Croat Anger at Lenient Sentences for Vukovar Three

The 20-year prison sentence handed down this week to Mile Mrksic, a commander of Serb forces during the 1991 siege of Vukovar, for the torture and murder of Croat prisoners of war captured after the fall of the town has disappointed many here.



Croats feel the sentence from the Hague tribunal was far too mild for the biggest crime in Croatia since the Second World War, especially since he was the only defendant to get a significant sentence. One of his co-accused was acquitted and a third received only five years.



Mrksic was a colonel in the Yugoslav People’s Army, JNA, when the 194 prisoners were killed at Ovcara farm near Vukovar in 1991.



He was found guilty of aiding and abetting the murder, torture and cruel treatment of prisoners taken from the local hospital when it was captured by the JNA and Serb paramilitary forces in November 1991. The trial chamber dismissed all charges of crimes against humanity, however.



It said the victims had been “specifically identified and selected because of their known, or believed, involvement in the Croatian forces in Vukovar. The Serb forces who mistreated the victims and murdered them acted on the understanding that the victims were prisoners of war, not civilians”.



For most Croats, Vukovar remains a symbol of the country’s struggle for independence and thousands of ordinary people and officials flock there every November to commemorate the suffering the town endured in autumn 1991.



A large part of the town has been rebuilt but many walls are still scarred by shells. Streets are lined with remnants of houses destroyed in the war. Serb and Croat communities living there remain divided.



Survivors of the Vukovar massacre in Croatia were very disappointed by the sentence.



"It seems that there is no justice for Vukovar victims. Those of us who went through the town's siege, who testified before the UN tribunal, are deeply disappointed with the verdict," Vesna Bosanac, the wartime head of Vukovar's hospital, told news agency AFP.



"Apparently [the judges] did not understand the significance of the crime of Vukovar and what these people are guilty of. They will never wash away their guilt… Now we can only expect justice from God."



Mrksic’s subordinate, Veselin Sljivancanin, was sentenced to five years in jail, having been convicted of aiding and abetting the cruel treatment of the prisoners. The third accused, Miroslav Radic, was acquitted because judges found there was no evidence he was aware of the killings taking place at Ovcara.



At the time when the crimes took place, Mrksic was a colonel in the JNA and commander of all Serb forces including JNA, Territorial Defence and paramilitary forces in the Vukovar area.



Radic was a captain in the JNA and a company commander of the 1st Battalion of the Guards Motorised Brigade. Sljivancanin was a major in the JNA and held the post of head of the security for both the Guard’s Motorised Brigade and Operational Group South at the time.



The trial of these defendants, the so-called Vukovar Three, began in October 2005 and concluded in March this year. A total of 88 witnesses were heard and around 800 pieces of evidence were presented. Prosecutors sought life sentences for all three of them, and said they would appeal the sentence.



The Croatian parliament’s speaker Vladimir Seks was angry over what he felt was the tribunal’s leniency. “This judgment is like killing the Vukovar victims all over again,” he told reporters.



People started gathering at the site of the mass grave in Vukovar to protest the verdict as soon as it was announced, and were joined there by Prime Minister Ivo Sanader.



“I would like to say that, in my opinion, this is a defeat for the idea of the Hague tribunal,” he said, saying Croatia would send a vigorous protest to the UN Security Council. “We respect the tribunal, but Croatia is a member of the United Nations and we will ask that all the circumstances that led to the ruling be investigated.”



The Vukovar section of the major war veterans organisation said the verdict was humiliating for the families of the victims.



"The indictment may have been an extensive one, but to only give 25 years in prison is shameful," Stipe Seremet, president of the Vukovar-Srijem County section of the Croatian Disabled Homeland War Veterans Association, told the Vecernji newspaper.



The trial chamber stressed that its findings do not preclude that more than 200 persons, of whom 194 have been identified, died at Ovčara on 20th and 21st of November 1991.



It said the actual perpetrators of the murders and torture and associated beatings were members of the Serb Territorial Defence forces, led by Miroljub Vujović, many from the Vukovar area itself, and Serb paramilitary forces.



Mrksic was found guilty of aiding and abetting the murders because, despite knowing of the threat that the local paramilitary forces posed to the prisoners of war, he withdrew the JNA troops guarding the prisoners.



According to the judgment, this allowed the local forces to murder them. JNA forces which he commanded had earlier established the inhumane conditions of detention, and he failed to act effectively to ensure that the prisoners were properly protected by JNA guards from torture by Serb Territorial Defence and paramilitary forces.



Sljivancanin was ruled to have failed to secure adequate JNA guards for the prisoners and to have failed to stop local forces from abusing the prisoners.



The evidence established that Radic was at the Vukovar hospital on November 19 and that JNA soldiers under his command provided the initial security at the hospital. But it said he had not taken part in the separation of the prisoners into different groups, and that there was no evidence to suggest that he knew of the crime or that troops under his commands had taken part.



The initial indictment against Mrksic, Sljivancanin and Radic was issued on November 7, 1995. Mrksic has been in the tribunal’s custody since May 15, 2002 and Sljivancanin was transferred into custody on July 1, 2003.



They had been charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes for their alleged participation in a joint criminal enterprise whose goal was to murder and mistreat the prisoners and their personal and command responsibility for the torture and executions.



Goran Jungvirth is an IWPR contributor in Zagreb.