Vukovic was a Croatian police officer who took part in the defence of Saborsko from early April to late September 1991. He described the unequal conflict between the former Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and Martic's militia and the few Croatian police and soldiers in Saborsko, a 300-household village surrounded by the Serbs.
The witness described the tensions and provocations in relations with surrounding Serb villages and how armoured vehicles of the JNA, which claimed it was keeping a buffer zone, passed through Saborsko on a daily basis until attacks started on August 5.
"The first shell fell around 6 am and by 10 am 80 shells had fallen. They were 82 mm mortars with which the JNA and the local Martic militia were shelling us from Licke Jasenice."
The witness said the shelling then took place every day and was especially intensive at night.
Asked by the prosecutor if the Croats were attacking the JNA or other villages, Vukovic said, "We were commanded not to shoot. We had nothing to defend ourselves with. We were happiest when there was no shooting".
The witness described how he was arrested on September 29, while driving in a car to Rakovica with two other soldiers.
Vukovic said he was taken to the police station in Plaski where he was detained, mistreated, humiliated and beaten for 12 days.
From Plaski he was transferred to the police station in Korenica, where the abuse was even worse. "I was beaten by one who was naked from the waist up, with a knife in his hand and a black bandana on his head. He would cut my face with the knife. That was the worst."
Vukovic was then sent to the Manjaca camp in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He was exchanged on a bridge near Bosanski Samac on 9 November 1991, after which he underwent treatment in Zagreb.
He also described his return to Saborsko on 7 August 1995, during Operation Storm.
"I didn't recognise Saborsko, it didn't exist, just bushes and thorns, it was a ghost town, only the road had remained. Everything was levelled to the ground."
He said he attended exhumations which began on 18 October 1995. Three mass graves were found, the biggest containing 14 bodies.
The 60-year-old Martic, former interior minister and president of the self-styled statelet of Republika Srpska Krajina, is accused of war crimes committed in occupied parts of Croatia from 1991 to 1995, in western Bosnia in 1994, and of the shelling of Zagreb in May 1995.