Amir Mafalani, one of six men accused of the murder of Croatian journalist Ivo Pukanic, told the Zagreb County Court on Wednesday that he was not at the crime scene the day before the 2008 murder in downtown Zagreb, as claimed by protected witness number three.
During a police lineup, the witness said she saw Mafalani, third on the indictment, and Robert Matanic, first on the indictment, on the parking lot of Nacional, a weekly co-owned by Pukanic, on 5 October 2008, the day before a bomb planted there killed Pukanic.
Mafalani said that was not him, as in those days his face was all swollen because of an inflamed tooth. He added that he visited a dentist in Zagreb on the day of the assassination and that medical records confirmed it. He said there was also a cell phone picture taken at that time showing him with a swollen face and that the phone was confiscated by the police.
The panel of judges entered into evidence a Nacional article linking Matanic to murders in Bulgaria. A protected witness, Dusan Erceg, told the court yesterday that upon seeing the article, Matanic told him while they were serving sentences in a Serbian prison that he would kill Pukanic in 20 days' time.
The judges accepted a request by the defence to ask relevant Montenegrin bodies for information expected to prove that EUR 750,000 deposited in the account of defendant Slobodan Djurovic four days before the Pukanic murder was not intended to kill Pukanic but for trading in some construction land.
The trial resumes on May 10.
