VANCOUVER - A B.C. man says he was working as an unarmed military mechanic in 1991, the same time a Croatian court says he was torturing and killing prisoners of war.
Josip Budimcic testified for a second day Wednesday at hearing to determine whether he withheld information on his 1994 refugee application in Belgrade.
The Canadian government says Budimcic, who is Croatian, is a convicted war criminal who misled immigration officials about his military service during the Yugoslavian civil war.
Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day has asked the Immigration and Refugee Board to strip Budimcic of his refugee status, which could see him sent back to Croatia.
Budimcic said he served in the Yugoslavian Army after being picked up while mass mobilizations were sweeping the country in the fall of 1991.
He has already presented his military booklet at the hearing to confirm the dates and places of his deployment.
He says he was only a day labourer and a mechanic, without weapons or even a uniform.
But witnesses told a Croatian court that Budimcic was a member of the Serbian paramilitary police, guilty of war crimes during the same period.
In 1996, Budimcic was convicted in absentia of torturing and executing prisoners and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Dennis McCrea, Budimcic's lawyer, denies the charges and questions the impartiality of the Croatian courts that convicted his client.
He said Budimcic, 43, is one of many targeted by Croatian officials in the aftermath of the civil war for not fighting.
McCrea called Dr. Ivan Avakumovic, a scholar in Balkan politics and history, as an expert witness on the situation leading to the breakup of Yugoslavia.
"Before 1990, there was no rule of law, especially when it came to political matters,'' he said. "After 1991, there were new leaders, but the script remained the same.''
He told the hearing he could not trust the impartiality of court decisions in the former Yugoslavian states because of the war and the remnants of the communist regime.
Croatian court rulings in the aftermath of the civil war were "a tool of the new government,'' he said.
But Avakumovic would not comment specifically on decisions made in Croatian courts, or the legitimacy of Budimcic's conviction.
He said he was only familiar with larger trials at The Hague but called both courts examples of victor's justice.
McCrea asked Avakumovic whether, in light of the region's bloody history, a Croatian man married to a Serbian woman who left Croatia in 1991 for a Serb-controlled area and did not fight should return to Croatia.
"I would not sell such a person a life insurance policy if he went back,'' Avakumovic replied. "We have long memories in the Balkans.''
Budimcic told the hearing Yugoslavia was disintegrating when he fled to the safety of a relative's small apartment in Belgrade without money or belongings.
He said he fled the city of Osijek in 1991 with his Serbian wife and children, abandoning an apartment and job as a police traffic officer, to escape rising Croatian nationalism.
"I was a proud, professional police officer,'' he said. "But around 1991, things were changing in Osijek.''
Nationalists seeking an independent Croatian army began to bolster police ranks with thousands of new recruits, he said.
"They were taking people off the streets,'' he said. "Anyone could join the police. They even released people from jail to join. I was very surprised.''
Budimcic said he soon saw traditional uniforms being swapped for camouflage fatigues and people with little training being handed guns.
Bombings were going uninvestigated and Serbian-dominated towns outside Osijek were setting up their own local police forces.
"I wasn't able to do my job,'' he said. "A gun means nothing when they put a bomb in your car.''
On July 1, 1991, a senior police chief was assassinated while trying to negotiate with a local militia outside of Osijek.
Ten days later, before dawn, Budimcic said he turned in his uniform and weapon, gathered his family and drove the only safe highway out of Croatia bound for Belgrade.
According to Budimcic, he spent the next two years stuck between sides in a civil war he wanted nothing to do with.
