AKTIVNOSTI SLUŽBE DRŽAVNE BEZBEDNOSTI RSUP-a SR HRVATSKE U ISTRAŽIVANJU DIVERZIJA U BEOGRADU 1968. i 1973.

Abstract

Diversions carried in Belgrade at main Railway station and “20 October” cinema, during spring and summer of 1968, caused terrible effect in broader Yugoslav and especially, Belgrade public and remained remembered until nowadays. No matter that two persons of Croatian nationality were sentenced - as those who planted the explosives which caused these diversions, all activities of the State Security Service (SDB, or Sluzba drzavne bezbednosti) showed numerous unsolved dilemmas. Even more, in the case of the July and September explosions in 1968, the SDB remained without any exact fact on eventual bomb-planter for over ten months after the diversions. No matter that extensive network of operatives and collaborators were engaged in Yugoslavia and the diaspora as well. Even more, the SDB documents showed that beside those “main” diversions, a nearly half-dozen of other minor diversions were carried in the same period. All of them remained unsolved as well as the one carried at Belgrade railway station in 1973. Existing traces that the main diversions in Belgrade 1968, could have been carried by the individual from Germany were never taken into a sincere consideration. Yugoslav state, federal and Croatian SDB put emphasis on these cases as the pretext for huge operations against the Croatian emigration in Western Europe. Mostly in West Germany and Austria. Radical circles in Croatian diaspora were organized in different organizations with political aim of independent Croatia. Few of them, in this period, did not hesitated to take the terrorist actions, such as assassinations of different Yugoslav representatives abroad, attacks on Yugoslav consular and other institutions and sending the small armed groups into Yugoslavia with task to facilitate eventual uprising against actual communist rule. Such activities reached the peak in period between mid-1960s and late 1970s. Part of the chase against the Croatian terrorists (revolutionaries) were carried through the investigation of those diversions carried in Yugoslavia 1968-1973, with assistance of the West European police services. They assisted the Yugoslav efforts and carried several arrests and trials for those emigrants for whom the evidence were gathered that they were active in those terrorists activities. For the part of them in which cases formal evidence could not be obtained, the SDB conducted assassinations in the same and later period. Those actions were carried by the different operatives of SDB. The article was written based on original documents of the SDB, that belonged to Socialist Republic of Croatia, which were preserved in Croatian State Archives.