The Zagreb County Court on Friday convicted 51-year-old Tomislav Viktor Basa for murdering Promdei Banka owner Ibrahim Dedic in Zagreb in the summer of 1999, sentencing him to nine years in prison pending appeal.

Basa did not attend the sentencing hearing but will stay in custody until the verdict becomes final. His attorneys have already announced they would appeal.

Presenting his defence, Basa said that he was not involved in Dedic’s murder and did not shoot him. He said that he could not remember the event, claiming he was in a bad state at the time but admitted to having been at the scene with persons whose names he would not reveal, citing concerns for the safety of his child and family.

Basa was indicted in 2020 for Dedic’s murder, which committed on 3 July 1999 in Zagreb’s neighbourhood of Svetice.

He was charged with having ambushed the banker with another unidentified person with whom he colluded to kill Dedic.

After Dedic entered his apartment building in Svetice, Basa and the unidentified person shot him some 20 times, killing him, the prosecutors allege.

Croatian police arrested Basa on 30 January 2020 after waiting for him to return from abroad for several years in order to confirm their suspicion that he is the person who killed Dedic. He was arrested a few days after he arrived in Croatia for a visit.