War crimes trial hears pig farm massacre survivors

Two former Croat prisoners of war who narrowly escaped a 1991 massacre of more than 200 fellow POWs at a pig farm in eastern Croatia testified yesterday at a landmark trial of 17 Serb paramilitaries charged in the slaughter.

The appearance of Emil Cakalic and Dragutin Berghofer before Serbia’s special war crimes court is the first time that any of the survivors of the Ovcara massacre – which took place in November 1991 – were called in to testify since the proceedings opened in March.

The trial is considered a key test of whether Serbia is able to prosecute Serb war crimes suspects. Belgrade has pledged to do that in order to ease some of the pressure from the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands.

While The Hague court is trying three former Yugoslav army officers suspected of orchestrating the Ovcara slayings, the suspects on trial in Belgrade include low-ranking paramilitaries accused of carrying out the massacre.

According to the indictment, the Ovcara slaying took part shortly after the fall of the eastern Croatian town of Vukovar during the 1991 Serbo-Croat war.

After capturing the city, the Serb soldiers allegedly took prisoner hundreds of people who were hiding in a local hospital, took them to a nearby pig farm and killed them. Their bodies were later dumped into a pit at the farm, the indictment says.

Cakalic and Berghofer, both retired Croat army officers, told the court they were saved by Serb friends who took them out of Ovcara to another prison only hours before other prisoners were killed.

Cakalic said the prisoners were transferred to Ovcara from the Vukovar hospital in Yugoslav army buses. Upon arriving at the pig farm, the prisoners were first searched and their personal belongings were taken from them, Cakalic said. After that, they were beaten and harassed by the paramilitaries, he added.

Both Cakalic and Berghofer singled out one of the defendants, Milan Bulic, as among the people who took part in the beatings, the Beta news agency reported.

The indictment alleges the killing of prisoners started in the evening hours of November 20 and lasted for several hours.

Cakalic also testified that top army officers, including General Mile Mrksic, who is jailed in The Hague, arrived at Ovcara a few hours after the prisoners were brought in and were present during the beatings.

War crimes trials in Serbia became possible only after former President Slobodan Milosevic was ousted in 2000 by a pro-democracy leadership which pledged to prosecute those responsible for atrocities committed during the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

Milosevic, who is believed to have fomented the wars, currently is being tried by The Hague tribunal for genocide and crimes against humanity for war crimes committed by his troops in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.