Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, December 5, 1993                   TAG: 9312050032
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: TOM MASHBERG BOSTON GLOBE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

INVESTIGATORS FIND EVIDENCE OF WAR CRIMES IN YUGOSLAVIA

After examining two secret graves - one in a weedy cornfield in Serb-held territory, the other near a gravel-strewn bathhouse in a Croat-dominated area - the team concluded that the victims were executed rather than killed in battle.

Such massacres have been reported since the Balkan war erupted 30 months ago. The new information, from a group viewed as impartial, is important in two respects:

It constitutes the first independent forensic evidence likely to connect individual Serbs and Croats to known atrocities.

It is admissible under international law, making it crucial to the work of a tribunal convened Nov. 17 to bring Balkan war criminals to justice.

"What we have now is a test case for both sides," said Eric Stover of Wellesley, an internationally known forensic anthropologist who is executive director of Physicians for Human Rights.

"Politically, it shows a balanced approach," said Stover, who recently returned from his mission to Yugoslavia. "Practically, it gives the world tribunal the hard evidence needed to press ahead with the search for the guilty."

Stover and his colleagues hope their evidence, ranging from bullet casings to T-shirts and boots to human remains, will lend forensic weight to the eyewitness accounts of Balkan atrocities being examined by the U.N. tribunal in The Hague.

So far, 25,000 accounts of murder, torture and rape have been cataloged since the main rivals in the former Yugoslavia - Serbs, Croats and Muslims - went to war. The bloodiest of the ethnic conflicts is continuing in Bosnia.

While Stover and his team have not yet been granted access to Bosnian land, where more mass graves are reported, their work so far offers a rare window onto the killing fields of the Balkans.

"When we open a grave, we open the last chapter of someone's life," Stover said. "The perpetrators can make claims about what happened, but not the victims. Not until you see how they died can you assign exact blame to the culprits."

The excavated sites include one near Vukovar, where about 250 Croat civilians, reportedly pulled from a hospital by conquering Serb forces, are thought to have been massacred in November 1991; and a series of ditches in a barren Croat-dominated region where several dozen Serb execution victims have been uncovered.

After a painstaking hands-and-knees exploration carried out over two long visits, Stover and his colleagues believe that the Croat victims buried at Vukovar were herded together, mowed down by rifle fire and thrown into a trench the size of a school bus.

The evidence includes mounds of shell casings and the scoring marks on surrounding trees, which suggest a blizzard of gunfire.

The Serb victims, Stover says, were killed by gunshots to the skull; their wrists were found still entwined in bits of rope.

"Our rule in the field is: `Close your ears, and open your eyes,' " Stover said. Stover and his associates have not fully dug up the Vukovar site, and they insist that no final conclusions can be drawn until all evidence is at hand.

"There's much talk of the collective guilt for this war," Stover said. "But without specific evidence of specific crimes by specific commanders, we'll never bring criminals to justice and get past the horror to the healing many, many people need."