"I did not provide funding for General Gotovina while he was at large, although I knew him. I last saw him in 1998 or 1999 at a dinner organised by General Zagorec," Petrac said on Friday while presenting his defence in a repeated trial for the kidnapping of retired General Vladimir Zagorec's underage son.
Speaking before the Zagreb County Court, Petrac apologised to Prime Minister Ivo Sanader for calling him names after his arrest in Greece and for wishing him "a lot of luck in his political suicide". However, he said today that his apology did not refer to his claim about Sanader's political suicide.
Explaining why he was on the run for a year and a half, Petrac said that he was convinced at the time that he was a victim of a rigged political trial which had to do exclusively with Gotovina, and that the arrest of his son Novica was a way for the authorities to get hold of him.
Petrac said his suspicion that the proceedings were politically motivated only grew stronger when he was banned from entering EU countries and when the government launched an action plan to arrest Gotovina, in which he said he had been labelled the chief mobster in Croatia without any evidence.
Petrac said that after his arrest in Greece he had been questioned exclusively about Gotovina and that nobody had even mentioned the kidnapping because of which a warrant for his arrest had been issued.
Apart from Greek secret services Petrac was visited in prison by investigators of the Hague war crimes tribunal, and was questioned by a Greek investigating judge on behalf of the Croatian judicial authorities. All of that prompted him to seek asylum in Greece, Petrac said.
He went on to say that he had started changing his opinion in prison, when he learned from his attorney that his son Novica had indeed been involved in the kidnapping, which Novica Petrac recently admitted in the retrial.
The trial will continue on November 27.