In the 1990s Dzakula was president of the Serb Democratic Party (SDS) in western Slavonia and he advocated a political solution to the Croatian-Serb conflict, which was why he came into conflict with the SDS leadership in Knin. Dzakula today spoke about the attacks of the former Yugoslav People's Army, Martic's police and the Territorial Defence on the Croat-populated villages in the occupied Croatian areas in 1991/92.
He said that he learned of the crimes committed in those attacks from other people and the media and spoke of what he knew about war crimes in Hrvatska Kostajnica, and in Skabrnja and other villages of the Sibenik and Zadar hinterland. The perpetrators of those crimes were never prosecuted, he said.
Dzakula said that the president of the government of the so-called Serb Autonomous District (SAO) of Krajina, Vlado Zecevic, had told him that there had been a lot of fighting in Croatian villages in northern Dalmatia and that many soldiers and civilians had been killed.
Asked by prosecutor Alex Whiting if Martic could have known about the crimes, the witness said that he could have learned of them through the police and media and because he was present in the region of northern Dalmatia all the time.
Dzakula, who in the second half of 1992 was deputy prime minister of the rebel Serb government, confirmed that Martic wielded great authority among members of the rebel Serb government and that he had the last say in decisions adopted by the ministries of the interior and defence, of which he was in charge.
The witness confirmed that Martic participated in the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina and described how in the summer of 1992 the accused and his unit took part in a breakthrough in the northern Posavina region, after which he was promoted to the rank of general.
The witness testified about crimes committed against Croat civilians in western Slavonia in September and October 1991.
He spoke about Martic's victory in the 1994 elections for the president of the Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK), at which Martic promised "the imminent unification with all Serb territories and the transfer of leadership to the leader of all Serbs, (former Yugoslav president Slobodan) Milosevic".
Dzakula also spoke about the plan Z4, which he said was rejected by the Serb authorities in Knin in 1995, despite the fact that it offered the Serbs "a state within a state" with a high level of autonomy for the so-called SAO Krajina, speedy reintegration of western Slavonia and gradual reintegration of eastern Slavonia into Croatia.
Dzakula was also questioned by Martic's defence attorney Predrag Milovancevic.
Martic is charged on the basis of individual and command responsibility with 19 counts of crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war, persecutions on political, racial and religious grounds, extermination, killings, imprisonment, torture and deportations of Croat civilians in the occupied areas of Croatia in the period from 1991 to 1995, as well as crimes against non-Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1994 and the shelling of the Croatian capital Zagreb in May 1995.