Josip Boljkovac, who used to be a senior official of the former Yugoslav Communist security agency (OZNA), is charged with command responsibility for the arrest of a high number of civilians in Duga Resa and nearby towns and villages and with the execution of 21 civilians in May 1945 at the Vidanka-Curak location, with Boljkovac denying his accountability for those crimes before an investigating judge in Zagreb on Wednesday afternoon.
The Croatian Interior Ministry said in a press release that an investigation was completed which it launched in 1998, together with the prosecutorial authorities in Zagreb and Karlovac, when remains of people killed in the wake of the Second World War were exhumed in the wider Karlovac area.
Boljkovac, 91, is charged with war crimes against civilians.
After the questioning at the Zagreb County Court, Boljkovac's lawyer Anto Nobilo said that his client could not be held accountable for those crimes as he had not commanded the units that had perpetrated those atrocities.
Nobilo described the arrest of Boljkovac as a show which Interior Minister Tomislav Karamarko of the the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) had prepared for election campaign purposes.
Boljkovac was escorted by the police and was accompanied by a doctor to the court.
The lawyer said that his client was old, sick and demented and could walk only on crutches.
After Croatia gained independence, Boljkovac was the country's first interior minister.
