Amir Mafalani, the third defendant in the Zagreb trial for the murder of the reporter and co-owner of the Nacional weekly Ivo Pukanic, told the Zagreb County Court on Tuesday that people whose identity he did not want to reveal because he feared for his life had told him before Pukanic's murder that "somebody, somewhere was about to be killed".
I heard this from people who threatened to kill me so I don't want to reveal their identity, Mafalani said while amending his defence, after he accused Pukanic's alleged assassins also of planning to kill Hrvoje Petrac and his son Novica.
Mafalani claims that he was advised to keep silent about what he knew also by the police, who on the day of his arrest told him that if he said what he knew, the key witness in the trial, Tomislav Marjanovic, could accuse him of killing Davor Zecevic and Marko Slisko, as well as of throwing a hand grenade on the house of former politician Ivic Pasalic.
Presenting his defence today, Mafalani said for the first time that he had first met Zeljko Milovanovic and Bojan Guduric, defendants in the Pukanic murder trial, in the apartment of the first defendant Robert Matanic.
Mafalani said that at the time, Matanic described Milovanovic, who is standing trial for Pukanic's murder in Belgrade, as a very dangerous man.
He said that he did not have any problems with Guduric, who he said was mostly interested in places to go out in Zagreb.
After amending his defence, Mafalani was expected to answer questions from the defence and the prosecution.
At the beginning of today's hearing, the panel of judges conducting the trial rejected most of the evidence submitted by the defence, as a result of which the court will not hear testimonies from Sreten Jocic, the man who allegedly organised the group that killed Pukanic, and from Vladimir Zagorec and Stanko Subotic.
Jocic, Milovanovic and Zoran Kuzmanovic are on trial for the crime in Belgrade. The accused on trial in Zagreb are Slobodan Djurovic and alleged members of the criminal group Robert Matanic, Luka Matanic, Amir Mafalani and Bojan Guduric.
Pukanic and his business associate Niko Franjic were killed in the explosion of a bomb attached to a scooter parked by Pukanic's car outside the Nacional building in Zagreb on 23 October 2008. Franjic was a collateral victim.
