(9 Mar 2004)
1. Exterior of the Special Court in Belgrade
2. Policeman guarding entrance of court
3. Defence team leaving court building
4. SOUNDBITE (Serbian) Milan Zaklan, defence lawyer of the accused Miroljub Vujovic:
"The trial has started, they have read the indictment and the chief suspect Miroljub Vujovic gave his statement. The trial will resume tomorrow
and five more accused will give their statement. After that, we presume that 12 more people will be indicted who are now under investigation, then their cases will be included in the trial. That's all I can say. The trial has started and some 50 witnesses will testify in the trial."
5. Police car driving away the defendants
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Sam Nazzaro, legal advisor of the US Embassy in Belgrade:
"We are very pleased to see the case go forward. I know that the prosecutor Mr Vukcevic and his staff have been working very diligently and
conscientiously on this case. We are hopeful that justice will be achieved and that this is a good start."
7. Various of press
8. People leaving court
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Natasa Kandic, head of Humanitarian Law Centre:
"(I believe) that Serbian court and politicians are willing to show that they are ready to try perpetrators, because all of them are perpetrators. The
main commanders and officers of the army are accused by the International Criminal Tribunal. In every case, this trial will show what happened in
Ovcara 1991, will show how many people were involved in the execution and it is very important for the public opinion - to know the truth of what happened."
10. TV crews in front of the court house
STORYLINE
In a key test of Serbia's ability to deal with its legacy of wartime atrocities, a landmark trial opened on Tuesday for six Serbs indicted for executing 192 rival Croats at a pig farm in Croatia in 1991 and dumping their bodies into a pit.
At the time of the alleged crime, the suspects were members of a paramilitary Serb group fighting in Vukovar against Croatian forces.
The indictment against them says that after the Serb side gained control of Vukovar in mid-November 1991, Croatian prisoners who had "surrendered" were bused from a Vukovar hospital to a nearby pig farm on November 20, 1991, where they were first hoarded into hangars.
At the Ovcara pig farm, the six defendants allegedly lined up the victims, strafed them with machine-gun fire and dumped their bodies into a freshly dug pit.
Exhumations in later years revealed the scope of the massacre, which came to symbolise the brutality of the war in Croatia.
After the charges were read out in court on Tuesday - including the names of all 192 victims - the chief defendant, Miroljub Vujovic, a Vukovar native who allegedly commanded the Serb paramilitary group, proclaimed his innocence, saying the indictment was "a complete fabrication".
A self-described "volunteer defender" of Vukovar, Vujovic said he only heard later from others that "something had happened in Ovcara".
But he admitted he visited Ovcara "out of curiosity" a day before the alleged massacre, looking for his former Croat acquaintances among the
prisoners.
Three ranking officers of the former Yugoslav army, who allegedly ordered or allowed the executions, are being tried at The Hague tribunal, which has allowed Serbia to prosecute the six lower-level suspects.
Eight people originally were indicted in connection with the Vukovar killings; one committed suicide while in detention, and another went into a
witness-protection programme in exchange for testifying against the others.
domestic courts.
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