Croatia vows anti-mafia measures after editor slain
24 Oct 2008 16:24:57 GMT Source: Reuters
(adds OSCE comment) By Zoran Radosavljevic ZAGREB, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Ivo Sanader announced emergency measures on Friday to fight organised crime in Croatia after violence escalated to the point of threatening Zagreb's bid for European Union membership. A car bomb killed Ivo Pukanic, editor of Nacional weekly, and his marketing chief in Zagreb on Thursday in the latest of a series of incidents that have hit the capital this year. "There is no need to declare a state of emergency, but we will introduce extraordinary mobilisation measures. We shall deal thoroughly with organised crime, mafia or terrorism. Croatia will be a safe country," Sanader told reporters after a meeting of the National Security Council. He said the measures would include wider police authority, faster trials for organised crime, DNA databases of convicted criminals and the right to confiscate illegally obtained property. He did not specify what wider policy authority meant. The European Parliament's rapporteur for Croatia, Hannes Swoboda, said the rise in crime was a problem for the Balkan country which hopes to conclude EU accession talks next year and join the bloc in 2011. "This is the most serious obstacle in Croatia's (EU) accession talks since they started," Swoboda told local news portal javno.hr. "I think the government's negligence towards organised crime and corruption has to stop ... and ... Sanader must personally take measures against organised crime." The media freedoms monitor for the 56-nation Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe condemned what he called a "wave of terror against media that are striving to accomplish the indispensable job in exposing wrongdoing" in Croatia. "This shows once again that journalism is still a very dangerous profession in some parts of the OSCE region," Miklos Haraszti said in a statement. "The government has to stop violence against journalists to protect democracy." Sanader fired the interior and justice ministers earlier this month, when he announced a set of tough 'anti-mafia' laws. The sackings were prompted by a string of unresolved public beatings and the murder of a prominent lawyer's daughter, who was shot twice in the head in the stairway of the building where she lived, not far from the Zagreb police headquarters. This year, a well-known crime reporter was beaten up on the street, a member of the Zagreb city administration was attacked with baseball bats and the chief executive of a big construction firm was assaulted with iron bars in September.
