Six face charges over deaths of 192 Croats

A landmark war crimes trial opened in Belgrade today against six Serb suspects accused of killing 192 Croat prisoners of war at a pig farm during the brutal 1991 war in the Balkans.

At the time of the alleged crime, the suspects were members of a paramilitary group fighting in the eastern Croatian city of Vukovar against Croatia’s independence from Yugoslavia.

The case is a watershed in Serbia, where the current authorities are struggling to deal with the gruesome legacy of war campaigns and atrocities committed during the 1990s under Serbia’s former strongman, Slobodan Milosevic.

In 1991, Milosevic – now standing trial at the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands – supported Croatia’s ethnic Serbs who took up arms to contest Croatia’s declaration of independence earlier that year.

The indictment against the six says that, after the Serb side gained control of Vukovar in mid-November 1991, the Croat prisoners of war were taken from a Vukovar hospital and were bussed to a nearby pig farm in the evening of November 20, 1991.

At the Ovcara pig farm, the defendants allegedly lined up the victims before freshly dug pits and mowed them down with machine guns.

The next morning, bulldozers were used to cover the pits with soil. Exhumations in later years revealed the remains.

Three ranking officers of the former Yugoslav Peoples’ Army, who allegedly ordered or allowed the executions, are being tried at the UN war crimes tribunal in the Netherlands.

But the six lower-level suspects – suspected killers – are being tried at home with the permission and monitoring of the UN tribunal.

Eight people were originally indicted in connection with the Ovcara case, but one has committed suicide while in detention and another was given protected witness status in exchange for testifying against the others.

The defendants face up to 20 years in jail if convicted.

The spokesman for the prosecution, Bruno Vekaric, said that several witnesses were expected from neighbouring Croatia to testify in the Ovcara case.

The trial is held before the Special Court in Belgrade, recently established with Western help to deal with cases of war crimes and organised crime.