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Podujevo 1999 – Beyond Reasonable Doubttime I was in the field with a unit, both in Bosnia and in Croatia, I was issuedarms - they are battle equipment and are simply something you can’tdo without.”When asked by Rodić to give additional explanation about his entering thehouse after the civilians had left it and why he had done so, the defendantreplied: “The purpose of my entering the house after the civilians had leftit was to search the house and make it secure for other members to comein, and about the pistol I found there I believe it was quite normal that Itook it and it was just as well that I took it so the terrorist could not use itto fight us.”Asked by Rodić if he would also have taken the grenades he had discoveredin the house had the shooting not taken place, the defendant replied:“Had the shooting not occurred, I would certainly have taken the grenadesand put them into a safe place and given them to the unit for further disposition.”Before the District Court in Belgrade, at the main trial on 12 March 2003,the defendant reiterated his defence from the minutes of the main trial beforethe District Court in Prokuplje, dated 9 October 2002, and added: “Iwore battle fatigues. As for other details and explanations and descriptionsof the uniform I don’t want to say what it was like because I intend to askthe Albanians who will come to describe the uniform I wore.At the time of my meeting with the unit commander, Slobodan Medić, hesaid that the Scorpions unit was engaged to fight NATO forces and the terroristsin Kosovo. The unit was engaged by the armed forces of the FederalRepublic of Yugoslavia, but it was a part of Special Antiterrorist Unit ofthe Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Serbia. As I explained earlier,at the time of arriving in Prolom Banja, commander Medić delivered aspeech telling us we were not going to plunder, we were not going to killthe civilians, that whoever had come to do just that had better go back immediately.”After the defendant had been shown the sketches of the crime scene andthe photo documentation contained in the case file, the defendant ex-277