"As Mayor of Osijek, I strongly protest against the manipulation which is aimed at destabilising the city," Djapic said at a press conference.
He said that the purpose of the media campaign was to portray Osijek as "a twilight zone" in 1991 where murder could go unpunished and where killings were condoned by the national authorities of the time.
Djapic said that it should be left to the judiciary to hand down a final verdict on the crimes committed in the early 1990s rather than allow the creation of "an atmosphere of lynch mob justice" against him, the new city government and Branimir Glavas, an independent member of Parliament who had recently been expelled from the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ).
The mayor said he had talked to representatives of several war veterans' organisations, some of whom had announced the possibility of public rallies to protest "this kind of attitude towards Osijek".
"This campaign is an attempt to distort history and downplay the Homeland War," Djapic said. "Excesses are committed in every war and it is possible that they also occurred in Osijek, but that should be determined in a normal legal proceeding rather than be used for purposes of daily politics."
Djapic said that he would officially ask Prime Minister Ivo Sanader and Chief Public Prosecutor Mladen Bajic to take a position on the matter.
The Split-based Feral Tribune weekly said in its latest issue that the Office of the Chief Public Prosecutor had received a witness statement about the arrests, torture and murders of Serb civilians in Osijek at the start of the war in 1991.
According to media reports, the witness in question claims that the civilians were executed on the verbal orders of Branimir Glavas, who at that time served as head of the National Defence Office in Osijek.
The identity of the witness was revealed by his father on Sunday when Josip Fehir reported that his son, Krunoslav, had disappeared. Later on he said that he had been notified by the police that his son, a police officer employed with the Osijek Police Department, had been transferred to another work location.