I cannot tell you the exact date, but the trial of Mile Mrksic, Veselin Sljivancanin and Miroslav Radic is expected to start at the beginning of or in mid-2005 if there are no problems, Judge Carmel Agius said.
Asked by the judge if they had any comment on prison conditions or any health problems, Mrksic and Radic said they had no objections and that they were feeling well, while Sljivancanin said that he was not feeling well and that he would like the trial to start as soon as possible so that the truth could come out to light.
The three officers are accused of involvement in "a joint criminal enterprise" the aim of which was to expel the Croats and other non-Serbs present in the Vukovar hospital after the town fell to the besieging Yugoslav army and rebel Serb forces on November 19, 1991. It resulted in the execution of at least 264 Croats and other non-Serbs, including women and the elderly, on the Ovcara farm outside Vukovar.
The indictment says that Yugoslav army forces commanded by Mrksic, Radic and Sljivancanin took about 300 prisoners out of the hospital and transferred them to Ovcara, where they handed them over to members of the Serb Territorial Defence knowing that they would be executed.
The three are charged with eight counts of persecutions on political, religious and racial grounds, extermination, murder, torture, inhumane acts and cruel treatment, which qualify as crimes against humanity and violations of the laws and customs of war.
General Mrksic was commander-in-chief of the army of the self-styled Republic of Serb Krajina; he surrendered to the ICTY on May 15, 2002. Colonel Sljivancanin was arrested in a police raid in Belgrade on June 13, 2003, while Captain Radic was arrested in Serbia on April 21, 2003.