Slobodan Djurovic, accused of being a link between the assassins who killed Ivo Pukanic and Sreten Jocic, who allegedly paid for the assassination of the Croatian reporter and co-owner of the Nacional weekly, on Monday accused key witness Tomislav Marjanovic of demanding EUR 300,000 from his family to change his testimony in which he accused six defendants in the Ivo Pukanic murder trial of killing Pukanic and of planning two other assassinations.
"He demanded EUR 300,000 from my brother to change his testimony. My lawyers report this to the USKOK anti-corruption agency, but USKOK failed to react, saying that this was not withing its jurisdiction," Djurovic said on the second day of presenting his defence before the Zagreb County Court.
Djurovic said that the authorities also failed to react to Marjanovic's threats, as it did not suit them to have their key witness be involved in a blackmail scandal.
Pukanic and his business associate Niko Franjic were killed in the explosion of a bomb attached to a moped parked by Pukanic's car outside the Nacional building in Zagreb on 23 October 2008. Franjic was a collateral victim.
Djurovic, as well as the other defendants in the trial in Zagreb -- Robert Matanic, Luka Matanic, Amir Mafalani, Zeljko Milovanovic and Bojan Guduric -- are charged with conspiracy to murder Pukanic for financial gain in order to stop him from writing about organised crime. They all pleaded not guilty.
