Vladimir Rolovic a former Yugoslav ambassador to Sweden, cannot (anymore) testify for the latter thesis. Andelko Brajkovic, in cooperation with much better known Miro Baresic, shot him to death in 1971 in a spectacular assassination inside the Yugoslav embassy building in Stockholm. According to the court, one of the three wounds on the ambassadors head occured after Brajkovic pushed a gun barrel into the ambassador's mouth and fired a shot into his brain. In the trial documentation we can also find the following dialog between the accused and the prosecutor:
When you tied the ambassador's mouth with a tie, did you soil yourself with blood?
No, only while I was tying him up.
Did anyone tell you to tie the ambassador up?
No, nobody told me anything. I told him to lie still but he didn't want to do that. I suppose he didn't understand me. He moved around a bit, so I tied him up.
How did you tie him up?
I took a nylon rope, tied both of his legs and an arm. I was covered with blood after that because he was bleeding all over. After that I went to the window, pissed on my bloody hands and wiped them with the curtains. I went back to the center of the room and tried to make a phone call. All this time, Miro was guarding the door. When I came back I fired another bullet...
"If I hadn't killed butcher Rolovic, I would have never had four children in a marriage with an indian woman." This is the title of an article in "the global weekly Nacional", in which a journalist, with the recognizable dose of stupidity in her approach, tried to describe "the Christmas atmosphere in the Brajkovic family home which was given to Andelko immediately after his return from Paraguay." We found out that Brajkovic was briefly detained upon his return to the country (last Spring) by the Croatian police because of the Interpol warrant; however, "the misunderstanding was quickly resolved"; furthermore, as Andelko says, "the misunderstanding was of an administrative character," although he cannot "for now, cross the Croatian border." Outside Croatia, there is Interpol...
The state kept being quick and gallant: Andelko Brajkovic and his wife Rosalin were employed by the Croatian Army, and an apartment for the large family was quickly provided. Possible misunderstandings with international criminal organizations are not a public concern. However, the global weekly did a public service of national importance: it delivered an eulogy for a national hero, Andelko Brajkovic, an uncompromising fighter for a Croatian statehood who, some 25 years ago, hunted down and killed "butchers" so that we can today enjoy a free and cleansed state, a state we have always dreamed of.
Of course we will hear more about Brajkovic. His biography will be embellished with superlatives; authorities, within the limits of what they can provide, will reward him with available privileges; it is not excluded that one of the Sibenik streets will soon pride itself with Brajkovic's name. Miro Baresic, Brajkovic's accomplice in the assassination on Vladimir Rolovic, already has a street in Split. His mysterious death (as well as the speculations that he is allegedly alive but is hiding "in the interest of the state") only helped the development of a knightly charisma. Recently, in Zadar a music festival was named after him and organized in his honor as well as a soccer tournament which took place immediately afterwards!
However, the Croatian terrorist elite wants to inform the public that it is here, that it is alive and kicking, and practically legal, as is today alive the idea for which the terrorists have fought in their youth. This media trend, let us recall, was started by "the national weekly Globus" with an attempt to revise the assessment of the results of the infamous "Bugojno Group" and a conversation about how a certain Adolf Andric had written a practical manual for terrorists entitled "Bleiburg revenge". The interview with Andric is memorable because of a characteristic detail that a newborn Andric was named after a well known German statesman.
Therefore, we have a trend here, since the whole time there is not even one deviation from a precisely defined form. The tone of the public attitude towards the former Croatian terrorists is always the same: it doesn't matter which means were used in the struggle for the independent Croatian state, what matters is that they did fight for it. The character of "a patriotic deed" is never questioned. However, there is only one possible implication of this approach: it doesn't matter what the Croatian state is like, but only whether it exists or not! Exactly because of that, the present state (more precisely, its official representatives), if only in an intermediary role (because if Interpol, international public and similar temporary trifles) are willing to reward the former terrorist vanguard with the highest possible spiritual and material privileges. This kind of approach would not have been possible if the state didn't contain (more or less malign) seeds of terror and violence in itself.
It was touching to observe the pomp with which was in Zagreb recently greeted the publishing of a book by Mrs Julienne Eden Busic about the famous plane hijacking in which an American policeman was murdered, and because of which the author had spent 11 years in jail. The top Croatian state and intellectual authorities gathered at the promotion: from the Supreme Court and Constitutional Court presidents to the top of the Science Academy; from the political pundits to literary (quasi)legends.
One would be a fool to think that the literary or documentary value of the book brought them there. They came because of the author: she is, whatever the methods, a symbol of the struggle and sacrifice for the Croatian idea and state, regardless of the act from which this sacrifice came out. Besides, the state has already taken care for a kind of author royalties and employed Mrs. Busic at the Croatian embassy in the USA. Now an intellectual whipped cream will be added as a topping to a dubious life story.
Taking into account the rich experience in the demolishing of the bronze and marble monumental heroes in this territories, we have learnt that the only deed more disgusting than the promotion of uncalled for heroes can be their forced demise. Except when this comes out as a form of self criticism: Andelko Brajkovic admitted himself that he had pissed on his bloody hands.