Ivica Biscan, the adopted son of the Serb Vila family from Sisak, testified on Wednesday that he saw Croatian soldiers liquidate his entire family in autumn 1991.
Biscan, an ethnic Croat adopted by the Serbian Vila family from Sisak in 1988, testified that he was with his adopted father, Zeljko, in the Gaj cafe in Sisak one night in autumn 1991 when Zeljko quarrelled with another customer who swore at him and allegedly stabbed him with a knife.
Later, he said he was at home when a car came and took him and the family to the Ora barracks in Sisak, where they were beaten by uniformed men.
After that, they were taken to a boat in a nearby river Sava, where Biscan said that uniformed men shot all the members of his family in the backs and threw them into the river.
Biscan said he was saved by a Croatian soldier named Sasa Krstulovic who also testified on Wednesday.
Krstulovic, a former member of Croatian army's second guard brigade, the "Thunders", said that he "couldn't understant why civilians were being imprisoned in an army barracks.
"A little later, I observed that they were missing," Krstulovic added.
Two persons are currently standing trial for war crimes in the Sisak area perpetrated from July 1991 until June 1992.
Drago Bosnjak, former member of the Sisak special police unit known as “the Wolves”, is accused of organising and leading a group that detained and tortured Serb civilians, allegedly killing eight of the 24 victims named in the indictment.
Vladimir Milankovic, wartime deputy police commander of Sisak, is charged with allowing, encouraging and failing to investigate the physical and psychological torture, illegal detention and humiliation of Croatian Serb civilians in the Sisak area.
He is also charged with personally torturing and ordering the illegal arrest of a large number of Serb civilians from Sisak, which resulted in the death of 24 people.
The third indictee, Djuro Brodarac, the wartime police commander of Sisak and a senior member of the former ruling Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, died in custody of a heart attack on July 13 2011, after being detained together with Bosnjak and Milankovic.
The trial continues on September 17.
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.