Medical experts have confirmed that the killing of a Croat family could have happened in the time listed in the indictment of the Serbian prosecution.
“The exhumation of the bodies was carried out after ten years, and our medical analysis determined that the deaths could have occurred at the time mentioned in the indictment,” said Dusan Dunjic, an expert witness in the case for war crimes in Beli Manastir, a town in eastern Croatia.
“However, the bodies decayed over time, and on the basis of bones alone, we could not determine the distance from which people were shot,” Dunjic added.
According to the indictment, Zoran Vuksic, Slobodan Strigic and Branko Hrnjak, all members of the Special Police Unit for the town of Beli Manastir, detained four men from the Cicak family, then drove them to the ruins of abandoned farm Karasevo, where they killed them and robbed their dead bodies.
The prosecution also charges Zoran Vuksic, alias "Yellow", for the attack on Mr and Mrs Baric, a Croatian couple. The husband was shot dead while the wife was wounded with a knife.
“Our medical records show that the woman was in traumatic shock and that the stabbing was severe and life threatening," a court witness said.
The Beli Manastir case is a joint indictment filed in 2010, accusing Zoran Vuksic, Slobodan Strigic, Branko Hrnjak and Velimir Bertic of war crimes against civilians in Beli Manastir, a town in eastern Croatia near the Hungarian border, during the second half of 1991.
They were all members of the Special Police Unit of Beli Manastir, which was part of the military forces of the Serbian Autonomous Region of Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Srem.
The Croatian State Attorney’s Office yielded this case to the Serbian Prosecution Office in 2008, on the basis of a cooperation agreement concerning the prosecution of war crimes, signed by the prosecution offices of the two countries on October 13, 2006.
The trial will continue on May 9.
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Timeline of events in the case against 13 former Serb fighters charged with committing war crimes in the villages of Cuska, Zahac, Ljubenic and Pavlac in Kosovo in 1999.