Croatia will kill me, says Dragan

Croatia will kill me, says Dragan

The man known as "Captain Dragan" told the extradition hearing his prosecution by Croatia for war crimes was retaliation for the prosecution of Croatian military commander Ante Gotovina by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

"I am a sworn political enemy of the HDZ (Croatian ruling party) and I believe I will not survive to obtain a fair trial in Croatia should I be surrendered into their custody,"  Vasiljković said in a statement.

"I believe I will be killed or alleged to have committed suicide. I do not believe I will get a lawyer in Croatia to properly present my case. I am frightened if I raise these matters I will be tortured and killed."

He had entered the witness box for the first time since his arrest in Sydney in January on war crimes charges. Croatian authorities allege that as a member of Serbian paramilitary forces in the early 1990s in Krajina, he brutalised a captive soldier, ordered a murder and told troops to fire on a town.

Vasiljković, who told the court he changed his name to Daniel Snedden 30 years ago when he first moved to Australia, said a plaque on the wall of the fortress at Knin, where he trained Serbian soldiers, proved he could not receive a fair trial.

He told the court the plaque said: "In this place in 1991 there were imprisoned, tortured and killed Croatian defenders by the forces of Captain Dragan."

The plaque, dated August this year, was dedicated to "Croatian concentration camp victims of Serb forces in Knin", he said.

Vasiljković said he had been a commander in the civil war and helped keep Krajina free of "HDZ military domination" from June 1991 to 1995.

He said that when he gave evidence for the prosecution at the ICTY trial of Slobodan Milosevic, he had not been questioned about any alleged involvement in war crimes.

Vasiljković also attacked The Australian for first reporting the war crimes allegations. "There were no specific allegations of war crimes against me until a defamatory article appeared in The Australian in September 2005, which implied that I was involved in war crimes distinct from those alleged in these proceedings," he said. The hearing continues.