Knights of Ovcara

Three weeks after the return of the Chief Prosecutor of the Hague Tribunal, Karla del Ponte, from her first official visit to the FRY, it became clear that the issues of extraditing Slobodan Miosevic and the existence of secret indictments are not the only problems between Belgrade and the Hague.  The next visitor from the international community, President of the Delegation for Relations with Southeastern Europe, Doris Pack, reminded the government of the demand for the extradition of three officers of the former Yugoslav National Army (JNA), a case that is nearly ten years old.  These indictments are issued for the names of retired General Mileta Mrksic, retired Captain Miroslav Radic and active Lieutenant Colonel in the Yugoslav Army Veselin Sljivancanin.  The three of them, otherwise the first individuals indicted by the Hague Tribunal, are sought for the murder of nearly three hundred prisoners at the agricultural complex Ovcara, near Vukovar, at the end of 1991.

SWALLOWING FROGS:  The case of the “Vukovar Trio” is one of those ticking bombs which Milosevic left for his successor.  The indictments and arrest warrants were submitted to the FRY government back in 1994, while Milosevic was still toying with the idea of cooperating with the Tribunal in order to avoid economic sanctions.  Thus he permitted himself to be sucked into publishing the Tribunal’s demand for their extradition in the state controlled media, and even allowed for the Tribunal’s warrants to be personally served to these individuals.  At the same time, Yugoslav prosecutors, also against their will, began the investigation of the massacre at Ovcara, only so that it could be said that our courts are “working on this issue.”  No further steps were taken by our government regarding this issue, and since the NATO bombing and the complete brake in cooperation with the Tribunal, it appeared like Mrksic, Radic and Sljivancanin could stop worrying.  Right up to the moment that Doris Pack, whose recommendation is crucial in influencing the better part of the financial and political support to Serbia after Milosevic, did not, as she put it, “ask her hosts where there is any possibility of arresting the trio.”  “We did not get a response,” Pack responded at a press conference, “but we did give them the idea that they should be arrested.”  The idea is probably good, but is raises feelings among many in the civilian and military infrastructure which the Croatian Military Minister, Gojko Susak, described well as “swallowing a frog.”

The problem is that in contrast to other cases which the Hague Tribunal is investigating, the case of Ovcara is one that is very well known because it is one of the most thoroughly investigated crimes in the Yugoslav wars.  Namely, there is no inkling of a doubt that after taking Vukovar on November 19, 1991, members of the First Guard Brigade took three hundred men from the Vukovar hospital under suspicion that they are members of the Council of the National Guard who had disguised themselves as patients and doctors at the hospital.  There is also no doubt that these men were taken to the improvised camp at the agricultural complex Ovcara, which is ten minutes by car from Vukovar.  Two days later the Army delivered the prisoners to the Territorial Defense of Eastern Slavonija, Baranj and Western Srem which killed all of the prisoners on the same day and stuffed them into a mass grave.  The investigating team of Doctors for Human Rights exhumed the corpses in 1992 and carried out pathological analyses.  According to their report, the grave contained 294 bodies, mostly men, although there were several women, old men and boys.  According to the pathologists report, the majority were killed by firearms, even though several among them were killed with cold weapons or their heads were smashed in with heavy objects.  An advantage for the investigators was the fact that United Nations troupes secured the area around Ovcara shortly after they arrived in Slavonia in 1992 and thus prevented destruction of evidence.  Since the moment that the pathologists’ report was published (January 1993) Serbian officials made unfounded allegations that what is at issue is a Croatian hoax and that animal bones were found at Ovcar.  Besides this, several of the surviving victims described in detail what was happening so that the existence of this crime has never been doubted.

HAGUE PUBLICITY:  Unfortunately for the accused, their role in the massacre is also beyond doubt, mostly thanks to Sljivancanin who was a Major at the time and a Commander of a unit, and who was promoted at the time of the siege of Vukovar into the “new Savo Kovacevic” and “the Knight of Vukovar” by the state media.  This evidently pleased him and he posed before cameras with no small amount of pleasure, and gave interviews freely.  Thus it came to pass that on November 19 he was recorded by cameras while shouting at a representative of the International Red Cross to enter the hospital and telling him that he will fling him into the Vuka River.  When it was noticed that Sljivancanin had taken overly enthusiastically to the whole role, he was promoted and quietly transferred to Podgorica, only to be transferred back closer to home when the Hague indictment was issued and when he ended up in the Center of High Military Schooling in Belgrade.  He is still in this position with the rank of Colonel, but has lost all desire for speaking with journalists in the meantime.  Radic, who commanded a special police unit in Vukovar as part of the First Guard Brigade, directly commanded the transfer of prisoners from the hospital to the agricultural complex (through the rear door, while Sljivancanin was doing his theatrics before the cameras at the front entrance to the hospital).  He retired during the war, at his own demand, and it is suspected that he lives in Belgrade.  General Mrksic, who is indicted on the basis of chain of command, has remained in the Yugoslav Army and has advanced in rank to the Commander of the Special Forces, and was transferred to the Army of Srpska Krajina shortly before the downfall of Knin.  He is also living in Belgrade and is occasionally seen selling pears at the fruit and vegetable market.

The extradition of Sljivancanin represents the biggest problem for the new government, and especially for President Kostunica, who is at once the supreme commander of the Yugoslav Army, because what is at issue is the extradition of an active officer.  Besides the instinctive repugnance toward the Hague Tribunal on the part of President Kostunica, it seems that the extradition of Sljivancanin could instill disturbances into Yugoslav Army ranks among its members who have cause to fear that they might share Sljivancanin’s fate in the near future.  Still, it is highly unlikely that the arrest and extradition of the “trio” could result in mass demonstrations of the sort that are taking place in Croatia these days.  Federal Defense Minister, Momcilo Grubac openly stated these days what many of his colleagues in the government are shy in stating: that the new federal law which will be voted on in several months will permit the arrest and extradition of Slobodan Milosevic to the Hague Tribunal.  When this is swallowed, in all likelihood other frogs will follow with relative ease.