(Vatiican Radio) The trial of former Croatian Serb leader Goran Hadzic, the last fugitive
sought by the United Nations Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, has resumed at The Hague.
Hadzic, who led Croatian Serb rebels when Croatia's government broke away from Yugoslavia
in 1991, is among key officials whose proceedings start this week with the words "All
Rise . . . Please be seated." As president of a self-styled Serbian mini-state
in Croatia, the Republic of Serbian Krajina, Hadzic allegedly oversaw atrocities such
as the murder and persecution of non-Serbs. He is also accused of having supervised
detention centers where torture, beatings and killings of civilians and other detainees
were carried out. Hadzic is accused of leading the forcible transfer of tens of thousands
of non-Serbs from across the region under his control during the 1991-1995 conflict.
He was apprehended in 2011 near Belgrade after eight years on the run, but has denied
the charges. Although Hadzic faces 14 counts of war crimes and crimes against
humanity, prosecutors on Monday mentioned specifically the killing of patients in
what was one of the worst massacres in the Croatian conflict. Serb forces under Hadzic's
command allegedly took some 260 non-Serbs from Vukovar Hospital after a three-month
siege of the city. Hague Prosecutor Matthew Gillett said most of the men and boys
were slaughtered in November 1991 on a pig farm in Ovcara, near Vukovar. "It's
been agreed essentially, I am summarizing, that the 194 named victims in the annexed,
the paragraph 32 of the indictment, were murdered at Ovcara...That they were detained
when they were murdered, that they were buried in a mass grave at Ovcara, that the
grave was protected by U.N. personnel, and [that] the exhumation and autopsies were
carried out by international and domestic experts, and [that] representatives of the
Croat and Yugoslav authorities were present," he said. Croatian forensic pathologist
Davor Strinovic has investigated the massacre. Speaking as a witness at the trial,
Dr. Strinovic said the youngest victim discovered so far was 16-years-old; the oldest
was 72. He recalled that it has been difficult to find and identify the more than
200 victims of the Vukovar Hospital massacre. "Of course, we are trying and have been
trying from the very start to find all of those who are on on the list," the investigator
stressed. "We will never stop looking for those people. To this day, we have not been
fully successful in finding all the people from the list. The forensic pathologist
said that, in at least one case it was too emotional for survivors to acknowledge
a victim's name. Delays in exhuming the remains have also made it difficult to
identify all those who were killed in the massacre, and dozens of suspected victims
remain missing. If convicted on even some charges against him, Hadzic could face life
in prison. The proceedings, came before the trial of another prominent Serb on
Thursday, Ratko Mladic. The former Bosnian Serb general has been charged with war
crimes, including involvement in the massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys by
his forces in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in 1995. The International Criminal
Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia is under pressure to end its operations. It already
closed its main field offices in Croatia and Kosovo, but it is continuing it activities
in Serbia and Bosnia. Allies Russia and Serbia have sharply criticized the tribunal
over what they say is its bias toward Serbs following rulings to free two Croatian
generals and a Kosovo Albanian former guerrilla commander.
Since it was established
in 1993, the tribunal has indicted 161 people for Balkan war crimes, of whom 15 have
been acquitted. Proceedings are ongoing for 31 suspects.
Last month, the U.N.
Security Council extended the work of the court, but Russia abstained from the vote
because it said the resolution did not address the tribunal's "inefficiencies."
The
court expects to rule on its final appeals by 2016. After that, any more cases arising
from the Balkan wars of the 1990s must be tried in the countries where the crimes
were allegedly committed. Listen to this report by Stefan Bos