FIVE ARRESTED SUSPECTS TRANSFERRED TO RIJEKA UNDER POLICE ESCORT

GOSPIC, Sept 14 (Hina) - Tihomir Oreskovic and four other persons, arrested in Gospic on Tuesday under suspicion of committing war crimes against civilians, were transferred to the Rijeka County Court under heavy security shortly after 6pm on Thursday. The transfer of the arrested persons under police escort began in a tense atmosphere when their family members rushed towards the official vehicles wanting to say goodbye to them, but special and other police officers, armed with automatic rifles, prevented them. A melee broke out when somebody shouted: "Take a photo of the commies!" Immediately after that paddy wagons were mobbed by the arrested persons' family members who were crying and shouting

insults at policemen. During a scuffle, while a policeman and photo-journalist of the "Vecernji List" daily were scrambling around a camera as police were trying to prevent photoreporters to film the event, threats were directed towards journalists just as in the morning and yesterday. The 48-hour-long detention for the arrested men expires by 11.00 am Friday and in this period an investigating judge in Rijeka, who will be in charge of the case, should decide whether an investigation can be launched, the arrested left in custody or released. Defence attorneys of the five arrested men announced that they

would file an appeal with Croatia's Constitutional Court and the European Court for Human Rights against the ruling of the Croatian Supreme Court to transfer the jurisdiction from Gospic to the Rijeka court. The five men were arrested on Tuesday on suspicion they had committed war crimes against Serb civilians in Gospic in 1991. One of those five suspects is General Tihomir Levar, who used to be the secretary of the Gospic-based war crisis centre for Lika, and whom

the recently killed Milan Levar had accused of crimes. Levar, who was interviewed by the Hague-based international tribunal in 1997 and 1998 about the matter, lost his life in a bombing in Gospic at the end of last month.(hina)