Robert Matanic, the first defendant in the trial for the murder of the Nacional weekly's co-owner and reporter Ivo Pukanic and his business associate Niko Franjic, on Monday reiterated before the Zagreb County Court that he had not been in any way connected with that crime.
Matanic, who pleaded not guilty at the start of the trial, today again accused the Croatian national agency for investigating organised crime and corruption (USKOK) of having deluded him into making up a false story in return for a possibility to be treated as a protected witness.
Matanic said he stood by all he had said so far at the pre-trial process and during the trial, and that he only denied his own statement of 22 December 2008 when he implicated another defendant Slobodan Durovic as well as Vladimir Zagorec and Stanko Subotic Cane in Pukanic's murder.
According to Matanic, he gave this false statement on 22 december 2008 as USKOK reportedly needed the names of those men "for a larger-scale investigation".
Matanic again described Tomislav Marjanovic, a key witness, as "a pathological liar and arch-kleptomaniac".
He said that another two defendants in this case - Luka Matanic and Amir Mafalani -- were arrested and accused of this crime only because they were his cousin and his friend.
Robert Matanic said that he knew Bojan Guduric, who is also standing trial with him and the other defendants.
Matanic admitted that Guduric had once brought Zeljko Milovanovic, who is standing trial in Belgrade as the assassin of Pukanic, to his home to stay overnight.
Matanic said that he had not known what Milovanovic had been doing in Croatia at that time.
Matanic said that he did not know personally Djurovic, one of the six defendants in this trial in Zagreb.
He described Djurovic as a man who had helped him while he had been serving his term in a prison in Serbia, without any explanation.
He denied having known that Djurovic was a close friend of Sreten Jocic, who is indicted in Serbia for having paid EUR 1.5 million for Pukanic's murder.
Jocic, Milovanovic and Milenko Kuzmanovic are being tried by the Belgrade court for this assassination.
Pukanic and Franjic were killed in the explosion of a bomb attached to a scooter parked by Pukanic's car outside the Nacional building in Zagreb on 23 October 2008. Franjic was a collateral victim.
During the continuation of today's trial in Zagreb, Luka Matanic also dismissed charges pressed against him.
![[DOKUMENT] Vrhovni sud odbio optužbu protiv Vladimira Zagorca u aferi vikendica zbog zastare](/media/thumbnail/500x300/1481333.jpeg?cropId=1746134)
