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Josip Perkovic (left) and Zdravko Mustac (right) on trial in Munich. Photo: Beta

Prosecutors on Tuesday demanded life sentences for former Yugoslav secret service officials Josip Perkovic and Zdravko Mustac, on trial for murder at the Higher Court in Munich.

The two men, on trial since October 2014, are accused of ordering, planning and organising the murder of Croatian émigré Stjepan Djurekovic in Germany in 1983.

The prosecution said the accused deserved life sentences because they took part in the murder, and not only abetted it.

Senior state prosecutor Lienhard Weiss presented detailed evidence before the court of the key of the garage where Djurekovic was murdered, and of the structure of the State Security Service, SDB, and the role that Perkovic and Mustac played in it.

Weiss claimed that the SDB considered assassinations of emigrants a lawful action, noting that a number of emigrants were killed by SDB during the years.

He also claimed the SDB intensified the number of assassinations abroad after the death of Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito in 1980.

Weiss’s colleague, Stefan Weiland, described Mustac as the link between the SDB and the Yugoslav authorities, mentioning also witnesses who described Perkovic as a crucial figure in the Yugoslav Communist state’s war against political emigrants.

Weiland described relations between Yugoslavia and the then West German state, and how cases within the SDB were assigned to different persons, “whose agents were in the best position to act”. He also claimed that Yugoslav officials were always informed of all major actions undertaken by the SDB.

“There was no larger action abroad in which officials at the [Yugoslav] national and federal level were not involved,” he said.

Perkovic’s lawyer, Ante Nobilo, said the prosecution had avoided two key facts. On was that there is no evidence that the murderers waited for Djurekovic in the garage where he was killed, and that former secret service agent and court witness, Krunoslav Prates, could not have known when Djurekovic would be in the garage, or share that information with Perkovic.

The indictment says Zdravko Mustac, head of Yugoslav state security service at the time, gave orders to Perkovic to organise the assassination of Djurekovic in 1983.

The alleged motive for the murder was Djurekovic’s criticism of the Communist regime in Yugoslavia.

Both Mustac and Perkovic have pleaded not guilty. After the defence gives its closing words, the court will likely pass sentence next week.