Former Yugoslav and Croatian secret service official Zdravko Mustac was handed a 40-year prison sentence, a court in Velika Gorica said on Thursday. The ruling converted his sentence to life imprisonment which he had been handed by a Munich court over a high profile 1983 assassination of a Croatian emigrant in Germany.
Zdravko Mustac (76), had been tried in Germany along with another Yugoslav-era secret police official, Josip Perkovic (73), for ordering and organising the assassination of a Croatian émigré Stjepan Djurekovic in 1983 in Germany.
Following years of highly publicised legal wrangling in Croatia, Perkovic and Mustac were extradited in 2014 to stand trial in Germany after Munich prosecutors had indicted themfor their involvement in the murder of Djurekovic.
It was proved during the trial that Perkovic and Mustac, at the time senior officers of the Yugoslav secret service, had organised Djurekovic’s assassination abroad after he had emigrated to Germany in 1982.
Djurekovic, who was formerly CEO of the Zagreb-based state-owned oil company Ina, became involved with Croatian emigre groups in Germany before he was murdered in Wolfratshausen, a small town some 30 kilometres south of Munich.
In 2016, thirty years after the crime, a Munich court sentenced both Perkovic and Mustac to life imprisonment.
After their verdict, their request to serve their sentence back in Croatia was granted by German courts. However, this raised the issue of how to convert their sentence, as Croatia’s criminal code does not envision life imprisonment and proscribes a maximum jail term of 40 years, reserved for only the most severe types of crimes.
In December, a Zagreb court converted Perkovic’s sentence to 30 years in prison. At the time, the case of Mustac was passed on to another local court, in Velika Gorica, a town just south of capital Zagreb, to convert the sentence, as Mustac was resident of the town prior to his arrest.
The ruling published on Thursday was the last pre-requisite for their extradition to Croatia from the German prison where they have been held since 2016.
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