Another suspect in the killing of the Croatian journalist Ivo Pukanic will join the already launched trial in Zagreb, after Bosnia extradited him on Friday, according to dpa. The suspect, Bojan Guduric, waived his protection from extradition that his Bosnian citizenship provided, saying he feared for his life in Bosnia. "I do not know who threatened him or who could kill him, but he is convinced that he is in danger," Guduric's lawyer, Nenad Balaban, told the Croatian news portal index on February 2. A journalist and publisher who wrote reports on the multi-billion business of cigarette smuggling in the former Yugoslavia, Pukanic was killed by a bomb in October 2008. An associate was also killed then. The trial of the alleged killers began this month in Zagreb, following a joint Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian police operation. Prosecutors charged convicted criminals - Guduric, Robert and Luka Matanic, Amir Mafalani, Zeljko Milovanovic and Slobodan Djurovic, as well as the reputed boss of the Balkan underworld, Sreten Jocic - for the organization and execution of the attack. Some of the suspects, including Jocic, will be tried in Belgrade, with the court set to launch proceedings in April. Expectations by local media that the Pukanic case would become the "trial of the century" gained credence Thursday, when a witness implicated the Montenegrin Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic. The witness, a former close ally of Djukanovic, accused the "tobacco mafia" for the killing. In his reports from 2001, Pukanic branded Djukanovic as the political patron of the organization that ran the multi-billion-dollar tobacco smuggling business in the 1990s, during wars in the former Yugoslavia.
