Vukovar: Milosevic must pay

2002-11-17 12:59

Ferdinandovac, Croatia - Eleven years after Vukovar fell into the hands of Serb forces, its wartime commander still vividly remembers the three-month siege of the eastern town and hopes that former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic, on trial at the UN court in The Hague, will answer for the atrocities committed there.

"I live with Vukovar 24 hours a day, it visits me in my dreams. That is not something you can leave behind and go on as nothing happened," said Mile Dedakovic, known as Jastreb (Hawk).

The 51-year-old father of six now lives quietly on his farm in the northern village of Ferdinandovac, close to the border with Hungary.

In August 1991, at the outbreak of the 1991-95 war between Croatia and secessionist Serbs, Dedakovic was sent by Zagreb to head some 1 800 lightly armed volunteers as the town came under heavy attack from the Belgrade-controlled Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) joined by rebel ethnic Serbs.

During the brutal siege some 15 000 civilians, living in their basements, were exposed to constant shelling while the town was razed to the ground.

'Court will find him guilty'

Charges against Milosevic in the second phase of his trial in The Hague relating to his role in the 1990s wars in Croatia and Bosnia include torture and killing of 255 Croat and non-Serb patients taken from the Vukovar hospital after Serb forces conquered the town on November 18, 1991.

"I feel nothing about his trial and I just expect that the court will find him guilty," Dedakovic said.

"I am convinced that all those who violated the international conventions will have to answer for that sooner or later, including Radovan Karadzic, Ratko Mladic and Veselin Sljivancanin," he added.

Karadzic, Bosnian Serb wartime leader, and Mladic, his military commander, are wanted by the UN court for war crimes and genocide committed during Bosnia's 1992-95 war.

Sljivancanin, one of three JNA officers indicted by the UN court for war crimes in Vukovar, tried to persuade Dedakovic to surrender during the siege.

But, Dedakovic would not talk to him since the JNA "actually turned against people who created it and whom it was supposed to defend".

'Immense desire'

According to his estimates, published in his book The battle of Vukovar, over 80 000 fighters were operating in Vukovar, including only 18 500 paramilitary Serb forces.

Dedakovic said these figures disproved the claims that Croatian Serbs "rebelled and did all that since they were oppressed".

"Those were the JNA forces coming from the very heart of Serbia," Dedakovic said listing JNA brigades, participating in the Vukovar siege, which were based in Belgrade and Serbian towns of Nis and Valjevo.

As a former JNA pilot Dedakovic knew well how the army functioned.

"Realistically they should have conquered Vukovar in five to six days. However, it was a huge machinery based on collectivism and it took them too much time to reach a decision while we were constantly changing our tactics," he said.

The morale on the Croatian side was high "because there was this immense desire to create the Croatian state and we were very united in it".

Dedakovic stressed that the people of Vukovar were joined by volunteers from all over Croatia but also from France, Spain, Britain and elsewhere.

Besieged

According to Dedakovic, the battle for Vukovar was crucial to the defence of the whole country as Milosevic launched a military campaign following Zagreb's proclamation of independence from the former Yugoslavia in June 1991.

Vukovar tied down JNA military forces for three months, giving Croatia time to arm itself and to raise and train troops.

"We have done the impossible by merely sustaining for three months that huge military force, but we could not do a miracle because only God can do that," he said.

Dedakovic left Vukovar during the fighting in a vain attempt to get military help for its defence, but could not return to the besieged town.

Some 1 100 civilians were killed in Vukovar while 5 000 others were taken prisoner in Serbia. Most of the 1 300 people who are still listed as missing in Croatia were from Vukovar.

The once wealthy provincial town on the border with Serbia, was conquered on November 18, 1991, after being virtually razed to the ground by rebel Serbs and the former Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) who besieged it.

After the war ended, Vukovar and its region were put under UN administration and reintegrated into Croatia in January 1998. - Sapa-AFP

- SAPA