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.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of