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Dragan Vasiljkovic, alias ‘Captain Dragan’. Photo: Beta

Wartime paramilitary commander Dragan Vasiljkovic pleaded not on Thursday at preparatory hearing at the county court in the Croatian coastal city of Split.

“I don’t consider myself guilty,” Vasiljkovic told the court.

His trial will start on September 20 and the state attorney office put forward a list of 50 witnesses it wants to testify.

Vasiljkovic is accused of war crimes against civilians and prisoners of war in Croatia between 1991 and 1993.

He is accused of planning an attack on the town of Glina and surrounding villages in central Croatia in July 1991, which resulted in the death of two civilians, one of them a German journalist, Egon Scotland. Property was also looted and destroyed.

He is also charged with the torture and mistreatment of imprisoned Croatian soldiers and policemen in June and July 1991 at the fortress in Knin, and ordering the execution of two prisoners of war in Brska, near the southern town of Benkovac, in February 1993.

Vasiljkovic has been in custody in Split since July 2015, after he was deported from Australia, where he lived for many years under the name Daniel Snedden and worked as a golf instructor.

He was sent to Croatia after losing a nine-year battle against extradition.

Vasiljkovic denied the allegations and sought to avoid extradition from Australia on the grounds that he would not have a fair trial in Croatia.

Belgrade also lobbied the Australian government for Vasiljkovic to be prosecuted in Serbia rather than Croatia, also alleging that he would not get a fair trial.

During the early 1990s, Vasiljkovic came to the Knin region of Croatia to train a special armed unit of Serbian rebels, known as the Knindze – a pun on the words ‘Knin’ and ‘ninja’. They helped carve out a territory later proclaimed as the Republic of Serbian Krajina.

Vasiljkovic also instructed the notorious Serbian warlord Zeljko Raznjatovic, alias Arkan, and members of his Tigers paramilitary unit, amongst others.

Hague Tribunal indictments have connected the Tigers directly to Slobodan Milosevic’s government, maintaining that they were financed out of Serbia’s state budget.

Vasiljkovic testified as a prosecution witness at Milosevic’s trial in The Hague in 2003, when he denied having had any connection to Belgrade.

The Tribunal in 2007 named him as a participant in crimes against Croats and other non-Serbs in the case of former Croatian Serb leader Milan Martic, but did not request his arrest.