Sljivancanin Blames Others for Vukovar Killings

Former Yugoslav People’s Army, JNA, officer Veselin Sljivancanin, who testified in his own defence this week, told the court that the mass execution of some 260 patients and civilians taken from the Vukovar hospital in November 1991 was committed without his knowledge and by forces which were not directly subordinated to him.



The defendant also told the judges that he had believed people taken from the hospital were to be bussed to safety in Croatia, and that local Serbian territorial defence units were responsible for the killings, not the JNA.



Sljivancanin, along with Radic and Mrksic, is charged with overseeing the November 1991 killings of some 260 Croat patients and civilians from the hospital after the town was overrun by Serb forces.



According to the indictment, Sljivancanin and Radic personally participated in the selection of detainees who were loaded onto buses on the morning of November 20 and transported to Ovcara farm. Detainees were humiliated and abused there for hours, the indictment further alleges, and in the evening, they were executed at a site near Ovcara by troops under the command and supervision of the three co-defendants.



This week, Sljivancanin suggested that local army reserve units known as the territorial defence were the perpetrators of the Vukovar massacre.



Sljivancanin, at the time a major in the Guards’ Brigade, also implied that he would not have had the authority to issue orders to the territorial defence or to other units during the Vukovar operation.



The defendant downplayed his own role in the battle for Vukovar. He said if he wanted to issue an order to a subordinate unit, the JNA’s rules of service mandated that he ask Colonel Mrksic, commander of the Guards’ Brigade, first.



Sljivancanin did note that he was able to offer “guidance” to subordinates, but said his job consisted primarily of drafting programmes and plans for military police training, controlling and helping with the training and analysing any tasks handed out by military police.



He was particularly emphatic in disassociating himself from the territorial defence.



“I was not in charge of providing guidance to the territorial defence nor did I provide it,” he said.



Sljivancanin implied professional soldiers looked down upon the territorial defence unit.



“It wasn’t [the Guards Brigade] that wanted volunteers,” said Sljivancanin. “We sent back many because of mental instability and a lack of discipline. We were there to provide order and discipline as much as possible.”



The defendant said his role in the Vukovar battle was to rescue comrades from JNA barracks that were surrounded by Croat forces.



This week, Sljivancanin also challenged the testimony given by the prosecution witness Herbert Okun in November 2005.



Okun was the special advisor and deputy to Cyrus Vance, the UN envoy to the former Yugoslavia in 1991. In his testimony last year, Okun said that during the envoy’s October 1991 visit to Vukovar, Sljivancanin raised his voice and pointed a rifle at Vance when he insisted on being taken to the Vukovar hospital.



Okun said he and Vance did not believe Sljivancanin’s claim that the bridge was mined, but decided not to push the issue any further once he raised the gun.



Sljivancanin flatly denied Okun’s story, saying that the reason he did not take Vance to Vukovar hospital was not because there was anything to hide there but because the area was still unsafe. He offered JNA intelligence reports that described a cellar near the hospital as a Croatian paramilitary headquarters as evidence supporting his claims.



He also noted that his superior officer, General Aleksander Vasiljevic, had once scolded him for taking a high-ranking officer near the front lines, and said he did not want to be blamed for putting a UN envoy in a similarly dangerous situation.



“If I pointed a rifle at a man of Vance’s age I should have been locked up and sectioned off a long time ago,” he said.



Sljivancanin is the last defendant to present his case in the trial, which has been going on for over a year. Lawyers for the third co-defendant, former JNA commander Mile Mrksic, have already completed their defence case.



Sljivancanin’s defence team has said they expect to finish their case by December 8, 2006.



Katherine Boyle is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.