The trial for the murder of the co-owner of the political weekly Nacional, Ivo Pukanic, continued at the Zagreb County Court on Thursday with the testimony of two female witnesses who were close to the crime scene when Pukanic and his business associate, Niko Franjic, were assassinated in a bomb explosion in central Zagreb on October 23, 2008.
The two witnesses gave evidence via video link from another courtroom fearing for their own safety. Their faces on the monitor were blurred and their voices electronically distorted.
The woman identified as Witness No. 2 said she had seen a man in a raincoat and a peak cap shortly before the explosion in the car park of the Nacional building. She said all the passers-by except the suspect were shocked by the blast.
"While crossing the street, he paused briefly, looked around and kept walking," the witness said, adding that she saw the man as he was leaving the car park and heading towards the city's main square.
She was unable to identify any of the suspects in a police lineup, unlike the other witness, called Witness No. 3, who recognised two suspects she had seen in Nacional's car park.
"I recognised one with 100% certainty and another with 95-97% certainty," Witness No. 3 said. She said that two weeks before the assassination she had seen the two men in the car park "studying things, looking at the surrounding buildings and bending down to look under cars."
The witness did not specify which two of the six suspects she had recognised.
