Posted on 09/26/2007 1:53:52 PM PDT by joan
BBC Monitoring European
26 September 2007
Source: HINA news agency, Zagreb, in English 1356 gmt 26 Sep 07 Text of report in English by Croatian news agency HINA
ZAGREB, Sept 26 (Hina) -- Serb residents of villages in the Medak area have begun testifying in the trial of Croatian Army generals Rahim Ademi and Mirko Norac, describing crimes committed by Croatian troops against Serb civilians and prisoners of war during the Croatian Army operation "Medak Pocket" in September 1993.
"My wife was impaled on a stick alive and her body was pulled out of a septic tank together with the bodies of a few other civilians," Stevo Jovic, a resident of Divoselo, told judges at the County Court in Zagreb on Wednesday, presenting documents and photographs to corroborate his statement.
Jovic said he had seen some of the cases of murder and torture himself and learned about some from other people, which he checked in documents. He insisted that the bodies of mutilated people had not been exchanged in order to cover up the evidence of torture.
The witness said he had been wounded during the operation, first by a piece of shrapnel and then by a bullet, after which he escaped and hid in the woods.
"Had we surrendered, we would have had our throats slit too," Jovic said when asked why they had not surrendered. He likened the Croatian troops involved in the Medak Pocket operation to Ustasha forces, who he said had slaughtered as many as 634 people in that area in a single day in 1941.
"Unlike the Ustasha troops, these even destroyed the cemeteries, monuments and houses, and poisoned the wells," the witness said.
Jovic said that his two sons had served in the Croatian Army and that one of them had been killed.
"Chetniks who came to our villages called me an Ustasha because of that," Jovic said, referring to Serb paramilitary forces. He added that the local population did not welcome the Chetniks, but did not dare stand up to them.
Jovic said that the Serbs and the Croats had lived in peace before the war and that he was not blaming the two accused generals for "being led astray or hating Serbs." "They were more led astray than they were to be blamed, but they had their subordinates who were supposed to know who the perpetrators were."
Jovic presented a list of the civilians killed, saying that they had all been old, infirm or sick.
Another witness who testified about crimes against civilians in the Medak area was Slavica Bjegovic, whose father she said had been killed on the doorstep and her mother while she was leaving the village.
Zeljko Prpic, who had succeeded General Ademi as commander of the Gospic Military District, said that no crimes had been committed during the operation and that there had been no parallel line of command. He insisted that the civilians killed had not been civilians because they had all been in the service of the Serb paramilitary forces.
Ademi issued an order to all the commanders that crimes must not be committed and they agreed with that, Prpic said.
Medak is situated just southeast of Gospic, about 180 kilometres south of Zagreb.
The trial continues on Thursday.
"My wife was impaled on a stick alive and her body was pulled out of a septic tank together with the bodies of a few other civilians," Stevo Jovic…
The Croats and Muslim Albanians who participated and commanded these operations are genocidal monsters.
Jovic said that his two sons had served in the Croatian Army and that one of them had been killed.
Croats didn't even spare the parents of Serbs who served in the Croatian army. There's other cases where the Croats murdered the civilian parents of Serbs who served in Croatia's army.
It was the classic case of the 100-foot stare in a 10-foot room.Truth lies buried in Balkan hell holesThe dialogue was flat, almost disembodied. But the young soldiers were trying to speak to the camera. They had been asked what happened in the Medac pocket in 1993 when Croat forces attacked the Krajina, then held by Serbs.
I wonder if any of the Canadian soldiers who witnessed the atrocities of these modern-day Ustashi will be called to testify?
Yes, the Serbian paramilitaries, upon finding the dozens or Serbian corpses, obviously tortured by the Croat soldiers, were very indiscriminate in their dispensing of vengenance.
As always, however, the fact that the entire incident was initiated by the slaughter of innocent Serbian civilians is completely ignored.
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