Belgrade, Serbia-Montenegro
A Serbian court has convicted 14 former Serbian paramilitary fighters of massacring at least 200 Croatian prisoners of war during the Yugoslav war. In 1991, at the end of the battle for the Croatian city of Vukovar, Serb militiamen rounded up the prisoners at a hospital. They trucked the prisoners to a pig farm, then marched them in front of a firing squad in groups of seven or eight. It took two days to kill all the prisoners and bulldoze over their bodies. Most defendants got the maximum sentence of 20 years. The verdict is the first for Serbia’s war-crimes court, which was set up in 2003. “The entire proceedings were conducted in keeping with world standards,” said prosecution spokesman Bruno Vekaric, “which shows that the Serbian judiciary is capable of coping with high-profile cases.”
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