The 61-year-old parish priest, Mladen Kozina, is charged with downloading about 3,000 photographs from child pornography sites from 2007 to 2010. Details of the plea agreement and the criminal investigation were not disclosed because the case involved underage children.
Kozina was arrested last October as part of an international anti-pedophile police operation launched by Britain's Scotland Yard. The operation covered 24 people and legal entities in Croatia who were suspected of downloading or possessing pedophile content, including photographs and videos of naked children and children engaged in explicit sexual behaviour. The police searched about 30 homes, seized dozens of computers, hundreds of memory cards, and thousands of CDs and DVDs.
Priest Kozina was provisionally released after his arrest, and during the pre-trial investigation the Zagreb Archdiocese relieved him of all priestly duties in his parish.