In his testimony at the trial for the October 2008 murder of Croatian journalist Ivo Pukanic before Zagreb County Court on Thursday, Montenegrin businessman Ratko Knezevic referred to Sreten Jocic, who had allegedly ordered the assassination, as "the Premier League of Serbian mafiosi", and said that Jocic's close friend, Slobodan Djurovic, who is one of the six accused in this case, had ties to the underworld and the Montenegrin government and was highly ranked in "the Balkan crime confederation".
Although he did not known him personally, the witness said that Jocic, whom he referred to several times as "Mr Amsterdam", had frequently visited Montenegro in order to get closer to the authorities and "get a licence for the cocaine business".
Knezevic claimed that government-sponsored cocaine smuggling replaced cigarette smuggling in Montenegro, adding that the same routes were also used for trafficking in weapons and people. He said that this was the reason why EU countries had launched investigations to sever the smuggling routes, even though they were initially benevolent to the cigarette smuggling with which Montenegro financed its independence from Serbia.
In order to get into the cocaine business, Jocic spent an entire summer in the Montenegrin coastal resort of Budva in the company of Djurovic, the witness said.
Knezevic tried to avoid answering questions as to the source of his information, saying he feared for the lives of the people who had given him the information.
"A joint dictatorship of the mafia and state security elements is at work in Montenegro and human lives are worth very little. Those people will be in danger after this, and I suspect that even the record of my testimony during the investigation ended up on the table on Prime Minister Djukanovic," Knezevic said.
Knezevic several times referred to Djukanovic as the sponsor of the tobacco mafia and the sponsor of Stanko Subotic aka Cane, who has moved to Switzerland, where cigarette smuggling is not treated as a crime, after he ended up on an Interpol arrest warrant following the investigation into cigarette smuggling.
Nevertheless, Cane frequently comes to Montenegro where he enjoys the protection of the state authorities and his house is under police protection, the witness said.
When shown by the Djurovic defence team a letter from Interpol's Montenegro office according to which Subotic had not been visiting that country, Knezevic said that the letter was most probably written to deceive the Croatian police.
Speaking of the tobacco mafia, Knezevic also mentioned the Croatian tobacco factory Tvornica Duhana Rovinj (TDR) as "Stanko Subotic's major client", noting that he paid millions to TDR from a Cyprian bank.
According to the indictment, the accused Slobodan Djurovic was a connection between the assassins and Jocic, who allegedly paid 1.5 million euros for the assassination of Pukanic. Knezevic described Djurovic as a person with ties to both the criminal underworld and the Montenegrin government.
"You knew all Montenegrin mafiosi. You and your family are brilliantly connected with the government and with the mafia in Montenegro," the witness said when asked by Djurovic why he had come to court to "sell his pamphlets".
"I'm here to stop this blood trail running from Podgorica to Zagreb. I will never stop and only a bullet from you or your friends can stop me," Knezevic said.
Knezevic said he had Montenegrin, British and Croatian citizenship. He said he had been friends with Djukanovic since the late 1980s, adding that he had been cooperating with Djukanovic after Djukanovic came to power and had been lobbying for Montenegro round the world. He said their ways parted "when the two country fell under the influence of smugglers."
