Five charged over murder of Croatian media figures

CROATIA HAS charged five people over the murder of two leading media figures and jailed 22 people in a major drug smuggling case, as part of a drive to crush powerful organised crime groups that could threaten the country's bid to join the European Union.

Croatia established special courts for Mafia suspects and announced plans to improve the running of its police force and witness-protection programme, and move more swiftly to confiscate criminals' property, after a string of apparent contract killings in the capital, Zagreb. A new interior minister, justice minister and chief of police have also been appointed in recent weeks.

Officials from the EU warned Croatia that organised crime could hamper its membership bid, after a bomb killed prominent editor Ivo Pukanic and his magazine's marketing chief last month.

A fortnight earlier, the daughter of a leading lawyer was shot dead in her apartment block, and media, business, and political figures have been badly beaten up in Zagreb this year.

This week a Zagreb court jailed 22 Croats for up to eight years for running a €10 million operation which smuggled some three tonnes of cannabis from the Netherlands to Britain.

The court also confiscated property worth about €2.5 million, which the group had bought to launder drug money.

Prosecutors have also pressed murder and conspiracy charges against five people over the death of Mr Pukanic and his colleague, Niko Franjic. Three Croats are in custody while two Serbs, one of them with a Bosnian and a Croatian passport, are on the run.

Police have not identified the suspects, but local media claim the Croats are close to a Serb Mafia boss who was the subject of a recent investigation by Mr Pukanic's magazine, Nacional.

Croatian media have also named one of the Serbs as a former member of his country's notorious Red Berets special forces unit, veterans of which have been closely associated with crime and nationalist groups, and one of whom was convicted of murdering reformist Serb prime minister Zoran Djindjic in 2003.

"During the operation, there has been intense co-operation with our neighbours . . . the operation was code-named 'Balkan Express'," Croatian police spokesman Krunoslav Borovec said of a series of raids that netted 10 suspects in the killings.

Police forces across former Yugoslavia have been slow to match the level of co-operation shown by the region's powerful criminal gangs.