Prisoner´s Father: Maestro is a Political Game

Ante Pesa, the father of the accused and freed Robert, says the overinflated balloon of the soap Maestro broke over his son’s head.

After the Croatian Constitutional Court brought a decision which released the second accused in the “Maestro” case Robert Pesa from custody after 20 months, his father Ante is not hiding his happiness, but stresses the decision should have been made long ago.

“His release from custody would be a great success if he were guilty of something, but anyone who has an insight into the case sees that the court has nothing to charge him with. It is shameful and degrading that Robert, being my son or not, rotted in inhumane conditions for 20 months. Never in history has it occurred that somebody, for these charges, has been held in custody for so long” said Ante Pesa.

Not even he knows at what time his son will be released from custody, because the paperwork for his release is being currently processed.

“The lawyer is now working on that, but I hope that in two to three hours time we will pick him up and that he will finally be home with his children” said Pesa.

Besides the Constitutional Court decision that Pesa be released from custody, judge Ivana Krsul, who leads the “Maestro” process, brought a decision less than a month ago returning 20,000 euros confiscated during the criminal processing, even though that was initially denied.

“In the explanation, the judge wrote that there is no evidence that my son received bribes or of any other criminal activities, and that is what we were proving the whole time.

His family lived very poorly. I helped them as much as I could, but I could not help a lot. However, money is the smallest problem here, what is most tragic is that the children, aged only 13 and 16, will have lasting consequences, but none of the responsible did not worry about that” said Pesa.

As he said, since his son was arrested as a part of the “Maestro” anti-corruption operation, he has sent hundreds of letters to various parliamentary committees, even to Minister Ivan Simonovic, but he did not get an answer from any of them, let alone help, because of which he is even more certain that “Maestro” is a political game.

“Maybe the hardest thing was that on multiple occasions I wrote to the Croatian Helsinki Committee who did not even answer me, nor did any of them accept me for a conversation. They do not even want to hear me out, and at the same time they want to give Mladen Bajic an award. This is only evidence of what sort of country we live in” said Robert Pesa’s father.

Also, he added, he hopes that the release of his son from custody has opened many people’s eyes to see what he has been saying all along, and that a political process is in question.

“Take a look at that Josko Kuzmanovic. He, as their main witness speaks nonsense in the newspapers. I do not know what I would say about all of it, maybe nothing is best until the trial is over. I can only say that the decision by the Constitutional Court has confirmed what I have been saying all along, and that is that they do not have anything against my son, and that somebody had a great interest that they all be in custody needlessly for so long. For the good of all of us, I hope that in a democratic country that Croatia should be, that something like this will never happen again” concluded Ante Pesa.