A car bomb has killed Ivo Pukanic, a prominent Croatian journalist, and a colleague in downtown Zagreb, in what the country’s president and prime minister called an assassination.
State-run Croatian TV showed footage of Pukanic’s burned-out Lexus and two covered bodies outside his NCL Media Group office in the capital on Thursday. Police identified the victims as Pukanic and his group’s marketing director, Niko Franjic.
Krunoslav Borovec, a senior national police official, said a hidden explosive device had destroyed Pukanic’s car and that an investigation has been launched to determine who had killed the two men.
Six months ago, Pukanic, 47, said that someone had tried to kill him in front of his house in downtown Zagreb, showing police what he described as a bullet hole in a nearby shop window. Police provided him with protection afterward, but ended that in August at his request, Croatian Interior Minister Tomislav Karamarko said.
Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader said his government condemned the “assassination” of Pukanic, the owner and editor-in-chief of Nacional, the No. 2 political weekly in Croatia.
Pukanic’s media house also publishes several other newspapers.
“Is it mafia or terrorism, that’s early to say,” he said. “But we are witnessing something bigger” than a common crime, Sanader said.
Croatian President Stipe Mesic also swiftly condemned the killing.
“By tonight’s assassination, terrorism came to the streets of Zagreb,” Mesic said in a statement. “It is now a choice between us — the state of law — and them: criminals, terrorists, mafia.”
In Croatia, the term “terrorism” does not necessarily refer to an insurgent group, but is often used to describe bomb attacks carried out by criminals and criminal gangs.
Last month, Ivana Hodak, a 26-year-old daughter of a prominent lawyer, was shot twice in the head in her home in the capital, near police headquarters. The government condemned it as a mafia-style murder, not a terrorist attack.
Nacional, launched in 1995, is an investigative newspaper.
Pukanic was praised for his work there, but was also considered controversial and criticized for being too close to some politicians and a public figure believed to be an organized crime boss.
In April, Pukanic’s name also made headlines when his wife Mirjana accused him of buying and using cocaine from dealers.
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