THE HAGUE The genocide trial of the self-styled Serb Adolf Hitler, Goran Jelisic, opened before the UN war crimes tribunal here Monday. The hearing was held behind closed doors to examine procedural questions at the request of the defence. The Bosnian Serb pleaded guilty last month to murdering and torturing Bosnian Muslims and Croats but he denied the charge of genocide, saying his actions were not part of a systematic plan to exterminate the Bosnian Muslim population.

He already faces life imprisonment following his guilty pleas but will be sentenced by judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for those crimes only once his trial on the genocide charge is over. Jelisic held a post at the Luka detention camp near the northern Bosnian town of Brcko, where Bosnian Muslims and Croats were held in appalling conditions, between May and July 1992, prosecutors alleged.

He introduced himself as the `Serb Adolf,' said that he had come to Brcko to kill Muslims and often informed the Muslim detainees and others of the number of Muslims he had killed, the indictment said. Jelisic, now 30, pleaded guilty to 12 documented killings, four acts of torture, and plunder, carried out in the space of two weeks in May 1992 in Brcko when he was 23 years old.

However prosecutors believe he carried out and ordered countless others.