The trial for the murder of the co-owner of the political weekly Nacional, Ivo Pukanic, and his aide, Niko Franjic, opened at Zagreb County Court on Wednesday morning amid tight security.
The defendants are Robert and Luka Matanic, Amir Mafalani, ZeljkoMilovanovic, Bojan Guduric and Slobodan Djurovic, who have been indicted by theOffice for the Prevention of Corruption and Organised Crime (USKOK) for murderfor gain, a crime against public security and a conspiracy to commit crime.
Guduric and Milovanovic were not in the dock. Guduric, who turned himself into the police in northwestern Bosnian city of Banja Luka on Monday, is incustody in Bosnia awaiting extradition to Croatia, while Milovanovic is incustody in Belgrade where he is awaiting a trial for the same case along withMilenko Kuzmanovic and Sreten Jocic, aka Joca Amsterdam, who, according to Serbianprosecutors, had paid 1.5 million euros for the assassination of Pukanic.
In mid-October last year, Montenegrin businessman Ratko Knezevic testifiedduring the investigation at Zagreb County Court, accusing his best man,Montenegrin Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic, and "his tobacco cartel"of ordering the assassination.
Pukanic and Franjic were killed in the explosion of a bomb planted next toPukanic's car in the car park outside the Nacional offices in central Zagreb onOctober 23, 2008.
