Defendants Amir Mafalani and Bojan Guduric denied on Tuesday that they had been involved in the assassination of journalist Ivo Pukanic, claiming that the Office for the Suppression of Corruption and Organised Crime (USKOK) based the charges on a false testimony by key witness Tomislav Marjanovic.
Mafalani told the Zagreb County Court that Marjanovic's testimony completely lacked credibility and made no sense.
Mafalani dismissed Marjanovic's statement that before the assassination they had tailed Pukanic in a red Seat, saying this car had been stolen from him 10 months earlier and that he had reported this to the police.
Mafalani said Marjanovic lied when he said that Mafalani had frequently gone to Bulgaria with another defendant, Robert Matanic, that he had been watching the yard of Nacional weekly, where a bomb killed Pukanic on 23 October 2008, and that he had tailed and taken pictures of Pukanic while preparing the assassination.
Mafalani dismissed Marjanovic's accusation that he had purchased photo equipment, a telescope and a GPS to tail Pukanic, a journalist and co-owner of Nacional.
The defendant said he had known Marjanovic since 2002, when Marjanovic sold him a TV set that turned out to have been stolen, which landed Mafalani at a police station, where Marjanovic accused him of theft.
Guduric said he was innocent and that he could not have done what he was charged with.
USKOK accuses him of having watched from a building near Nacional's offices if the assassination would succeed and of being in charge of shooting Pukanic from a rifle in case it failed. His DNA was subsequently found on the rifle.
"I have never shot a rifle nor would I know how to. I didn't even serve in the army and I'm also myopic," he said. He admitted to involvement in property crime, but said he had never used weapons or force.
Guduric said he had been in his flat on the day of the murder, sometimes going out and texting his wife and talking with her on the cell phone the whole time.
He could not explain his DNA on the rifle found in a house outside Zagreb after the assassination, but said the rifle had not been in Zagreb when the crime was committed.
Like others before him, he accused Marjanovic of lying.
Guduric fled Serbia in the summer of 2008, as he was supposed to serve prison time for involvement in a robbery. He said his wife had given birth and that his family's existence depended on him, which prompted him to flee.
Guduric said he had lived with Matanic "a couple of months", who had been recommended by "a friend". He then rented a flat in Petrinjska Street in downtown Zagreb, which USKOK established the assassins had used to prepare the Pukanic murder.
