Hearing new alleged witnesses without the presence of Zagorec's Croatian lawyers is not in line with the rule of law and the right to defence, reads the statement by lawyer Gabriel Lansky, who also said that Zagorec's Zagreb attorney had requested a postponement of the hearing because he was ill, but the investigating judge turned down his request.
The decision of the investigating judge confirms our position that Zagorec will not have a fair trial in Croatia, Lansky said in the statement.
Georg Brockmeyer, spokesman for the Vienna law firm, could not confirm today if the request for Zagorec's extradition to Croatia, filed by the Croatian Justice Ministry, had arrived in Austria, saying he had no information on it yet.
Zagorec's Vienna defence team is working intensively on a complaint to be filed against Croatia with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, the statement said.
Zagorec, who has lived in Vienna for the past seven years, is suspected of abuse of office, namely that in 2000 he took from a Defence Ministry safe diamonds he had received from a German arms dealer in 1993 as collateral for five million US dollars from the ministry intended for the purchase of weapons for Croatia's defence.
The accusations are absurd and fabricated, the witnesses lack credibility, and there were no diamonds, Lansky said.