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Serbian court jails militia members for Balkan war crimes

A Serbian court, in a landmark verdict, on Monday found 14 former members of a Serb militia guilty of war crimes and senten-ced them to prison terms ranging from five to 20 years for the exec-ution of 200 Croat prisoners of war in 1991.

Eight of the defendents, sentenced for one of the worst massacres of POWs during the 1990s Balkan wars, received the maximum 20 years in jail.

The rest were given prison sentences ranging from five to 15 years, including the only woman among the defendents, who was given a nine-year prison term. Two of the 16 defendents origin-ally indicted were acquitted.

The trial in Belgrade was seen as a key test of the ability of Serbia's judiciary to deal with cases of war crimes committed by Serbs during the bloody breakup of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

"Justice is done," said the spokesman for Serbia's war crimes prosecution, Bruno Vekaric.

"The trial, which satisfied world legal standards, shows that the Serbian judiciary can tackle high-risk cases," he said.

During the trial, which opened two years ago in Serbia's special war crimes court, only one suspect and two protected witnesses confessed to their roles in the killings at a pig farm near the Croatian town of Vukovar.

In the fighting in November 1991, the Serb-controlled Yugoslav army advanced against the forces of newly independent Croatia and seized control of a disputed eastern territory, capturing several hundred Croatian soldiers and civilians.

While most of those captured in the town of Vukovar were eventually released, about 200 were taken from a hospital soon after their capture and gunned down at the nearby farm in the village of Ovcara.

The POWs were separated into the groups of seven to eight and sprayed with machine-gun fire, the verdict said. It added that those showing signs of life were shot in the head with pistols.

"Every [Serb] soldier who came to the pit was forced to shoot, as an assurance for their silence," the verdict said.

In key testimony last month, former soldier Ivan Atanasijevic admitted taking part in the killings. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

"I was completely in shock," he said during his testimony.

"Not even in movies have I seen so many corpses at one place," he said.

Such trials only became possible after pro-democracy leaders toppled former president Slobodan Milosevic in 2000 and sent him to the UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands. He is currently standing trial for his role in fomenting the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

The Hague tribunal is responsible for trying top civilian and military leaders -- including three former Yugoslav army of-ficers charged with command responsibility in the Croat POW slayings.

Local courts in the Balkan countries deal with lower-level suspects.
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