CNN.com - Serb policeman denies killing Arkan

Dobrosav Gavric and three other men are charged with Arkan's killing

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- A Serb policeman accused of gunning down warlord Arkan in a hail of bullets has pleaded not guilty on day one of his trial.

Dobrosav Gavric, who was off duty at the time of the attack in January, testified from a wheelchair that he had been wounded in the shooting. He said he had been in the lobby of Belgrade's Intercontinental Hotel, where the killing took place, only to meet a friend.

Arkan, whose real name was Zeljko Raznatovic, had been indicted for war crimes by a United Nations court for leading paramilitary units operating in Bosnia and Croatia in the 1990s.

The international police body Interpol also wanted him for a series of bank robberies across western Europe.

Prosecutors have also charged nine other men in connection with the death of Arkan, one of a series of high-profile killings in Yugoslavia in the final months of former president Slobodan Milosevic's authoritarian rule.

Three more men are also charged with murder for allegedly assisting Gavric, 24. Six others are charged with helping him after the shooting.

Gavric said he had been caught in the cross-fire of the attack, which also killed a friend of Arkan's, and a policeman.

"The firing started suddenly and I ducked," he told the court on Tuesday. "Then it stopped. I headed toward the exit, then something hit me in the spine area and I fell. Then I dragged myself out."

He said co-defendant Milan Djuricic had put him in a car. He had asked to be taken to a hospital in his hometown of Loznica, around 150 km from Belgrade, because he did not have confidence in the capital city's emergency unit.

Asked why he had worn a flak jacket that day, Gavric implied he saw it as a fashion accessory, saying he simply liked to wear it and put it on when it suited his clothes.

He said gunpowder traces found on his sweater might be from firecrackers he had thrown on Serbian New Year's Eve in the night of January 13-14, a day before the murder.

Perceptions of Arkan in Serbia differed dramatically from his image in the West. For many Serbs he was a folk hero who risked his life fighting his country's enemies.

He was also widely believed to have close links to Milosevic's power structure and was closely associated in many minds with the Belgrade underworld.

His mother Slavojka told reporters during a recess in the trial she thought Gavric's testimony was "full of lies."

Prosecutors have not publicly offered any motive for the killing but the most common theory advanced in Belgrade is that it was related to his business dealings.

Arkan's mother said she thought Gavric had killed Arkan for money and that the United States Central Intelligence Agency was behind the murder.

"If the CIA thinks that someone should not defend his country then they are very wrong," she added.

Arkan's killing was one of a series of high-profile, mostly unsolved murders that shook Yugoslavia earlier this year. They claimed the lives of the defence minister and the head of the state airline among others.

Among witnesses due to testify in the trial is Arkan's widow Svetlana Ceca Raznatovic, a pop singer well known in Serbia.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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