The spokesman for the Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor, Bruno Vekaric, said that the prosecution was surprised with the Supreme Court's ruling quashing the trial verdict and returning the case to the court of first instance for retrial.
He added that the prosecution would do all to win justice for the victims and see the perpetrators punished.
"More than 200 people were killed at Ovcara and someone must answer for that, and we believe we have the people who are responsible for that. We will do all to see them convicted," Vekaric said.
The leader of the Fund for Humanitarian Law, Natasa Kandic, who monitored the trial on behalf of the victims' families, told reporters that she did not understand the reasons by which the Supreme Court was governed in making the decision.
"The trial for war crimes against Croatian prisoners was conducted professionally," Kandic said, wondering why the Supreme Court had waited so long to state its opinion considering the fact that the trial ended a year ago.
She said that the presiding judge in the trial, Vesko Krstajic, was commended by the victims' families for taking care about the victims' dignity and granting all questions that could have helped in locating other possible mass graves, while at the same time there were no complaints about the rights of defendants.
Kandic recalled that the Supreme Court had previously also quashed verdicts for the kidnapping and execution of 16 Muslims from Sjeverin and the murder of 19 Albanian civilians in Kosovo during the NATO-led bombing campaign.
The Special War Crimes Court did not comment on the decision of the Supreme Court because it still has not received the official text of the ruling.
The Supreme Court entirely quashed the verdict of the Special War Crimes Court in the trial for war crimes committed against more than 200 Croatian prisoners at the Ovcara farm outside the eastern Croatian town of Vukovar in 1991.
The Supreme Court said in a statement today that it had accepted appeals by defence counsel for some of the accused as well as by the prosecution and decided to return the case to the court of first instance for retrial.
The Supreme Court said its decision was due to violations of the Penal Code, without elaborating on those violations.
The Special War Crimes Court last year sentenced to prison 14 accused and acquitted two. Eight indictees were sentenced to 20 years in prison each, three to 15 years, one woman was sentenced to nine years, and one man to five years in jail because the court established that they were responsible for the murder and torture of Croatian prisoners in Vukovar in 1991. This was the first verdict for war crimes before a Belgrade court.