Mrskic, Radic and Sljivancanin

Lawyers representing three ex-Yugoslav army officers charged with the murders of some 264 people taken from a hospital in Vukovar in late 1991 have suggested that staff at the facility performed fake operations on Croat fighters in order to hide them on the premises.

Former nurse Binazija Kolesar, appearing as a witness for the prosecution this week, denied during cross-examination by defence counsel that healthy people had put on bandages and had even been “cut up…and stitched” in an effort to appear wounded.

The three accused in the case – Mile Mrksic, Miroslav Radic and Veselin Sljivancanin – are charged with overseeing the notorious massacre after the Vukovar hospital was seized by the Yugoslav People’s Army, JNA, and Serb paramilitaries on November 19, 1991.

Defence lawyers apparently want to establish that active Croatian National Guard, ZNG, fighters were present in the hospital, seemingly to show that the building was a legitimate military target.

Kolesar insisted that there was “no way” Croat fighters could have found shelter at the Vukovar hospital by pretending to be injured. All patients were examined on arrival and had medical documents to prove that their injuries or symptoms were genuine, she said.

In reply, Miroslav Vasic, defence counsel for Mrksic, directed the witness to a statement she gave to prosecution investigators in 1995. In the statement, Kolesar was quoted as saying that she didn’t know if there had been Croat soldiers in the hospital because, with crowds of patients in the building, it was difficult to tell “who was wounded and who was pretending”.

Rather than comment directly on this apparent inconsistency with her evidence in court, Kolesar replied simply that it was no surprise that terrified people had done whatever was necessary to seek protection at the hospital.

In a further effort to show that hospital staff were involved in the conflict, Radic’s defence counsel Borivoje Borovic also asked Kolesar about suggestions that a JNA soldier who spent a month in the building, Sasa Jovic, may in fact have been held there as a hostage rather than a patient.

Kolesar was forced to admit that she couldn’t remember what Jovic’s injury was.

During questioning by prosecutors earlier in the week, the witness helped to build up a detailed picture of the day JNA troops arrived at the Vukovar hospital.

In line with claims made in the indictment, Kolesar said that on the morning of their arrival the soldiers ushered her and other hospital workers into a meeting. With the staff distracted in this way, she said, they then went about ordering all men in the building, including patients who were able to walk, to go down into the yard outside.

Kolesar said that at one point in the “meeting” a nurse noticed a crowd forming outside and saw that it included the husbands of hospital staff, who had been taking shelter in the building for several weeks.

The nurse in question asked Sljivancanin, who was amongst the troops overseeing the staff, where their husbands were being taken. He apparently replied by demanding a list of their names. Of the 400 or so men who were taken from the hospital to nearby JNA barracks that morning, the men on this list were the first to be returned.

Kolesar’s account appears to support claims in the indictment that it was Sljivancanin who “personally directed the removal and selection” of non-Serbs from the hospital on November 20. Kolesar also confirmed this separately, stating that “with everything going on” at the hospital that day, Sljivancanin was the one “issuing orders and telling everyone what to do”.

The nurse noted that the JNA’s forced removal of patients was a far cry from a planned Red Cross evacuation that hospital staff had so eagerly awaited. By the time the JNA arrived, she said, the hospital was bursting with civilians who had come from all over the besieged town of Vukovar, seeking an “oasis of peace”.

“We were hoping, finally, to get out of that hell,” said Kolesar.

Helen Warrell is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.