Renewed hope for justice in case of Croatian Six

The so-called Croatian Six case is seen as one of the most serious mis­carriages of justice in Australian legal history.

Nikola Stedul with wife Shirley and daughters Kristina and Monika in 1989 after the sentencing of his would-be assassin.

On February 8, 1979, six young Croatian-Australians were ­arrested in Lithgow and Sydney and charged with conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism in ­Australia.

What followed was not only the longest-running criminal court case in Australia but, since new evidence has come to light, the so-called Croatian Six case is seen as one of the most serious mis­carriages of justice in Australian legal history.

Although all six men persistently pleaded their innocence, and evidence presented in court was weak, some of it extracted as a ­result of police brutality, in 1981 all six men in the dock were found guilty as charged and each was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Their appeal was dismissed.

Despite previous failed ­attempts, Sydney barrister Sebastian De Brennan and solicitor Helen Cook, acting pro bono, ­recently made a third application to review the case.

The NSW Supreme Court has now designated judge Robertson Wright to look at their application. Justice Wright is expected to make his findings known before the end of this year. With some 5000 pages in 20 volumes of trial transcript he has much work to do.

Given past rejections for a ­review, the appointment of Justice Wright has provided hope within the Croatian community that a genuine breakthrough may be forthcoming.

Prior to the 1991 break-up of the federation of Yugoslavia, a constant, no-holds-barred war was being waged by the Yugoslav ­secret police, Uprava Drzavne Bezbednosti (UDBA), to prevent the disintegration of the failing federation into its constituent ­republics. UDBA had a “licence to kill” if that’s what it took to achieve that aim. The Yugoslav ­secret police not only severely persec­uted those in Yugoslavia who ­advocated independence and freedom from Josip Tito’s brand of communism, but similarly tar­geted those who had gone to live in other parts of the world.

The long arm of UDBA reached into Australia, where it conducted a series of campaigns, including “false flag” acts of violence, in order to brand the Croatian-Australian community as “extremists” and “terrorists”. UDBA also used murder to ­silence those engaged in legal political work in democratic nations, including Germany and the US.

John Schindler, a former specialist on Balkan issues with the US National Security Agency, ­described UDBA’s involvement in the case of the Croatian Six as “one of its “great successes”, so devastating was it not only to the lives of the six men, but the whole ­Croatian-Australian community.

the Croatian Six – Max Bebic, Vic Brajkovic, Tony Zvirotic, Joe Kokotovic, Ilija Kokotovic and Mile Nekic. Picture: ABC

In an ABC Four Corners documentary filmed in 1991, reporter Chris Masters tracked down Vico Virkez, the chief crown witness against the Croatian Six. His real name was Vitomir Misimovic. Having fled Australia on a Yugoslav passport before the end of the trial, he was then living in Jab­lanica, in the Gradiska municipality of what is now the Republika Srpska entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In the Four Corners interview, Misimovic openly admitted that he had provided false testimony in court under instruction from NSW police. He said that he had been warned of serious consequences if he failed to obey them.

However, in 1994, Misimovic’s own admission was not considered sufficient evidence for the Croatian Six to be granted an ­application for a review of the convictions.

Former federal government lawyer Ian Cunliffe warned that crucial evidence about UDBA ­activities had been withheld from the trial. Evidence of systematic abuse of the legal process by the NSW police units was also disregarded. Of note, Roger Rogerson, who led one arresting team, was later imprisoned for serious crimes, including murder during the course of a drug deal.

In his book, Reasonable Doubt: Spies, Police and the Croatian Six, published in 2019, Australian journalist Hamish McDonald drew on ASIO files from the National ­Archives of Australia. They show ASIO had been monitoring Virkez/Misimovic, who was associating with a known UDBA officer at the Yugoslav consulate-general in Sydney for several months prior to the arrests while masquerading as a Croat nationalist within the ­Croatian community.

NSW police were told of the ASIO findings; however assistant police commissioner Roy Whitelaw told ASIO that if this information got to the opposition, meaning the defence lawyers, it would “blow a hole in the police case”. The information was withheld, and the jury was assured by the crown that there was “not a skerrick of evidence” that Virkez/Misimovic was working with the Yugoslav intelligence service.

Paths cross

As a young Scottish-Australian migrant living in north Queensland, I met and fell in love with a Croatian-Australian called Nikola Stedul in the mid-1960s. By the time I met Nikola, he had become a naturalised Australian citizen. He had fled Yugoslavia illegally as a political refugee with a qualification in plumbing and sheet metal working, but like many young migrants who came to Australia he was able to turn his hand to a variety of jobs, including heavy manual labour, farming and ­mining.

He was also a thinker and a dreamer. His dream was that one day Croatia would become, through democratic means, an ­independent state that would ­prosper in accordance with international democratic laws. Quite simply, he wanted for his people the same freedom, human rights and privileges he had ­discovered and cherished in ­Australia.

It was for this reason too that he joined the CMF (Citizen Military Forces). The Vietnam War was raging and Nikola felt the need to prepare to partake in Australia’s defence if called upon.

At that time, ASIO officers routinely visited Yugoslav migrants, including Croats such as Nikola, due to ethnic clashes, especially during football matches and political protests. We learned that the federal police also questioned ­Nikola’s membership of the CMF. This was my husband’s first ­experience of targeted discri­mination by Australian authorities.

Our ASIO “visitors” later told us that they had been tipped off by Yugoslav dispatches, as well as complaints from local Yugoslav sympathisers, that Nikola was ­involved in Croatian political ­activities. “But,” one of the visitors added, “bombs have gone off in Sydney, and there have been armed incursions into Yugoslavia involving Croatian-Australians.”

No escape from past

Although Nikola’s CMF commander explained that his ­involvement in political activities was legal in Australia, and was not grounds for discharge, Nikola ­decided that his motives would ­always be unjustly questioned and so reluctantly discharged himself on principle. After selling our farm, we went to Europe with our two little girls to spend some time with Nikola’s family. When it came time to renew his Australian passport, however, he was told by Australian authorities that it was being withheld.

He was offered a limited travel document that would enable him only to return to Australia, but Nikola saw this as a violation of his basic rights. He sought explanations, but none were forthcoming. He offered to return if he would be assured of the chance to answer to any charges against him, but was told there were none. He was further informed that they were not obliged to provide any reasons for refusing him a passport since the decision had been made at the “minister’s discretion”.

We later learned that it had been decided that “it was not in Australia’s interest to facilitate the travel of Nikola Stedul”.

With six months remaining on his passport, we were still able to travel to Scotland to meet my relatives as originally planned.

We remained in Scotland during the 17 years that Nikola continued to pursue the renewal of his passport. In true Kafkaesque ­bureaucratic circularity the continued refusal to grant him his passport was later used as a reason to deny his numerous requests for British citizenship.

He then asked to be written out of his Australian citizenship, but was told that was not possible as he would then be rendered stateless. He explained that this was what he needed in order to take the Australian government to the International Court of Human Rights to highlight the discrimination against Croatian-Australians. Needless to say, this did not alter their decision.

Only in 2002 did he finally ­accept the limited travel document to return to Australia for the birth of our first grandchild. While we were there he went to Canberra seeking answers as to why he had been subject to discrimination for so many years. The files he sought were “not available, and would not be for a long, long time” he was told. Soon after this trip to Can­berra he was finally granted an Australian passport. Yugoslavia no longer existed and Croatia was independent.

Assassination attempt

In Scotland, in 1988, while Nikola was studying as a mature student for a master’s degree in politics and philosophy at Dundee University, he was targeted outside his home in Kirkcaldy in a Yugoslav UDBA assassination attempt.

The six bullets that hit him, two full in the mouth, were an attempt to silence him. His survival was deemed “miraculous” by the surgeon who removed one of the other bullets from his chest.

A neighbour noted the number plate of the hire car used by Nikola’s would-be ­assassin, Vinko Sindicic. Sindicic was arrested at Heathrow Airport, having taken a flight from Edinburgh to London that morning.

He was taken back to Scotland, where he stood trial, was found guilty and imprisoned for 10 of the 32 years originally handed down by the court.

The shooting and trial were known as the case of the Yugoslav Hitman, which was the title of the Scottish television docudrama made about the shooting. It was the first time a Yugoslav secret agent had been exposed in the UK.

As the defendant, Sindicic said in court, he did not have to prove anything.

He used the well-established UDBA technique of slander and lies to accuse Nikola of instigating with him every manner of conspiracy, including planning to smuggle guns to Scotland and scheming to blow up an airliner. When, after two weeks of evidence, Sindicic was found guilty, he proceeded to ­accuse the entire Scottish legal system, the police, the doctors and their NHS teams, as well as court witnesses, of being involved in a monstrous conspiracy against him, by claiming that Nikola had not even been shot.

Vico Virkez in Yugoslavia in 1991. Picture: ABC

Unanswered question

Whether Sindicic played any role in the Croatian Six saga is a ­pertinent question, since in ­preparation for his trial in Scotland he told his lawyer that he had met Nikola in 1978 in Australia.

When the lawyer realised that this could not be true since we had left Australia five years earlier and were unable to return, he dropped this line of ­defence. However, it begs the ­question: was Sindicic in Australia in 1978? And why would he want to suggest Nikola was also there then?

The Australian government white paper on counter-terrorism issued in 2010, which covers all terrorism attacks and failed terrorist plots in Australia dating back to 1970, makes no mention of the Croatian Six case. Furthermore, in ASIO’s entry about the Croatian Six case in the agency’s official history, the authors state that the six men were victims of ”wrongful conviction”.

The appointment of a new judge is a sign of hope for the Croatian Six, now in their 70s, that justice may be within reach. The six men, their families and the Croatian-Australian community deserve to be given a “fair go” – as is the Australian way. It’s time for the law and truth to prevail.