Zagreb County Court Judge Tomislav Jurisa convened the first hearing for February 5, the court said on Thursday.
Boljkovac and his attorney Anto Nobilo, both attending today's preliminary hearing, have been denying the charges from the start, saying there is no evidence linking him to the crime.
The Zagreb County Prosecutor's Office has accused Boljkovac of ordering between May 7 and mid-June 1945 the arrest and imprisonment of a large number of civilians from the Duga Resa area on charges of collaboration with the Ustasha authorities. At the time, he was the commander of the local branch of the OZNA, a security agency set up by the Partizans in 1944 for intelligence and security tasks.
The prosecution contends that those arrested, six identified and 14 unidentified persons, were questioned for several days, after which Boljkovac's company, at his orders, killed and buried them.
Boljkovac was arrested in November 2011 and placed in custody. Several weeks later, the Constitutional Court quashed a decision to investigate him because the investigation, under the former criminal procedure law, was led by an investigating judge and not a prosecutor's office.
A new investigation was launched in January 2012 under the new criminal procedure law. After being indicted this past September, Boljkovac said his case was an attempt to divert attention from daily politics and reiterated that he knew nothing about the crime.