The trial, which started on 13 December 2005, will be conducted by a trial chamber presided by Judge Bakone Justice Moloko of the South African Republic.
The prosecution will introduce 63 witnesses and a large number of documents, transcripts and audio and video recordings, including transcripts of Martic's conversations with former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and his closest associates.
Martic is charged on the basis of individual and command responsibility with 19 counts of crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war, persecutions on political, racial and religious grounds, extermination, killings, imprisonment, torture and deportations of Croat civilians in the occupied areas of Croatia in the period from 1991 to 1995, as well as crimes against non-Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1994 and the shelling of the Croatian capital Zagreb in May 1995.
As the founder and commander of the Serb police in the so-called Serb Autonomous District (SAO) Krajina, minister of defence and the interior, and the 1994/95 president of the RSK, Martic, together with the leadership of Serbia and Montenegro, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia/Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav People's Army, participated in a joint criminal enterprise whose purpose was the forcible removal of a majority of Croat civilians and other non-Serbs from the occupied areas of Croatia, the prosecution says in its pre-trial submission.
The criminal enterprise resulted in the murder of hundreds and expulsion of tens of thousands of Croat and other non-Serb civilians from their homes, their imprisonment in inhumane conditions, slaughter and other forms of persecution, reads the indictment.
Martic has been in custody at the ICTY's detention unit since his voluntary surrender on 15 May 2002.
The first indictment against him was confirmed and published on 25 July 1995 and was amended on 18 December 2002.