The panel of judges, presided by Judge Marin Mrcela, made this decision after having considered evidence proposed by the prosecution and defence teams for the two generals. The Ademi-Norac trial is the first case to be referred to Croatia by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
Witnesses to be questioned include Croatian army generals Mladen Markac, Davor Domazet Loso, Mate Lausic, Zeljko Sacic and Petar Stipetic.
The panel of judges turned down the defence motion to call to the witness-stand Savo Strbac, head of the Serb information and documentation centre "Veritas", who participated in collecting documents for the Hague tribunal's prosecution on crimes allegedly committed by Croatian forces during the war in Croatia. The court will not consider Strbac's documents because it believes that there are more relevant data on people killed and gone missing in the area of the Medak Pocket in September 1993.
The court also turned down a motion to question a deputy commander of the Croatian Serb rebel army, General Mile Novakovic, as well as a motion to include into the case file documents on weapons and ammunition used by Croatian military and police forces, and by UNPROFOR.
The court decided to request from the Defence Ministry all orders issued during the operation that was aimed at liberating the occupied parts of Croatia's Lika region to establish who issued them and if they had been manipulated.
The panel of judges did not accept the motion of Norac's defence team to reveal the identity of protected witnesses.
The court today did not state its position on a pre-trial statement from 2003 in which General Ademi claims that he had never been officially appointed commander or deputy commander of the Gospic Military District and had no real control over the operation. This prompted Norac's attorney Zeljko Olujic yesterday to state that he believed that Ademi could defend himself by shifting all responsibility onto Norac.
Although the pre-trial statement is part of the file, as is a number of other documents, it is no evidence and we do not have to state our position on it, Judge Mrcela said.
The trial is to continue on July 10 with the reading of documents. On July 16, the court will start questioning witnesses. Ivan Jarnjak and General Mladen Markac are expected to take the witness stand on that day.
Generals Norac and Ademi are charged according to command responsibility with crimes against civilians and the excessive and random shelling of Serb villages, which resulted in the killing of civilians. The indictment states by name all civilian victims and captured soldiers who were killed, after some of them had been subjected to cruel torture and were massacred.
At the time of Operation "Medak Pocket", Ademi was acting commander of the Gospic Military District, while Norac was commander of the Ninth Guard Motorised Brigade and of Sector 1.