Testifying at the trial of the former commander of the 3rd Battalion of the 7th Brigade , Tihomir Savoric, and two former brigade members, Ivica Krklec and Alen Toplek, the witness said that after armed clashes in the autumn of 1995 between this brigade and local Bosnian Serb troops in front of the Dabrac Motel near the western town of Mrkonjic Grad when one of his comrades was killed, an elderly woman happened to be passing by and one of the victim's comrades had wanted to kill her.
According to Haljinko, the company's commander Galic first stopped the Croatian soldier from killing the woman but later on he himself shot her dead with a pistol.
The witness could not explain why Galic, who committed suicide in 2010, had first stopped the woman from being killed only to kill her himself a while later.
It seems that the soldier insisted on killing the woman and Galic did it himself, the witness told the court.
The witness said that Savoric had not been present at the killing and he could not be certain whether the other two defendants had witnessed the crime.
None of the other witnesses testifying today incriminated Savoric, Krklec and Toplek, who are charged with killing four unidentified civilians in western Bosnian in 1995.. They said that they had never heard Savoric ordering anyone's murder.
Savoric is charged with ordering unidentified members of the Pumas brigade to kill two unidentified civilians: a man and a woman in their forties on 10 October 1995. According to the indictment, on the subsequent day, Toplek killed an elderly woman who might have been 60 years old, and Krklec killed a man who was about 50 years old.
Savoric, who has been sentenced to six years in prison pending appeal for war crimes near the Bosnian town of Glamoc, has been in the Remetinec prison in Zagreb since October 2009, while the other two co-defendants have been granted a provisional release.