Mesic added that he had the right to refuse the minister's proposals on promotion. "In such a case I would have to explain why I am not accepting his proposal, but there was not a single fact or piece of evidence that would have prompted me to question the minister's proposal," Mesic said when asked if he had known that a reserve non-commissioned officer, Zelimir Dragicevic, accused Kruljac of ordering the killing of a man at the time Croatian forces entered Okucani in western Slavonia in 1995.
Nacional weekly last week carried Dragicevic's accusations as well as his claim that last and this year he had sent three letters to the Office of the President to inform it about the case. Dragicevic was quoted as saying that he had also informed Chief State Prosecutor Mladen Bajic of the case.
"I definitely had no knowledge of it," Mesic said. "The Office (of the President) receives dozens of letters daily, and they probably included the letter Dragicevic is referring to. But in that letter he did not state what he is stating today, otherwise we would have forwarded the letter, as we did with all of his subsequent letters, to relevant institutions".
Mesic gave the statement on the island of Hvar, where is spending his holidays.
Mesic promoted Mladen Kruljac to the rank of lieutenant-general on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the military-police operation "Storm".
In a statement to Hina on August 9, Danijela Barisic, spokeswoman for the Office of the President, dismissed Dragicevic's claim that he had warned President Mesic on several occasions in writing about the case of war crime against a civilian.
Retired Guards Brigade member Tomislav Abramovic said on August 12 that he had followed Kruljac's order, but that the man he shot dead in Okucani "was not a civilian, old man, or a soldier, but an armed Chetnik".
Chief State Prosecutor Bajic said on August 11 that his office would decide on measures regarding Kruljac's alleged responsibility after it received a police report and assessed if the allegations were grounded.