In her motion of June 9 the Hague tribunal's chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte requested permission to withdraw her previous motion to refer the trial of the "Vukovar Three" to national judiciaries in Croatia or Serbia and Montenegro. Explaining her decision, she said that some questions and potential difficulties related to the case had arisen after her talks with officials in Belgrade and Zagreb on June 2 and that in the interests of justice the trial should be held in The Hague.
A submission, signed by the chairman of Serbia and Montenegro's Council for Cooperation with the ICTY, Rasim Ljajic, reads that Del Ponte failed to provide sufficient evidence which would enable the Referral Bench to make any decision on its merit. It is also noted that Del Ponte failed to state what exactly were the interests of justice to which she was referring and that the nature of questions and difficulties she was referring to was unclear.
The Council also challenges the argument of importance which the UN Security Council attached to this case in Resolution 1207 of 1998, saying that the resolution referred to the fulfilment of obligations by states towards the ICTY and that it was irrelevant for ICTY Rule 11 bis on the referral of cases.
The Serbia and Montenegro government recalled that decisions on referral could be made only by the
Referral Bench and urged it to dismiss the prosecution's motion and refer the case to Serbia and Montenegro.
Mile Mrksic, commander of the JNA's 1st Guard Brigade at the time of the JNA's attack on Vukovar in the autumn of 1991, and the brigade's security officers Veselin Sljivancanin and Miroslav Radic, are indicted for crimes against humanity and violations of the laws and customs of war committed through the murder of 264 Croat civilians and wounded persons who were removed from Vukovar Hospital and executed at the Ovcara farm outside the town on November 18, 1991, which is considered the worst atrocity committed in Croatia during the 1990s war.
Croatian representatives in the May 12 discussion on the referral of the case, Professor Zeljko Horvatic and Assistant Justice Minister Jaksa Muljacic, had claimed that under ICTY rules priority in referring cases should be given to the country where the crime was committed so that justice could be done as close to the victims as possible. However, they also stated that one should consider the possibility of holding the trial in The Hague due to the gravity of the crimes and the sensitivity of the case in the context of relations between the two countries.