In August 1991 Jarnjak was appointed assistant to interior minister Ivan Vekic, who is also due to testify today, and in April 1992 he succeeded Vekic as interior minister and remained in that position until December 1996.

Jarnjak said that it was difficult to carry out an investigation in Pakracka Poljana because of fighting at the time, adding that at one point the area was under Serb occupation.

The witness said he did not know about a prison in Pakracka Poljana, about dead bodies that had been found there or who had commanded the police reserve unit in question. He said that the unit could be linked to Mercep in that some of its members called themselves Mercep's men, and that he had met them in Gospic.

Jarnjak explained that at that time there were no ranks and that units were often named after persons who had proved themselves in combat, citing Glavas's men in Osijek, Decak's men in Virovitica and Norac's men in Gospic.

He said that the ministry sometimes received reports about missing persons and that later it turned out that those people were in occupied territory or had gone abroad. "We approached such reports with great caution," the witness said, claiming that he had not received any reports about Pakracka Poljana and that all front-line reports had been sent to the ministry's operations centre.

Just as former assistant interior minister Smiljan Reljic did in his testimony on Tuesday, Jarnjak also confirmed that the events in Pakracka Poljana had been investigated as part of the investigation into the murder of the Zec family in Zagreb.

Several people who identified themselves as Mercep's men confessed to the murder, but since they did so in the absence of a lawyer, the case against them was suspended for procedural reasons. The Zec case is included in the indictment against Mercep, who is charged on command responsibility with war crimes against civilians.

Jarnjak said that there had been information about crimes in Pakracka Poljana and that as far as he knew they had been investigated by Reljic and his deputy Marijan Benko. He said he did not remember if anyone had dealt with Pakracka Poljana in particular, other than the criminal police after the crimes were discovered.

Jarnjak said that when he took office in the Interior Ministry Mercep was already there serving as an adviser. He said he did not know what Mercep's powers were, but noted that advisers did not have any executive roles.

Jarnjak said that after he was appointed minister he put Mercep in charge of the Association of Homeland War Volunteers, adding that he never received any complaints about Mercep's behaviour.

Jarnjak said that in the autumn of 1991 the ministry realised that war crimes were being committed, so a war crimes investigation department was set up in October of that year. He said that the department investigated all war crimes, regardless of who had committed them.