All the interviewed witnesses work in the audio recording department in the Croatian President's Office.
Judge Mirjana Rigljan declined to speak about the details of the interviews, explaining that keeping the testimonies secret was in the interest of the investigation. She said the other three witnesses would be questioned on 3 March.
Judge Devcic, who questioned the five witnesses today, told Hina yesterday that the witnesses were supposed to explain how talks between the late Croatian president Franjo Tudjman and the military leadership ahead of the 1995 army and police operation Storm were recorded and transcribed. The witnesses will also be asked to describe the circumstances in which the talks were held on Brijuni, who attended them and when they took place, he said on Monday.
Asked why former senior government officials who had attended the talks were not summoned, Devcic said he could hear only the persons proposed by the prosecutor.
The Zagreb Municipal Prosecutor's Office requested an urgent hearing after lawyers for fugitive general Ante Gotovina brought charges against an unknown perpetrator for forging the transcripts.
After pressing charges in October 2004, one of the lawyers told Hina that Gotovina's defence team believed that the original transcripts had been modified.
"We have evidence to prove this and we will make it available to the prosecution," lawyer Ivo Farcic said, explaining that the evidence was based on statements by several persons who had attended the Brijuni meeting.
Portions of the transcripts were made public by several Croatian media last October.
Gotovina's lawyers claim that the Hague tribunal used the transcripts as the basis for its charge of "a criminal enterprise" aimed at driving Serb civilians out of rebel-held areas of Croatia.
According to media reports, Hague tribunal prosecutors came into possession of the Brijuni transcripts in 2000, and two years later they were admitted as evidence in the trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague.
Croatian media claim that the tribunal's indictments against Gotovina and another two generals, Ivan Cermak and Mladen Markac, are based on the Brijuni transcripts.
Under Croatian law, the crime of forging a document carries a prison sentence of up to five years.