War crimes trial against former Serb paramilitary begins in Osijek

The war crimes trial of former Serbian paramilitary Željko Travica has begun at the Osijek County Court on Wednesday. Travica is charged with the abuse and murder of eight prisoners of war, Croatian defenders, in the village of Cerić, near Vukovar, in 1991.

The war crimes indictment was read out in the Osijek County Court by the Deputy Chief State Prosecutor in Osijek County, Miroslav Kraljević. The indictment laid out in brutal detail the horrors that former Serb paramilitary Željko Travica subjected his victims to: “He bound the hands and feet of HOS members Zoran Šorli, Ivan Kopčić and Željko Uglješić with wire tied to their necks, and took them to a nearby house, near the place where they were captured. And there, during the night of October 2nd to 3rd of 1991, he tortured the bound prisoners, forcing a bottle with a steel wire wrapped around the bottleneck into the mouths of the prisoners, and thereby injuring them.”

Among the first witnesses to testify on Wednesday was Željko Uglješić: “They would come in, as the changing of the guards would happen, calling us "Zenge and Ustasha!" They beat us repeatedly. They would bring us the brains of our comrades in their helmets and show them to us.”

Travica, who entered a plea of not guilty, was arrested at the French border crossing of Calais in October of last year on the basis of a European arrest warrant.

Source: HRT