THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, Feb 15 (Hina) - The U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague is due to hold a status conference on Monday in the case of former Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) officers Mile Mrksic, Miroslav Radic and Veselin Sljivancanin
at which the three will plead to the consolidated amended indictment charging them with the 1991 slaughter at eastern Croatia's Ovcara farm.
THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, Feb 15 (Hina) - The U.N. war crimes tribunal in The
Hague is due to hold a status conference on Monday in the case of
former Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) officers Mile Mrksic, Miroslav
Radic and Veselin Sljivancanin at which the three will plead to the
consolidated amended indictment charging them with the 1991 slaughter
at eastern Croatia's Ovcara farm.#L#
The original indictment against the so-called Vukovar Three was issued
on 2 December 1997, when all three were unavailable to the tribunal.
Following Mrksic's surrender in May 2002, the case against him was
separated, but the spring 2003 arrests of Radic and Sljivancanin
resulted in the tribunal deciding to try them together, so the Office
of the Prosecutor's filed a consolidated amended indictment on
February 9 this year.
The three pleaded not guilty to the previous indictments. The new one
charges them with participation in the "joint criminal enterprise"
whose objective was the persecution of Croats and other non-Serbs
staying at the Vukovar Hospital following the eastern city's fall on
19 November 1991, specifically with the "extermination or murder of at
least two hundred sixty-four Croats and other non-Serbs, including
women and elderly persons".
The Vukovar Three are charged with eight counts -- persecution on
political, religious and racial grounds and extermination and murder
as crimes against humanity, and torture, cruel or inhumane treatment
as violations of the laws and customs of war.
The consolidated amended indictment brings a far more precise picture
of the three's command and individual responsibility and the
circumstances in which the Ovcara crime was committed.
The indictment identifies as the physical perpetrators of the massacre
the local Serb Territorial Defence unit Petrova gora, under the
commanded of Miroljub Vujovic and Stanko Vujanovic, who are identified
as participants in the "joint criminal enterprise" alongside Mrksic,
Sljivancanin and Radic.
The indictment says that at the time of the crime, the 57-year-old
Mrksic was a colonel in the JNA and commander of the 1st Guards
Motorised Brigade and Operational Group South, and that he controlled
all Serb units which had seized Vukovar, including the local
Territorial Defence, volunteers and paramilitary units.
Mrksic is charged with directing, commanding and controlling Serb
forces that evacuated non-Serbs from the Vukovar Hospital, guarded
detainees at the JNA barracks in Vukovar, transferred and kept these
detainees at the Ovcara farm building, and then mistreated and killed
them. The indictment also says that he "ordered or permitted JNA
soldiers under his command to deliver custody of detainees taken from
the Vukovar Hospital to other Serb forces... who physically committed
the crimes charged in this indictment, knowing... that the detainees
would be subjected to further persecution and murder".
The same allegations apply to the 51-year-old Sljivancanin, a JNA
security officer under Mrksic's command, who is also charged with
being personally responsible for the evacuation from the Vukovar
Hospital, personally preventing international observers from entering
the hospital, and being at Ovcara on November 20 when the crimes from
the indictment were committed.
The 42-year-old Radic, at that time a JNA captain who commanded an
infantry company in the Guards Brigade, is accused of directing,
commanding and controlling Serb units responsible for the mistreatment
and killing of non-Serbs at Ovcara, and of personally participating in
the removal and selection of 400 non-Serbs from Vukovar Hospital on 20
November 1991.
All three took steps to hide and conceal the crime, says the
indictment.
It goes on to state that on the morning of November 20 about 400
people were removed from the hospital, including "wounded patients,
hospital staff, family members of hospital staff, former defenders of
the city, Croatian political activists, journalists, and other
civilians".
JNA soldiers loaded about 300 Croats and other non-Serbs on buses and
took them to a JNA barracks in the south of Vukovar, where about 15
were selected and returned to the hospital because they were part of
the medical staff. After two hours the rest were taken to the Ovcara
farm, where they were forced to run between two lines of soldiers who
beat the men as they passed. These Serb forces continued to beat and
assault the detainees inside the farm building.
About seven detainees were selected and returned to Vukovar after
Serbs, who were present, intervened on their behalf. Members of the
JNA listed the rest. Afterwards, Serb forces comprised of JNA,
Territorial Defence and volunteers divided the detainees into groups
of 10 to twenty, which were then individually loaded into a truck and
taken in the direction of Grabovo to a wooden ravine approximately one
kilometre south-east of Ovcara where these Serb forces removed the
detainees from the truck.
At this spot, these Serb forces then killed at least 264 Croats and
other non-Serbs and used a bulldozer to bury the bodies in a mass
grave.
Two-hundred bodies were discovered when the grave was exhumed while at
least 50 more of those removed from the Vukovar hospital are listed as
missing.
(Hina) ha