Ten days ago Vladimir Faber, advisor to the interior affairs minister, organised a scandalous secret meeting with Ana-Marija Getos, the sister of Gordana Getos-Magdic, to whom he passed on a loaded message concerning the key indictment in what has been dubbed the Scotch tape Case: if Gordana Getos does not alter her statement and indict Glavas, the former head of the Osijek police department will tell the court that she and Glavas were lovers and that Glavas sexually abused her. In exchange for new testimony, whereby Glavas' former secretary would corroborate in court the claims of the State Attorney's Office concerning Glavas' command role in the murders at the start of the war of ethnic Serb civilians in Osijek, Faber has offered Gordana Getos a quick departure from her cell in Remetinec prison: instead of a 10 to 15 year prison sentence he says she will serve if she sticks with her latest statements, she could find herself at liberty very quickly after the trail is over if she accepts Faber's initiative, something Vladimir Faber would facilitate as an influential member of Croatia's Pardons Committee.

Although it sounds entirely unbelievable, there is solid evidence of this scandalous pressure and shameful attempt to strike a deal with an indictee that has already spent 14 months in police custody: Nacional possesses photos and audio recordings of a meeting held on the evening of Saturday, 29 December 2007, in one of the cafes at Zagreb's CineStar. There at 8 pm, at the agreed-upon location, at one of the outside tables of the HopDevil beer hall on the first underground level, Vladimir Faber, the former head of the Osijek-Baranja County Police Department, now serving as an advisor to the interior minister, and Ana-Marija Getos, sister of Gordana Getos-Magdic, met. Two others were involved in organising the secret meeting from the very start: the first was Sanja Sarnavka, the head of the B.a.B.e. association, who has visited Gordana Getos in Remetinec detention from the start of the Scotch tape Case and was the chief link to the Getos family, and the other was Natasa Djurovic, deputy chief of USKOK, with whom Vladimir Faber has had a relationship for several months.

And even though many would consider just the fact that a representative of the police would organise a secret meeting with family members of a person they had put in jail both scandalous and bizarre, what Vladimir Faber needs to explain is with what authority and on whose orders he even embarked on a secret mission to alter the testimony given by Gordana Getos-Magdic. At the moment the controversial meeting took place, namely, Faber was, at least formally, still an active police officer, and what is more serving at the post of advisor to the minister, and the press has written that he will soon leave the post to move to the private sector as head of security at the Croatian branch of Germany's Lidl retailer. That makes it all the more odd that he only recently embarked upon this controversial adventure, with the identity of the person who ordered it remaining, for the moment, a secret. It is, however, clear, who would benefit from the possible consent of Gordana Getos to a secret deal: legally speaking, it is the prosecution in the Scotch tape Case, i.e. the State Attorney's Office, and in the political sense the top brass at the HDZ and in the national administration, who have from the very start of the Glavas trial, directly or indirectly, made no bones of their intention to put their former party colleague behind bars to serve a very long prison sentence.

The secret negotiations to organise a meeting, according to the reconstruction, started in early December of 2007 when, after the elections for Parliament, many grasped that with the convening of a new session Branimir Glavas himself, first-accused in the Garage and Scotch tape cases, could move directly from police custody in Remetinec to Parliament on St. Mark's Square. It was clear that the prosecution faced serious problems in the trial before County Court, because the contentious first testimony given by Gordana Getos-Magdic was, in fact, the only solid evidence indicating Glavas' direct responsibility for the murders in Osijek, and she has already on several occasions indicated that the statement was extorted under strong pressure during the investigation in October of 2006 in the building of the Osijek police department. In mid December Nacional ran an interview with Gordana Getos' sister: 28-year-old Ana-Marija Getos evidently appeared to someone to be a person that could be approached and to whom an offer of a secret settlement could be presented. And so a few days later she received a call on her cell phone from Sanja Sarnavka who told her that she had learned in discussion with Natasa Djurovic that Faber was interested in meeting in private with her concerning some sort of agreement. The young assistant at the Zagreb Faculty of Law was frightened by the possibility, but was also surprised that she was even being offered a meeting with a police officer carrying out criminal proceedings against her sister, who had publicly accused him for police brutality. Nevertheless, after several days of persuasion, during which time she was told that Gordana, if she accepts the deal, would get a minimum prison sentence, and the offer that she could be alone with her sister in Remetinec jail to inform her of the proposal, Ana-Marija Getos decided to agree to a meeting with Faber, but under the condition that it be held in a public place.

On the afternoon of Saturday, 29 December, Sanja Sarnavka informed her at what time the meeting would be held, and Ana-Marija Getos demanded that she and Faber meet in one of the cafes at Zagreb's CineStar, the official name of which is, to give this Glavas story a bizarre and comic element, Branimir Centar. Although she initially did not even believe that the agreed-upon meeting would take place, at 8:06 pm Vladimir Faber arrived at the table in the HopDevil beer hall at which Ana-Marija Getos was seated. At the start of the discussion Faber made it known to the young Faculty assistant that he was a good friend of her boss' - Faculty of Law Dean Josip Kregar, with whom, as he said, "he had spoken about her at some length." He then explained that his girlfriend Natasa, deputy head of USKOK, and Sanja Sarnavka, the head of the B.a.b.e. association, had on several occasions spoken of the status of Gordana Getos and that it had been agreed that an attempt be made to contact her sister, with Sarnavka being made responsible for the operational details of the task.

Ana-Marija Getos then, as a lawyer, pointed out that regardless of the content of the discussion she was simply unable to pass on to her sister messages concerning the case because they were never alone during visits to the detention area, and that she was not allowed to discuss the case with Gordana. Faber then began to elaborate on his view of Gordana Getos' status in court: "I believe that Gordana is a victim in this entire affair, and not a victim of a political trial or of the police but rather only a victim of Glavas'... I think that there is still a chance for her, but under one condition. The tactics her defence is now employing is catastrophic, and will cost her 15 years in prison if they go on like this." He then made a claim he would repeat numerous times in the almost four-hour discussion concerning the alleged confession Gordana Getos gave to him in confidence during the criminal investigation: "After the guys had brought me the official records of the interview with her and told me that there were many more horrible things she did not want written down, she related to me her role in it all, that she had only learned of the murder after she had heard in the city that Branko Lovric had been killed. And that she had up to then no idea of what was going on, that there had been several of these kinds of messages that her boss had told her to take to Krnjak or Bušo, the platoon leader who was later killed... She, in fact, had no idea of what she was doing until Branko Lovric was killed, having been present when he was taken away. It was only when she had grasped what was going on that she called Glavas that same moment and asked to meet with him urgently. That part, which she related to me, what happened after she met with Glavas, is so horrible that I will not relate it to anyone, anywhere and at any cost. If what she told me then is true, the kind of sexual abuse and harassment she experienced is just too horrible", said Faber, and then asked Ana-Marija Getos: "Do you know that Glavas and your sister were lovers?", and went on after she answered to the contrary: "According to her statement they were lovers for over a year. The two of them. I did not want to tell anyone, and it has no bearing on the case in any event. The abuse he committed on her, and I believe her because she wept then, and trembled, all sorts of things went on. I believe her because I know Glavas for what he is." What followed was a disgusting attempt at a wager: Faber, namely, bet Gordana Getos' sister a dinner that her sister, if she did not change her testimony, would get from 10 to 15 years in prison. And although he had in the first part of the meeting explained that he was leaving police work soon to move on to the private sector, and that he was not at the meeting in the capacity of a police officer, in a squabble concerning his authorities and right to read secret testimony in a trial, Faber did "give himself away": "I am involved in the case in an official capacity, appointed by the interior minister to lead the case."

Although it can be discerned from the audio recording that the young lawyer and Faber had entered into an unpleasant analysis of police conduct in the Scotch tape Case, Faber was not phased, but rather practically began dictating how Gordana Getos' court testimony should sound: "She only transferred Glavas' orders and could not get out because he threatened her, very seriously threatened her at that, it was truly a kind of torture. With what she described to me, she could get off with even less than the minimum five-year prison term. In everything else, she is stoking the fires of Glavas' claims of a political and show trial with these stunts, which is nonsense. She can only be saved by the truth, and the truth is that she only passed on those orders and, after she discovered what was going on, only under a most severe duress and threat." And although he repeated many times the claim that Gordana Getos had confided this allegedly great secret to him, implying only that it was something horrible related to sexual abuse, Faber pointedly began explaining that in a few weeks he too would be giving testimony in court and that he would, if Gordana goes on behaving as she has thus far, perhaps be forced to speak publicly about this horrible truth: "Look, in my testimony I will not speak about the details she related to me, because she has a grown child, I will rather only relate to the court in January the circumstances of the statement she made. I will say that she had been presented with evidence and that she initially told the guys the truth, and all of this where the lawyer tried to win her the status of the key witness, and I will say that Glavas threatened her, and that she sought guarantees for herself and her child. Our plain clothes officers even protected her child. Not for a moment will I reveal her intimate secrets, those she revealed to us, because it would be neither moral nor ethical to do so. Even though, of course, considering how much I have been attacked, I could do so, because I have both the notes and the audio recordings, that is not evidence, that you know, although for slander or libel it could be. But I will not use it. I know that she is a victim and that she had to stay in that crap because of the threats. She was a patriot and when she discovered what was going on, she wanted out, but could not get out because of threats that were of a kind best not spoken of. Bajic has requested we all be interrogated, and I am the only one who can help her by not speaking of the disgusting things she told me of. Because, you see, it would be in my interest, as I have been labelled a torturer and abuser of women and so on, to give the testimony and explain in detail why and how she gave it to me", Faber explained to Gordana Getos' sister.

Saturday's secret meeting in the Zagreb beer hall went on to half past eleven pm, and in the last minutes before parting Faber presented his strongest "argument" why Ana-Marija's sister should consider the concept of her future testimony before the court: if Gordana Getos sticks to what he has proposed he will, after the court ruling is final, do everything he can to see her prison sentence reduced by half, so that in the end she would only get five years in prison. That, however, is not all. Police officer Faber congratulated himself with another possibility of his good will: he has for years been a member of the National Pardons Committee and said that President Mesic had a very high regard of his opinion, among other reasons because of his incorruptibility, which he demonstrated in a case in which he was once offered 100,000 German marks for someone's pardon and turned the offer down. If Gordana Getos played ball in a way that would suit the police and prosecution, Faber would be prepared to back her before the National Pardon's Committee, so that her five years sentence would be cut in half to two and a half year. Considering that she has already been in custody for the past fourteen months, and this time goes towards the final sentence, and given the fact that the trial will last at least a year, it is clear just how immoral the offer from Faber was. This leaves him to explain on whose orders it was that he gave Glavas' former secretary such a good deal.