The Sydney Yugoslav General Trade and Tourist Agency bombing occurred in Haymarket, Sydney on 16 September 1972, injuring 16 people. [1] The perpetrators of the attack were alleged to be Croatian separatists. [2]
In the 1960's to early 1970s violent ultranationalist Ustaše activities were conducted within Australia mostly targeting supporters of a federalist Yugoslavia by Croatian separatists. These activities were carried out by various Ustaše groups including the Croatian Liberation Movement (HOP), Croatian National Resistance (HNO) [3] and Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood (HRB). [4]
From 1969 to 1973, the operations of the Ustaše increased dramatically both in their number and in their violence. This coincided with the advent of the Croatian Spring, a widespread movement within Yugoslavia for Croatian autonomy. A total of around 60 attacks were attributed to the Ustaše movement in Australia during this time period. [5] [4] Violence included executions [6] [7] and bombings. [4] Bombing targets included the Yugoslav and USSR embassies in Canberra, Yugoslav travel agencies, cinemas displaying Yugoslav films, and various Serbian orthodox churches. [8] [4]
On the morning of 16 September 1972, two Yugoslav travel agencies were bombed in George Street in Haymarket at the end of the Sydney central business district. The first blast injured 16 people, three of them were critically injured. The second bomb blast injured none. [9] [10]
The New South Wales Police raided a number of Croatian homes in Sydney [9] which resulted in the arrest of Ljubomir Vuina and Anjelko Marić (Angelo Marie). Ljubomir Vuina, was charged and remanded on bail with threatening to destroy other Yugoslav travel agencies. Marić admitted to making the bombs but not placing them. [4] [11] Marić was arrested at the Fremantle home of Stjepan Brbić, a wartime Ustaša member who had replaced Srećko Rover as the Croatian National Resistance (HNO) leader in Australia. Brbić had previously established a Vjekoslav Luburić Society in Sydney and was believed to be the main organiser for the George Street bombings. [3] In 1976, Anjelko Marić was convicted of the bombings and sentenced to 16 years jail. [12] This conviction though was soon quashed in the High Court two years later after the trial was ruled miscarried because certain evidence had been wrongly admitted. [13]
The Ustaše, also known by anglicised versions Ustasha or Ustashe, was a Croatian, fascist and ultranationalist organization active, as one organization, between 1929 and 1945, formally known as the Ustaša – Croatian Revolutionary Movement. From its inception and before the Second World War, the organization engaged in a series of terrorist activities against the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, including collaborating with IMRO to assassinate King Alexander I of Yugoslavia in 1934. During World War II in Yugoslavia, the Ustaše went on to perpetrate the Holocaust and genocide against its Jewish, Serb and Roma populations, killing hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Roma, as well as Bosniak Muslim and Croat political dissidents.
The Independent State of Croatia was a World War II–era puppet state of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. It was established in parts of occupied Yugoslavia on 10 April 1941, after the invasion by the Axis powers. Its territory consisted mostly of modern-day Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as some parts of modern-day Serbia and Slovenia, but also excluded many Croat-populated areas in Dalmatia, Istria, and Međimurje regions.
The Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood (CRB) (Croatian: Hrvatsko Revolucionarno Bratstvo or HRB), also known as Ustasha, was an Australian-based Croatian separatist terrorist organisation.
Catholic clergy involvement with the Ustaše covers the role of the Croatian Catholic Church in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), a Nazi puppet state created on the territory of Axis-occupied Yugoslavia in 1941.
Jure Francetić was a Croatian Ustaša Commissioner for the Bosnia and Herzegovina regions of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) during World War II, and commander of the 1st Ustaše Regiment of the Ustaše Militia, later known as the Black Legion. In both roles he was responsible for the massacre of Bosnian Serbs and Jews. A member of Ante Pavelić's inner circle, he was considered by many Ustaše as a possible successor to Pavelić as Poglavnik (leader) of the NDH. He died of wounds inflicted when he was captured by Partisans near Slunj in the Kordun region when his aircraft crash-landed there in late December 1942.
Croatian Australians are Australian citizens of Croatian ancestry. Croatia has been a source of migrants to Australia, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s.
Ivan "Ivo" Herenčić was a general in the armed forces of the Independent State of Croatia, a fascist puppet state. In 1941, he commanded a battalion of Ustaše Militia that committed many war crimes and atrocities on civilians during the Genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia. Born in Bjelovar in Austria-Hungary, he completed his secondary and tertiary education in Zagreb and Sarajevo in what was by then the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. In 1933, he left Yugoslavia to join the fascist and ultranationalist Croatian Ustaše movement in Italy. Late that year, Herenčić participated in an unsuccessful assassination attempt on the King of Yugoslavia, Alexander.
Far-right politics in Croatia refers to any manifestation of far-right politics in the Republic of Croatia. Individuals and groups in Croatia that employ far-right politics are most often associated with the historical Ustaše movement, hence they have connections to Neo-Nazism and neo-fascism. That World War II political movement was an extremist organization at the time supported by the German Nazis and the Italian Fascists. The association with the Ustaše has been called "Neo-Ustashism" by Slavko Goldstein.
The Genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia was the systematic persecution and extermination of Serbs committed during World War II by the fascist Ustaše regime in the Nazi German puppet state known as the Independent State of Croatia between 1941 and 1945. It was carried out through executions in death camps, as well as through mass murder, ethnic cleansing, deportations, forced conversions, and war rape. This genocide was simultaneously carried out with the Holocaust in the NDH as well as the genocide of Roma, by combining Nazi racial policies with the ultimate goal of creating an ethnically pure Greater Croatia.
The Croatian National Resistance, also referred to as Otpor, was an Ustaša organization founded in 1955 in Spain. The HNO ran an armed organisation, Drina, which continued to be active well into the 1970s.
Croatia–Spain relations are the bilateral relations between Croatia and Spain. Diplomatic relations between the two countries were established on March 9, 1992 following Croatia's independence from SFR Yugoslavia. The two nations enjoy largely positive relations. Both countries are full members of the European Union and NATO.
The Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia involved the genocide of Jews, Serbs and Romani within the Independent State of Croatia, a fascist puppet state that existed during World War II, led by the Ustaše regime, which ruled an occupied area of Yugoslavia including most of the territory of modern-day Croatia, the whole of modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina and the eastern part of Syrmia (Serbia). Of the 39,000 Jews who lived in the NDH in 1941, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum states that more than 30,000 were murdered. Of these, 6,200 were shipped to Nazi Germany and the rest of them were murdered in the NDH, the vast majority in Ustaše-run concentration camps, such as Jasenovac. The Ustaše were the only quisling forces in Yugoslavia who operated their own extermination camps for the purpose of murdering Jews and members of other ethnic groups.
Branimir "Branko" Jelić was an exiled Croatian nationalist and doctor of medicine. He was a member of the fascist Ustaše organization.
Spremnost was a weekly newsmagazine of the Ustaše movement with articles about many topics like politics, war, economy and culture. It was published in Zagreb from early 1942 to the collapse of the Independent State of Croatia in May 1945. Its publication was restarted in 1957 in Sydney by Fabijan Lovoković, a former Ustaše Youth member who had fled to Australia in 1950. Publication of the magazine ceased in 2007.
Ante Vokić was a Croatian politician, general and putschist. Member of the Ustaše, he was the Minister of Armed Forces of the Independent State of Croatia from 29 January to 30 August 1944, succeeding Miroslav Navratil.
When World War II started, Zagreb was the capital of the newly formed autonomous Banovina of Croatia within the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which remained neutral in the first years of the war. After the Invasion of Yugoslavia by Germany and Italy on 6 April 1941, German troops entered Zagreb on 10 April. On the same day, Slavko Kvaternik, a prominent member of the Ustaše movement, proclaimed the creation of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), an Axis puppet state, with Zagreb as its capital. Ante Pavelić was proclaimed Poglavnik of the NDH and Zagreb became the center of the Main Ustaša Headquarters, the Government of the NDH, and other political and military institutions, as well as the police and intelligence services.
This article includes information on terrorist acts and groups in or against the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918–45) and Federal Yugoslavia (1945–92). Many of the terrorist acts were carried out outside Yugoslavia against Yugoslav subjects. The post-war period until circa 1985 was marked by frequent terrorist attacks on Yugoslav institutions organized by extremist emigrant organizations. Between 1962 and 1982, they carried out 128 terrorist attacks against Yugoslav civilian and military targets.
The Ustaše Youth was the youth wing of the Ustaše, a Croatian fascist, genocidal and ultranationalist organization active during the interwar period and World War II. The Ustaše governed an Axis puppet state called the Independent State of Croatia between 1941 and 1945.
At the end of World War II in 1945, members of the fascist Croatian ultranationalist and genocidal Ustaše regime from the collapsed Nazi puppet state of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) fled from the Balkan region to avoid imprisonment and execution at the hands of the Yugoslav Partisans. With the help of Western authorities, who now viewed the fiercely anti-communist stance of the Ustaše favourably in the emerging Cold War, thousands of members of the regime were allowed to migrate to other countries, including Australia.
Srećko Blaž Rover was a member of the fascist, Croatian ultranationalist Ustaša movement. During World War II, he served as an officer in the Ustaše Surveillance Service and the Ustaše Militia where he was involved in the mass imprisonment and executions of people deemed enemies of the Independent State of Croatia. After the defeat of the Nazis and their collaborators, Rover escaped to Australia, where he became a leading figure of the Ustaše in Australia.