VARIOUS: The U.N. war crimes tribunal convicts former Yugoslav army officer Mile Mrksic on war crimes charges over the massacre of hundreds of people in the Croatian town of Vukovar in 1991

The U.N. war crimes tribunal convicts former Yugoslav army officer Mile Mrksic on war crimes charges over the massacre of hundreds of people in the Croatian town of Vukovar in 1991, sentencing him to 20 years. The U.N. war crimes tribunal on Thursday (September 27) convicted former Yugoslav army officer Mile Mrksic on war crimes charges over the massacre of hundreds of people in the Croatian town of Vukovar in 1991, sentencing him to 20 years. Officer Miroslav Radic was cleared of all charges while a third officer Veselin Sljivancanin was sentenced to five years on torture charges but cleared of the most serious charges against him. Prosecutors had sought to prove the three were responsible for the killing of at least 264 people who had sought shelter in Vukovar's hospital in the early period of the 1991-95 Balkan wars. After Vukovar fell to Yugoslav forces after a siege, people fled to the hospital expecting to be evacuated by international observers. From there several hundred were taken by Serb-dominated army units and militias and transported to a farm where they were beaten and shot dead. Prosecutors had sought to prove that this group were largely civilians, but the court ruled they had been selected in the first place as suspected Croatian fighters, dismissing all charges of crimes against humanity against the men, including the charge of extermination. However Mrksic was convicted for having aided and abetted the murder and torture of 194 people, for his role in having turned them over to a group of Serb paramilitaries he knew harboured intense animosity against the group. Vukovar was once a pretty Danube River port whose 19th century Austro-Hungarian buildings were reduced to bullet-riddled stumps by the ferocious fighting of 1991. After the town fell, hundreds of people, including the families of hospital staff and some Croatian soldiers, sought refuge in the hospital in the belief they would be evacuated to safety in the presence of international observers. Instead, local armed Serbs entered the hospital and started abusing and beating patients. In spite of protests by the head of the hospital, soldiers separated the men from the women, taking about 400 people from the facility. They then transported 300 in buses to a farm building in nearby Ovcara. There, the captives were beaten for several hours and afterwards taken in groups of 10 to 20 to a site close by were at least 264, aged from 16 to 72, were shot. For most Croats, Vukovar remains a symbol of Croatia'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.

ITN Source | September 28, 2007

Tags:. .suffering. .safety. .protests. .struggle. .patients