A trial for the killing of Serb civilians in the village of Grubori after the 1995 Operation Storm was postponed on Tuesday because the court has still not received the death certificate for one of the defendants, Igor Beneta, who committed suicide.
Beneta's body was found in a wood in the Zadar area in April but police identified him only in late November.
He was the only one of the three defendants, special police, who was being tried in absentia. A warrant was issued for his arrest when police were unable to locate him after the Supreme Court in January decided to remand the three men in custody after two weeks.
After police said they had identified Beneta's body, the media reported that he did not hang himself but was murdered because he knew the truth about the crime in Grubori, a village near Knin.
Proceedings against Beneta cannot be dropped before the court receives his death certificate, so the trial was postponed until January 19.
The other two defendants, Frano Drlje and Bozidar Krajina, denied the war crimes charge in late November, saying they were not responsible for the killing of civilians.
The panel of judges plans to interrogate about 60 witnesses and examine documents also from the Hague war crimes tribunal.
Before the indictment in this case was filed, a number of people was under investigation, but the state attorney decided not to prosecute Berislav Garic due to lack of evidence and asked that wartime special police commander Zeljko Sacic be tried separately.
