dalj.
Stringer described the torture of the POWs at the Brodokomerc factory, in Erdut and Lovas, the rape of women, false executions, and Hadzic's appointment as RSK president. He said the result of the policy led by Hadzic was the ethnic cleansing of the entire SAO Krajina.
At least 180,000 people were driven away from that region, including 20,000 in Vukovar alone, said the prosecutor.
Hadzic is accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and violations of the laws and customs of war. He is charged with persecution on political, racial and religious grounds, extermination, murder, imprisonment, torture and cruel treatment of Croatian and other non-Serb civilians in detention facilities in Croatia and Serbia. He is also accused of deportation and forcible relocation, reckless destruction of villages and plunder of non-Serb civilian property in Dalj, Vukovar, Erdut, Lovas and other parts of east Slavonia.
Hadzic is also accused as a member of a joint criminal enterprise led by former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic which was aimed at the permanent removal of Croats and other non-Serbs from a large part of Croatia in order to make it part of a new Serb-dominated state.
Hadzic's trial began 21 years ago, after the crimes described in the indictment. The first indictment against him was filed in June 2004. It was amended in July 2011 and then in March 2012. Hadzic was on the run since the filing of the first indictment until his arrest in July 2011, when he was transferred to The Hague.
Hadzic is the last of 162 defendants being tried by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.