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Podujevo 1999 – Beyond Reasonable Doubtlowed the regulations because the regulations say that, should anythingappear suspicious, a teargas grenade should be thrown into the house, andwe didn’t have teargas, and I might, in a different situation, have shot atthe man holding his hand so, since I didn’t know what he was holding inhis hand. This is what an officer would have done in peacetime, let alonein wartime.”At the end, the defendant stated: “This is all I have to say, and I find it curiousto be innocent in detention and I can hardly wait for all this to end andfor the truth to come out.”At the time of the first hearing in the preceding trial before the investigativejudge in the District Court in Prokuplje, on 24 May 1999, the defendant hadsaid: “I live in Novi Sad. I am married. No children.At the beginning of NATO attacks on Yugoslavia, on 24 March 1999, I wasengaged, as a member of the Reserve Corps of Special Antiterrorist Unit, infact, a special unit known as Scorpions.On 25 March 1993, we started, by bus, from Novi Sad, with two buses anda truck transporting fighters and equipment, the Scorpions commanderwas accompanied by three men from his personal security detail. First therewas Boca, in a BMW, grey metallic colour, one of the buses was Šid prevoz,the other one Bečej prevoz. All the buses were engaged for the needs ofour unit.We travelled for quite a while; we started around midnight and arrivedlate in Prolom Banja. O the way to Prolom Banja, we stopped at Makiš.There, we were given uniforms and put them on immediately, and whenwe reached Prolom Banja we were assigned to rooms. I shared a room withRajko, my platoon commander. After two or three days, when the secondgroup was expected to arrive, we were ordered, by our platoon commanders,to clean the arms that were oiled, both for ourselves and the secondgroup that was yet to arrive. In Prolom Banja, where we were accommodatedbefore going to Podujevo on an assignment, all of us were issued automaticrifles 7.62 mm, and ammunition.281