Former President Stjepan Mesic dismissed on Monday political scientist Darko Petricic's accusations that his presidential campaign had been financed by an Albanian lobby or the Albanian mob, saying those were lies and defamation that had hurt and offended him.
"I wasn't financed by any lobby or mob. I never saw the Albanians that are being mentioned," Mesic told Zagreb's Municipal Court before Judge Zorislav Kaleb and Petricic, against whom he filed a private defamation suit.
Mesic said there was a report and an audit on the financing of his first presidential campaign, adding that he knew nothing about individual donors and amounts. He said his election team had been in charge of that, but that no person of Albanian nationality had made any significant donation to his campaign.
Mesic said he did not run in the campaign without money, but confirmed the number of interested sponsors increased before the runoff. He stressed that no donor had ever asked him for a favour.
Mesic said he had been meeting hundreds of people and that those mentioned by Petricic, who contended that Mesic was an exponent of the Albanian lobby, might have been among them. Mesic said he was also hurt by Petricic's claim that he was one of the three wealthiest people in Croatia, adding that he did not own any shares and that he borrowed money to buy a flat in Zagreb.
The judge asked if the two parties might make up, to which Petricic said: "Are you kidding?"
The defendant asked Mesic if he had been a collaborator of the former Yugoslav secret service UDBA, to which Mesic said that was "sheer idiocy".
Asked if his grandfather's name was Idriz Ujdurovic, Mesic asked the defendant if he was insane and then said he thought the defendant was not healthy, but answered that his grandfather was named Ivan and his father Josip.
Mesic confirmed that in 1992 he was at a meeting of Croatian emigrants in Australia, at the order of his then party, the HDZ, at which an Ustasha song was sung. "My job was to mobilise them to help Croatia," he said, dismissing speculation that he collected a bag with money on that occasion.
He said he had received such a bag, with several hundred thousand dollars inside, in Canada and that he gave it to then Defence Minister Gojko Susak.
Asked by Petricic if he was given a car in 2000, Mesic answered in the negative.
A new hearing was scheduled for November 16.
Mesic sued Petricic in December 2009 over his claims on Croatian Radio and Television and on Zagreb's Radio 101 that Mesic was "an exponent of the Albanian mob," that it financed his election campaign, and that he was one of the three wealthiest people in Croatia.
