Prime Minister Ivo Sanader announced emergency measures to fight organised crime today, after violence escalated to the point of threatening Croatia's European Union membership bid.
"There is no need to declare a state of emergency, but we will introduce extraordinary mobilisation measures. We shall deal thoroughly with organised crime, mafia or terrorism. Croatia will be a safe country," Mr Sanader told reporters after a meeting of the National Security Council.
He said the measures would include wider police authority, faster organised crime trials, DNA databases of convicted criminals and the right to confiscate illegally obtained property. He did not specify what wider policy authority meant.
A car bomb killed Ivo Pukanic, editor of Nacionalweekly, and his marketing chief in Zagreb yesterday in the latest of a series of incidents that have hit the capital this year.
European Parliament's rapporteur for Croatia, Hannes Swoboda, said the rise in crime was a problem for the Balkan country which hopes to conclude EU accession talks next year and join the union in 2011.
"This is the most serious obstacle in Croatia's (EU) accession talks since they started," Mr Swoboda told local news portal javno.hr.
"I think the government's negligence towards organised crime and corruption has to stop ... and prime minister Sanader must personally take measures against organised crime," he said.
Tackling corruption and organised crime is one of the requirements Zagreb has to meet if it wants to wrap up EU accession talks next year.
Mr Sanader sacked the interior and justice ministers earlier this month, when he announced a set of tough "anti-mafia" laws.
The sackings were prompted by a string of unresolved public beatings and the murder of a prominent lawyer's daughter, who was shot twice in the head in the stairway of the building where she lived, not far from the Zagreb police headquarters.
This year, a well-known crime reporter was beaten up on the street, a member of the Zagreb city administration was attacked with baseball bats and the chief executive of a major construction firm was assaulted with iron bars in September.
Reuters