Vukovar

Croatia's Minister of Veterans' Affairs, Tomo Medved, said the authorities remain committed to finding all the remaining missing persons from the 1991-95 war, as five more war victims were formally identified on Friday at the Dr Juraj Njavro National Memorial Hospital in the eastern town of Vukovar.

On the anniversary of the day in 1995 when the last territory occupied by Serb rebel forces in Croatia's Baranja and Eastern Slavonia region during the war was finally returned to government control, a film screening was held in the city of Vukovar to mark the peaceful reintegration.

Milos 'Cvele' Cvetkovic was walking the streets of the devastated Croatian city of Vukovar in November 1991, right after Serbian forces entered the city.

Walking past the ruins of buildings and the dead bodies, he took one of his most significant photographs - one of the town's 'liberators', as they were called in the Serbian media - sitting dejectedly on an ammunition box.

Ivica Husnik, who was convicted in Serbia of involvement in the killings of some 200 people at Ovcara Farm near Vukovar in November 1991, was extradited to Croatia on July 7 to serve his sentence for a different crime, Osijek County Court confirmed on Monday.

Miroljub Vujovic, a Serb wartime fighter who was convicted in Serbia of participating in killing some 200 prisoners from the Croatian town of Vukovar at the nearby Ovcara Farm in November 1991, has been granted early release based on the Belgrade Appeals Court's conclusion that his "resocialisation" is complete.

"No one will harvest the fruits of victory because there are none; all that is left is just the bitter taste of a hangover," said a report published in Belgrade-based Vreme magazine after the fall of the eastern Croatian town of Vukovar on November 18, 1991.

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Croatian city of Vukovar into the hands of the former Yugoslav army. The city was captured after a three-month siege and virtually destroyed to the ground by round-the-clock bombing. The first war crimes in Europe after the end of the Second World War were committed here.

The Humanitarian Law Centre said on Friday that Belgrade Court of Appeals' compensation awards to relatives of people killed by Serbian fighters at Ovcara Farm after the fall of the besieged Croatian town of Vukovar to the Yugoslav People's Army in November 1991 are inappropriately low and do not meet standards set by the European Court of Human Rights.

Zagreb-based NGO Documenta - Centre for Dealing with the Past and the Serbian National Council, which represents the Serb minority in Croatia, launched a media campaign on Thursday entitled 'Justice for Victims', supporting the government's plan to pass legislation that will grant benefits to civilian victims of the 1991-95 war.

Police announced on Monday that they have charged a 55-year-old Croatian citizen, who they did not name, with committing a war crime against a civilian.

According to the police, "a criminal investigation established a well-founded suspicion" that the suspect, who was "an armed member of paramilitary units", raped a female Croatian citizen.