ZAGREB, Croatia-A Croatian opposition lawmaker testified at his war crimes trial Monday that he had not ordered the torture and killing of at least 11 Serb civilians during the 1991 war.

Branimir Glavas said he had no authority in the area at the time. Glavas, re-elected to parliament in Nov. 25 elections, is the first senior Croatian politician to be tried for war crimes stemming from the war, which erupted when minority Serbs rebelled against Croatia's independence from Yugoslavia.

Glavas is charged with forming a paramilitary unit in 1991 in the eastern Croatian town of Osijek, where he was seen as a warlord, and ordered its members to detain, torture and kill Serb civilians. The bodies of 10 victims were allegedly dumped in a river, with their hands tied and mouths covered with tape.

In another incident in Osijek, Glavas, who once was a prominent member of Prime Minister Ivo Sanader's party, is accused of ordering three Serb civilians to be tortured and one of them killed.

Glavas said he "did not have command over any unit and so I could not have committed" the crimes. He insisted that a Sanader ally and the former speaker of parliament, Vladimir Seks, was in charge in Osijek at the time as the head of the "crisis headquarters."

"Nothing could have happened without the knowledge, agreement and approval" of Seks, Glavas said.

Seks has denied any involvement in any war crimes.

Glavas is being tried together with six alleged members of the paramilitary unit. All have been detained since the investigation began a year ago and all had pleaded not guilty at the trial at Zagreb district court.

If convicted, Glavas faces 20 years in prison.

Glavas was a senior member of the Croatian Democratic Union throughout the 1990s, but was expelled from it three years ago by Sanader, who got rid of party hawks and his opponents as he transformed the former nationalist party into a conservative-style one.

Glavas, once a fiery nationalist who has since toned down his rhetoric, then formed his own party, which won three seats in the 153-member parliament in the elections.

Parliament lifted his immunity last year so he could be prosecuted for war crimes, but his attorneys now claim he should be released from prison to swear in when the new parliament is formed.