here - Humanitarian Law Center/Fond za humanitarno pravo

period of time (almost a month), with a large number of injured parties, witnesses and accused.
Furthermore, the trial chamber was faced with an indictment that did not offer much evidence,
something also noted by the presiding judge in her explanation of the judgment. During the
evidentiary hearing, the chamber would often ex officio summon witnesses that the TRZ should
have put forward for examination. Over the Course of proceedings, a total of 198 witnesses were
heard, of whom 76 testified via video link because they declined to appear before the Higher
Court in Belgrade. The trial was prolonged owing to some abuses of procedural rights by
indictees and their defense counsels, resulting in the need to repeat some elements.
This trial was distinguished, on one side, by the high level of professionalism demonstrated by
the trial chamber and by the serious deficiencies in the work of the TRZ, on the other. The
chamber itself pointed out some of those deficiencies.
In its first indictment (filed on 28 November 2007), the TRZ included the killings of 69 civilians,
but offered no evidence regarding the circumstances under which many of those events had
happened, so throughout the proceedings the chamber took on the role of prosecution,
particularly in searching for witnesses and obtaining the necessary documentation.
The enormous effort that the chamber invested in establishing the whole ‘material truth’ for the
most part remained fruitless. When the proceedings were well into their fourth year, and evidence
examination was drawing to its end, the TRZ amended the indictment reducing some of the
actions for which defendants were charged, and in consequence reducing the number of killed
civilians included in the indictment from 69 to 44, despite the fact that during the proceedings it
had been established that 70 civilians had died in the village of Lovas over the period of time
covered by the indictment, something that was never contested by any of the parties to the
proceedings. 133
Of the victims that the TRZ excluded from the amended indictment, the majority died during the
attack by the 2nd Proletarian Guard Motorized Brigade of the JNA, launched on the village of
Lovas on 10 October 1991. Over the Course of proceedings, convincing pieces of evidence
emerged, demonstrating the personal responsibility of the commander of that brigade, a JNA
colonel, Dušan Lončar, for the attack on Lovas that resulted in the death of 22 civilians. On 9
October 1991, Lončar ordered an attack on Lovas including the order to “carry out cleansing of
the hostile population”. A military expert witness in his findings and testimony at the main
hearing, was of the opinion that Dušan Lončar, commander of the 2nd Proletarian Guard
Motorized Brigade of the JNA, was the commander of all the units participating in the attack on
the village of Lovas. According to him, the part of his attack order relating to “cleansing of the
hostile population” was “in contravention with Article 13 of the Additional Protocol II”.
Despite the existence of convincing evidence against Lončar, as well as the fact that, according to
the amended indictment, the attack on Lovas was carried out by the JNA, the TRZ did indict
133 In the initial indictment, the TRZ stated that Milan Latas had been killed during the artillery attack that the JNA
launched on Lovas; however no one was charged with his murder.
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