VICTIMS EXHUMED FROM OVCARA MASS GRAVE MAINLY HOSPITAL PATIENTS

ZAGREB, 24 Oct (Hina) - 'The bodies recovered from the Ovcara mass grave site are those of men taken from Vukovar hospital on 20 November 1991', investigator of the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Clint Williamson, told a press conference in Zagreb Thursday. Experts, who are conducting the identification of remains recovered from the Ovcara mass grave, have so far completed some 90 autopsies, and some 30 victims have been tentatively identified. More than 90% of those preliminary identifications matched names of victims which were set forth in the ICTY indictment which charged former JNA officers Veselin Sljivancanin, Mile Mrksic and Miroslav Radic, Williamson said. #L# 'We are quite sure that all of these persons died as a result of multiple gun shots', Williamson said. Asked whether signs of torture had been found on the bodies, Williamson said that those data would be available later. All identified bodies were male and they ranged in age from teenagers to people in their sixties. All 200 bodies recovered from the grave were clothed in civilian clothing, Williamson said. ICTY investigators still do not know what happened to other patients from Vukovar hospital. According to some data, there were some 261 patients in Vukovar hospital before the city fell to the Serb hands. Mistakes in the identification were possible since some skeletons had disintegrated, Williamson said. He described support provided by the Croatian government and Zagreb Medical Faculty as extensive. The reconstructed pathological laboratory in which remains were being identified was one of the best in Europe, he added. The Ovcara mass grave site, 13 m long and 10 m wide and up to 1.5 m deep, would be covered and guarded by UNTAES personnel, Williamson said. (hina) rm jn 241632 MET oct 96