Zagorec Did Not Wish Or Could Not Kill Ivo Pukanic

According to the testimony of Robert Matanic, Vladimir Zagorec and Stanko Subotic Cane ordered Joca Amsterdam to kill Ivo Pukanic.

Zvonimir Hodak, attorney of retired Croatian general Vladimir Zagorec, has denied claims for Javno website that Robert Matanic accused Zagorec and Montenegrin entrepreneur Stanko Subotic Cane for ordering the murder of Nacional weekly co-founder Ivo Pukanic.

Serbian prosecutors in Zagreb

According to the Serbian Press paper, Robert Matanic told Belgrade investigators that Subotic and Zagorec ordered Pukanic`s assassination from Sreten Jocic aka. Joca Amsterdam, who hired his best man Slobodan Djurovic, Robert Matanic`s old acquaintance from Bulgaria, to set up the explosive, along with the infamous Zeljko Milovanovic and Bojan Guduric, who is still at large.

- I absolutely deny that Zagorec has anything to do with this murder. He could not have and he did not want to either. It is interesting that this news is now reported in Serbia. I think they are having a dry spell at the moment and lies are published instead of the truth – attorney Hodak told us.

Representatives of the Serbian prosecution contacted the Croatian Office for the Prevention of Corruption and Organised Crime (USKOK) with a request of examining four suspects for the Ivo Pukanic assassination case and Niko Franjic, Nacional`s marketing director who was a collateral victim of the murder.

It is during their visit to Zagreb, Serbian media claim, that Matanic marked Zagorec and Subotic as the persons who ordered the bomb assassination.

The prosecutors were especially interested in Jocic`s best man Djurovic – this was one of their main reasons for coming to Zagreb.

They were interested in the details about Djuric`s meeting with Jocic in a Montenegrin bar, when the assassination plan was supposedly elaborated.

It is not familiar whether Djorovic helped the investigators, but in case that he did not, Matanic gave them information which will keep them busy for a while.

Nacional weekly co-founder Ivo Pukanic was killed by a bomb set up under his car in October 2008. The explosion also killed the paper`s marketing director Niko Franjic.

After an express arrest of the “Croatian group” of suspects for the Pukanic assassination, Sreten Jocic was arrested in Belgrade on May 27, suspected of organising the murder. Perpetrator Zeljko Milovanovic was then arrested, who had the police from all region countries on his trail.

For the time being, court processes in the Pukanic-Franjic murder case will be headed separately. One group, the Matanic cousins, Amir Mafalani and Slobodan Djorovic, will be tried in Zagreb, while the process against Sreten Jocic, Zeljko Milovanovic and Milenko Kuzmanovic will be conducted in Belgrade.