The editorial team of the weekly newspaper Nacional has confirmed that it received a message on 20 May threatening an attack on its reporters. It has informed Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic and filed a complaint with the police.

The message, which arrived on Monday morning from a known telephone number, contains explicit threats against the Nacional journalists and a clear allusion to the murder of Ivo Pukanic, then owner of the Croatian weekly Nacional, and his close colleague Niko Franjic, who were killed by a car bomb in Zagreb on 23 October 2008.

The message also referred to recent events in Slovakia, in particular the assassination attempt on Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico.

Nacional also published the message, which reads as follows:

“You and your ilk assassinated Prime Minister Fico by writing half-truths and lies and inciting people who do their job to collect money. Your triple informant paid for it with his head, and soon all the editors from the ‘axis of evil’ will do the same. We are waiting for the moment to catch as many of you as possible so that we don’t waste explosives on just one vulture. The vultures who survive will start writing the truth and only the truth, not lying, inventing and writing just to cash in. We are hot on your heels and more than two will succeed, so write your wills.”

The story about the threat to Nacional was published as a news alert on the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom’s Mapping Media Freedom website.