Mrksic, Radic and Sljivancanin

Dr Vesna Bosanac, the first witness to testify against former Yugoslav army officers Mile Mrksic, Miroslav Radic and Veselin Sljivancanin, described this week how her attempts to organise a safe evacuation of patients and other civilians from the hospital in the besieged Croatian city of Vukovar were repeatedly undermined by two of the accused.

Mrksic, Radic and Sljivancanin, known as the “Vukovar Three”, have been charged with five counts of crimes against humanity and three counts of violations of the laws or customs of war for their alleged role in the murder of at least 264 Croats and other non-Serbs taken from the Vukovar hospital in November 1991.

Dr Bosanac, then the director of Vukovar hospital, told the court that as the Serb bombardment of the city reached its peak in mid-November, hundreds of residents flooded into the hospital, believing it to be a safe place of refuge.

On November 18, 1991, during talks in Zagreb, the Yugoslav People’s Army, JNA, reached an agreement with the Croatian authorities and the International Committee of the Red Cross, ICRC, that those sheltering in the hospital could be safely transported to Croatian-held territory.

However, Bosanac became increasingly concerned when representatives from the ICRC, Médecins Sans Frontières and the Croatian Maltese Cross, who were supposed to monitor the evacuation, did not turn up at the hospital on the morning of November 19. Anxious to find out why progress was delayed, Bosanac spoke to Mrksic, then the colonel in command of the JNA’s Operational Group (OG) South, the unit responsible for overseeing the evacuation. Mrksic reassured her that the evacuation would go ahead as planned.

“He told me that everything would be alright, that he was from Vukovar himself, that we had been to the same high school,” said Bosanac.

But when the international monitors still failed to arrive, Bosanac spoke to Mrksic again. This time, the colonel repeated that the monitors were on their way, but warned they would only “get in the way” of his own negotiations.

During his opening speech, prosecutor Marks Moore claimed that the JNA had in reality “deliberately delayed” the aid workers as they tried to reach the hospital.

Bosanac went on to describe how, on the afternoon of November 19, JNA soldiers and paramilitaries stormed the hospital.

When the witness saw male patients and civilians being taken away in JNA vehicles, she approached Major Sljivancanin, the security officer for OG South, and asked why the planned evacuation was not taking place.

Sljivancanin was unsympathetic. “He was quite arrogant,” said Bosanac. “[He] told me I shouldn’t meddle in things which were no affair of mine.”

The witness recalled being interrogated later that evening by Sljivancanin at OG South headquarters in Negoslavci. Bosanac said that Sljivancanin was “gruff and strict”, and when she was unable to answer his questions, he asked how much she thought Franjo Tudjman, the then Croatian president, would pay for her return.

On November 20, the day of the alleged massacre of the hospital inhabitants, JNA forces took Bosanac to their barracks in Vukovar. From there, she was taken to a detention camp at Sremska Mitrovice in eastern Serbia, where she was kept until December.

Bosanac’s detention, which she described as “imprisonment”, began two days after Vukovar finally fell to Serb forces at the end of a three-month siege. Members of the Croatian national guard, no longer to able to defend the city against the JNA’s devastating artillery barrage, finally surrendered on November 18.

Bosanac claimed that despite two large red cross signs displayed on the hospital’s roof and in the courtyard, “between 80 and 90” bombs and artillery shells landed on the hospital each day in the period from August 15 until November 18. The witness said that some hospital staff had criticised the use of the signs because they feared they were being specifically targeted by JNA planes.

The doctor firmly denied Moore’s suggestion that the upper floors of the hospital, which were deemed unfit for patients because of shelling damage, could have been used as a base by Croatian soldiers.

“I would arrive [at the hospital] at six am and stay sometimes until two in the morning,” Bosanac said. “I went everywhere from cellar to attic - I would have known if it was being used for a military purpose.”

During cross-examination, Miroslav Vasic, defence counsel for Mrksic, challenged the witness’ calculations by pointing out that if she were correct, 6,000 to 7,000 shells – or over 40 tonnes of explosives - would have been dropped on the hospital during the three-month siege.

The doctor, however, said she had been careful to count the pieces of ordnance that hit the medical centre, and invited the lawyer to look at pictures of the destroyed hospital as a testament to the battering it received.

As a result of the heavy shelling, by late October the hospital was functioning without water or electricity. Bosanac described how staff had to collect rainwater from six local wells and treat it with chlorine so it was fit for drinking.

“It was often the case that nurses had to look after patients by candlelight or in complete darkness,” she said.

Roadblocks surrounding the city, which Bosanac said were so tight that “not even a bird could get through”, prohibited deliveries of vital medical supplies, so that infections such as gangrene were rife.

But despite a daily barrage of faxes sent to Croatia’s European Community Monitoring Mission office and various politicians overseas, little help arrived. The doctor sent these her pleas herself from a local police station, risking her life “each and every time” as shells fell along the road. The witness suggested that she had been ignored and let down by the international powers, which might have been able to offer assistance.

Even though Médecins Sans Frontières evacuated 105 hospital patients on October 19, the witness said they failed to bring in medical supplies as agreed. And when ICRC representative Nicolas Borsinger eventually arrived at Vukovar hospital on the evening of November 19, the doctor said he appeared “scared”.

Borsinger told Bosanac that he had “no power” over how the JNA would organise the evacuation, and that he could not stay to witness the move as he had to drive back to Belgrade that evening.

Bosanac said this was “not what [she] had expected from the Red Cross”.

Reading out a handwritten note which the witness had hastily added to one of her faxes, Moore emphasised that the people of Vukovar had been increasingly desperate for international help as the siege continued.

The words written by Bosanac read, “We are alive - but not for long, it would seem”.

Helen Warrell is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.