Retired member of the 3rd Guards Brigade, Tomislav Abramovic, has given statements to the media explaining that he was a man who followed the brigade commander Kruljac's order and shot dead "not a civilian and an elderly man, but an armed Chetnik" during the May 1995 Operation Flash in the Croatian town of Okucani. In this way, Abramovic dismissed media reports that Kruljac ordered him to kill an elderly civilian.
Upon the recent promotion of Mladen Kruljac to Lieutenant-General, a former member of the said brigade, Zelimir Dragicevic went out to the public with the claims that in 1995 Kruljac ordered the killing of an elderly man in Okucani during the liberating operation.
The Office of the State Prosecutor then asked the police to check the credibility of Dragicevic's claims.
"The actions which we have asked (of the police to take) envisage interviews with witnesses, including Tomislav Abramovic," Deputy Chief State Prosecutor Dragan Novosel told Hina on Friday.
Novosel explained that the police have a 30-day deadline to carry out all actions demanded by the prosecution, but, he said, this job usually takes less time.
He reiterated that after the police did their part of the job, prosecutors would decide whether there were grounds for the accusations levelled against Gen. Kruljac.
In a phone interview for Hina, Abramovic on Friday gave an account of the events on May 2, 1995, stating that he never considered the said event as something dubious from the military point of view and that he did not think about it until Zelimir Dragicevic and Ante Prkacin asked him to "sign a statement which they said they would submit to the Chief State Prosecutor's Office. I did not sign it".
Abramovic said that the signature on the statement which has appeared in the media was forged and that he would file a lawsuit.
He said that he did not consider himself to be guilty of anything and that so far he had not been contacted by any official institution with regard to the said event. Stressing that he was proud of his role in the Homeland War, Abramovic gave a detailed account of the events which happened on May 2, 1995 and the place and time when his former commander Kruljac ordered him to shoot.
Abramovic said that during sweep-up operations in the area of the eastern town of Okucani he was among riflemen who went before the brigade. When they arrived at a hamlet whose name he said he could not recall, they spotted a man running out from a house towards a field.
"With me were commander Kruljac, the commander of the 2nd Platoon whose name I don't remember, unit commander Pero Kovcic and his deputy Miha... The man saw us. Kruljac shouted at him to stop three times, but the man kept running. He ran a distance of some 200 metres when Kruljac shouted - 'Stop, I will fire!', but the man would not stop and Kruljac said - 'Sniper, deal with it!'," Abramovic said, adding that he followed the order.
"I hit him from a distance of 200 metres. I saw him clearly, him and his gun which he held in his right hand because at that moment he turned towards me. He was not a civilian, an old man or a soldier. There was no army there, he was a Chetnik, which is worse than the army," Abramovic said, adding that the body of the man, who was around 50, was put in a truck to be exchanged.