The witness, identified as No. 30, who was still a child when held prisoner on the Ovcara farm, said that patients from the Vukovar hospital had been beaten up and killed by members of the local Serb Territorial Defence with the tacit agreement of JNA officers and soldiers.
"There was an officer in the hangar in Ovcara who would shout that the beating should stop, but he would just say that and walk away, and the beating would continue," the witness said.
He said that members of the Territorial Defence were particularly cruel towards an ethnic Albanian man called Kemo, who eventually died as a result of being kicked in the head.
The witness named several Serb residents of Vukovar whom he had recognised among the paramilitaries who had tortured the prisoners.
General Mile Mrksic, commander of the JNA 1st Guards Brigade that spearheaded the attack on Vukovar, and his subordinates Veselin Sljivancanin and Miroslav Radic are charged with crimes against humanity for their role in the slaughter of at least 264 wounded Croatian soldiers and civilians, who were taken from the Vukovar hospital and executed on the Ovcara farm on 20 November 1991.
Witness No. 30 said he had seen Sljivancanin and Radic on the morning of 20 November in the hospital yard, where a large number of civilians had found shelter after the fall of the town to the besieging Serb forces.
The witness said that on that occasion Sljivancanin delivered a speech in front of the prisoners, saying that he "will find the guilty ones and let the others go." He noted that Sljivancanin had ordered Radic and other subordinates to search the prisoners before their evacuation from the hospital.