"The police are intensively searching for the perpetrator," the spokeswoman for the Zagreb police, Gordana Vulama told Hina on Monday adding that they had found several traces after the burglary in lawyer Tomislav Jonjic's office as well as in other offices in that building in Medjimurska Street, which were the target of the burglary. The police also found fingerprints.
According to a police report, the burglar opened by force the door of the underground garage of that building and ascended the stairs until he reached the fifth floor on which there were offices of several companies, including the offices of the lawyer Jonjic.
First, the burglar broke in Jonjic's offices, searched the place and stole 70 kuna and CD ROM drives. After that he broke in another two offices, but he fled the scene when he saw an employee in one of the offices.
"The CD ROM drives contain the testimonies of protected witnesses, documents and audio and video recordings of court proceedings of two men indicted by the Hague-based tribunal whom I represent," Jonjic said adding that CD ROM drives included documents he provided from the Hague tribunal's prosecution as well as those he collected on his own.
The lawyer hopes that the burglary will not affect the preparedness of the defence team for the further process, but he fears that "a part of documentation necessary for the defence will be irretrievably lost if the stolen CD ROM drives cannot not be found".
"We can get again a part of the documentation from the tribunal's prosecution, but the testimonies of some protected witnesses have disappeared, and we do not know how they will react after this burglary and whether they will agree to repeat their testimonies at the trials," Jonjic said.
He said that apart from the CD ROM drives, no other valuables had been stolen.
Jonjic's clients, Bosnian Croats Pasko Ljubicic and Valentin Coric, are indicted by the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for war crimes in Bosnia in 1992 and 1993.