Detention was set for the 28-year-old by investigating judge Renata Milicevic due to the danger that Rovisan might commit the same crime again and because he was already convicted.
The judge made the decision after questioning Rovisan for one hour. The prosecution accuses him of endangering life and property, and of illegal possession of arms and explosive materials, for which the maximum prison sentence is five years.
After the interview, Rovisan's attorney Ilia Ivanic told the press Monday's explosion occurred when Rovisan accidentally dropped an M75 hand grenade in a mail room of the British Embassy, where had been working for the past four years.
Ivanic said Rovisan carried the bomb with him all the time because he was afraid of people who gravely injured him in the casino of Zagreb's Esplanade hotel, where he worked as a bouncer, four years ago.
The attorney did not name those persons, but it is known that Novica Petrac and Sinisa Sosa are being tried for that incident before the Zagreb Municipal Court. Ivanic said that Rovisan was particularly afraid of Sosa.
Ivanic said that over the last three months his client had been pressured to change his statement in favour of the accused. The trial was to have resumed tomorrow, but was postponed because Sosa did not receive a summons, said Marijan Pedisic, one of the defence attorneys.
According to Ivanic, Rovisan carried the bomb in his car every day, but on the day of the explosion he came to work from Sisak, 50 km southeast of Zagreb, by train because his car had broken down. He carried the bomb in his backpack. Seeing in the embassy mail room that the bomb's fuse had loosened up, he tried to tighten it with a plastic band. The bomb fell out of his hand and went off, lightly injuring his left shin and making him unconscious.
Ivanic said that Rovisan at first told the police the bomb had entered the embassy in a package of newspapers, but decided to tell the truth after seeing in which direction the case was going and because of the employer's fair treatment of him.
"It is absolutely certain that this wasn't terrorism but an accident, and that at the time of the explosion only the life of my client was in danger," said Ivanic, adding the British Embassy did not know their employee had been convicted.
Rovisan rejected the claims by the police that on September 13 he avoided to appear in prison to serve a 16-month sentence for an attempted robbery in Sisak in 1998.
The attorney said his client's first request to postpone serving his sentence had been granted for family reasons, but that a second one was rejected.
Sources at the Sisak County Court said Rovisan appealed the second rejection. Given that no decision has been made on the appeal, the decision on serving the sentence is not final, which is why the court did not ask the police to bring Rovisan to prison as requested by the Administration for the Prison System.