Domovina Urednistvo
Many will recall that it was in March 2023 when the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New South Wales/NSW, Andrew Bell, appointed retired NSW Supreme Court Justice Robert Hulme to conduct a historic judicial inquiry. The inquiry into the 1981 convictions of the so-called Croatian Six (Maksimilijan Max Bebic, Vjekoslav Vic Brajkovic, Ante Tony Zvirotic, brothers Josip Joe Kokotovic and Ilija Kokotovic, and Mile Nekic) who were each convicted of planning an act of terrorism, or rather, of conspiring to bomb several locations in Sydney in 1979, including the Sydney water supply. They each served 11 of the 15 years they were sentenced to in prison because it was publicly revealed in 1992 that their slanderer and the prosecution’s main witness, Vico Virkez, was actually a Serb, Vitomir Misimovic, who admitted his connection to the UDB Yugoslav Secret police and the Yugoslav consulate in Sydney to the Australian ABC television. Several attempts after this to bring the case back to court with the intention of overturning the conviction as at least unsafe, were unsuccessful, until 2022, when, based on several strong indicators, a judge of the NSW Supreme Court concluded that a judicial inquiry in this case was justified.
Relatively recently declassified ASIO (Australian Security Intelligence Organisation) documents reveal that the Australian secret service identified Virkez as an informant at the Yugoslav consulate in Sydney who was suspected of having links to Yugoslav intelligence, without sharing this discovery with the defence of indicted Croatian Six. Namely, NSW Police and ASIO knew that Virkez was a Serbian migrant whose real name was Vitomir Misimovic who had assumed a Croatian identity and reported the activities of the Croatian community to the Yugoslav consulate.
Key questions being investigated in this judicial inquiry are: what did the Australian and NSW Commonwealth Police, ASIO and the Crown Prosecutor know about Virkez’s identity and activities and when? Why was information about Virkez not given to the defence at the original trial of the Croatian Six? And did the withholding of information lead to a miscarriage of justice? The judicial inquiry is also examining the conduct of the police involved in the arrests of the six and during the investigations that followed the arrests.
The aim of the inquiry is also to determine whether the convicted men (the Croatian Six) verbally admitted to their involvement in the bombing plot (they claimed they did not) – and if so, why were the NSW Police records of their alleged confessions not signed? Were they coerced or threatened into confessing?
If the outcome of this inquiry is in favour of the Croatian Six, it will also mean that this case represents the greatest miscarriage of justice in Australian history.
The inquiry hearings began in December 2023, many of which I personally attended in the public gallery of the courtroom, hearing testimony and examining evidence used in the first trial in 1980-1981, and lasted forty-three full days spread over 11 months, up to and including 7 November 2024, which was the last day in court. According to one of the lead lawyers for the Croatian Six, Mr Sebastian De Brennan, the searches ordered by the inquiry produced around 52,000 pages of documents that have been digitalised and the proceedings or hearings transcribed and deposited on a government website created for this judicial inquiry for public access. Link to these transcripts
In the long rows outside the one I sat in, whose desks were dominated by rather large computer screens, in front of Acting Justice Hulme and his assistants, dozens of Australia’s top legal talents had settled in for the duration of the hearing. Counsel assisting the inquiry, Trish McDonald SC, and several of her assistants, sat in the front row facing the judge. Sitting next to them was the team representing the Croatian Six (as a group): David Buchanan SC, the defence counsel in the original trial who came out of retirement for this judicial inquiry, barrister Sebastian De Brennan who led the application to the NSW Supreme Court for a review or judicial inquiry, and criminal law expert Sharon Ramsden, a partner at Marsdens Law Group in Sydney.
In a long row behind them sat lawyers engaged by the NSW Police Association to represent the twenty or so surviving police officers involved in the February 1979 arrest of the Croatian Six, and in that row sat Ms Gabrielle Bashir SC, who was separately representing James Bennett, another former detective involved in the 1979 arrests who left the police force shortly after the original case for a career as a barrister and judge in the NSW District Court, where he still sits after retirement as an acting judge.
In a couple of long rows behind the row of police lawyers sat lawyers for the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions and Ms Catherine Gleeson SC, who was representing the NSW State Police Commissioner, plus a number of assistant barristers. ASIO (and later the Prime Minister’s Department) was represented by lawyers including the well-known Peter Melican and Jake Silove.
I must admit, it was quite intimidating for me to sit in the courtroom, but I was held in a kind of awe because it was obvious that the state itself considered this case to be big and important and it was all about relentless search for justice that concerned members of migrant Croatian community in Australia to which I belong.
Listening to the police witnesses in the courtroom, I got the impression that much of what was expected of the police as matter of official duty of care was not done and that the unravelling of such accounts in court left me with the impression that the entire case was indeed a setup and a frameup against patriotic Croats in general, not just the six men. While the memory of almost all the police witnesses was selective (in favour of the police), it is obvious that the police, in arresting the Croatian Six in February 1979 and in the necessary actions to prepare for their first appearance in the courtroom with the charges, for committal hearing, did not act in accordance with the police regulations and procedures that were in place at that time. That is, it is obvious that the police most likely deliberately ignored, for example, the rules of raids or searches of premises that were defined by police as houses where dangerous terrorists will be found as well as explosives. The fact that police detectives went to such premises or houses of the Croatian Six in 1979 in “ties and suits as if they were going to mass”, evidently, instead of in protective suits as was reportedly the police procedure at the time, and that they clearly did not take measures to protect other people in the close proximity of the houses to be raided, tells me that the police surely must have known in advance that they were entering houses where there was no danger, even though they say they were told to search very dangerous houses, both for the people living in them and for the explosives allegedly kept in those houses. They did not even carry a photo camera with them to take pictures of the explosives that they were told they would find in those houses, and taking a camera was reportedly one of the strict rules within the rules of police conduct in dangerous situations that were issued to the police back in 1974!! A copy of this Manual of rules dating back to 1974 was produced in the courtroom, however a policeman involved in the raids and arrests of February 1979 said in court that in 1979 he was not aware of the existence of such a Manual! Having around that time worked in the Public Service myself I found that incredulous; in my duties with health government department adhering to rules contained in such Manuals was not negotiable. It formed an important part of duty of care at work. I assume police department was no different.
Besides not being photographed at the location none of the explosive materials that the police allegedly seized in the raids in Sydney were not fingerprinted either! It transpired that the “elite” CIB/Criminal Investigation Branch teams did not have megaphones or other voice recording devices for their interviews and approaches to the houses they raided! Police witness accounts as to where the explosives were stored after the raids were rather confusing and unclear, but clear disregard for safe transporting of explosives from the raided houses where they were allegedly found was rather scary for me, anyway; carrying gelignite sticks (that were not tested for their explosive potential) in their car boot for instance seemed to me like the stuff horror movies are made of. Further down the trip from raided houses to police station to dangerous goods storage the custody and storage of explosives raised eyebrows with great deal of concern. David Buchanan, representing the Croatian Six, put it to the police that they had pulled the incriminating explosives from stashes kept for purposes of loading up suspects and brought them to the raided premises. Certainly, besides relevant members of the Croatian Six group always having maintained their innocence regarding the allegedly found explosives, Mrs Lydia Peraic, who was married to Josip Kokotovic at the time and was present during the police raid of one of the houses, testified in the inquiry that she had never seen the two half-sticks of gelignite that the police team claimed were found in the attic of the Kokotovic family’s home in Burwood, Sydney, where she also lived at the time.
Then, speaking of the police procedures, retired detective Richard Grady, who was involved in the police investigations after the arrest of the Croatian Six, said in court this July that there was no independent or other review of his interview with Josip Kokotovic, nor was he asked to read it himself, even though it was the police’s duty to ensure it! Grady said in court that he did not even ask Kokotovic to read and verify his notes of the interview with him at the police station in February 1979 because he (Grady) knew that Kokotovic could not read his handwriting! Grady said in court that it would have been extremely hard to ask anyone to read things which he had written down … it’s was his handwriting and in places he used rudimentary shorthand, Grady said! The fact that Grady did not even bother to read back his allegedly difficult handwriting to Kokotovic speaks volumes to me of purposeful disregard of the arrested person’s rights to say the least. I could write for a long time about this topic of violating or ignoring police rules or the code of conduct in dangerous situations that include explosives in the case of the Croatian Six, but there is no space for that here. However, there is a lot of hope that Acting Judge Hulme will ask himself why everything was like that, why the policemen and detectives worked in such a procedurally suspicious manner during the arrest and processing of the Croatian Six in 1979 without adhering the rules of police work. That is, what could be the reasons why the police did not follow existing procedures and why some police officers invented their own rules and procedures “as they went” about their official business.
When asked if he had heard of the Yugoslav UDB intelligence services employing people to set up “false flag” operations, Grady replied no, as far as he could remember!
The role of the former NSW police Special Branch in this case, whose task at the time was to predict political violence and spot subversion, came under special scrutiny in the courtroom. While Assistant Police Commissioner Ray Whitelaw, the previous head of the Special Branch, and Inspector John Perrin have since passed away, the head of Croatian affairs for that police branch at the time of the arrest of the Croatian Six, Victor Jefferies, is alive and testified for several days in the courtroom via video link, during which he was questioned rigorously from all sides by the lawyers present.
Jefferies was repeatedly questioned during the inquiry about an interview he conducted with Vico Virkez in Lithgow, near Sydney, in February 1979, two days after the arrest of the six. During that meeting, Jeffries apparently quickly concluded from Virkez’s real name, Vitomir Misimovic, that Virkez was not a Croat but a Serb and that he was not a separatist but an ardent Yugoslav. Virkez admitted that he had warned the Yugoslav consulate, as well as the police, about the planned bomb, and that he had previously given the consulate reports about Croatian activism, but he denied contact with the UDB/Yugoslav intelligence services. Jefferies had at the time written all this down in a report, he said, which he then passed on to Perrin and showed to Detective Sergeant Ted Turner and Detective Senior Constable Alistair Milroy, the leading figures in the Lithgow raid which had been carried out following Virkez’s tip-off that he too was part of a plot to bomb several locations in Sydney. But, lo and behold (!), Jefferies now said in court that his interest was not sufficiently motivated by any impulse to investigate whether Virkez was an agent provocateur. Not even Alistair Milroy (later head of the Australian Crime Commission) felt the need to delve into Virkez’s evident double life when he was preparing a “preliminary” or background report on him in the Croatian Six case! It is utterly deplorable and distressingly unjust that the Croatian Six spent almost 11 years in prison when ABC TV journalist, Chris Masters, broke the shocking discovery to the public that Vico Vrkez was not a Croat he played the role of in 1979 but a Serb Vitomir MIsimvic with links to the communist Yugoslavia intelligence services via the Yugoslav consulate in Sydney and during the trial the police knew or strongly believed that on basis of collected intelligence and said or shared not a word about that to the Croatian Six defence team!
Jefferies had trouble i court remembering how exactly the police came to name all the members of the Croatian Six who, according to their claim, worked together in this alleged conspiracy. He said that he probably took the names of the Kokotovic brothers and Mile Nekic from the records held by the Special Branch in connection with some anti-Yugoslav protests, added them to those of Brajkovic and Zvirotic, named by Virkez in Lithgow on 8 February 1978/79, and Josip Stipic, a young student activist who would later be acquitted by the judge due to unsuccessful police evidence. This list was then passed on to police and detective teams who were urgently assembled at the CIB to disperse throughout Sydney late at night and search or raid several homes. It is striking to me that during the first trial in 1980, 1981, and today, neither the police nor the State Prosecutor seemed to have presented any evidence of how the members of the Croatian Six knew each other and where they met to develop and agree on, commit to, this alleged terrorist plot. In fact, Brajkovic testified in court in November this year that he had never known Max Bebic even though he had seen him at some anti-Yugoslavia protest in Sydney, for example, but had met him in court for the first time in his life when all six were brought in for their committal hearing.
As the former police officers and detectives involved in the arrest and prosecution of the Croatian Six repeatedly denied anything that would cast a negative light on them, or did not remember much actual content around matters they denied, Acting Justice Hulme at one point turned to one of them and stated that he himself was confused by the combination of gaps in memories and strong denials of bad behaviour. ” If you have no recollection, what’s the basis of your denial?” Hulme asked one former detective.
During the final days of the court hearings, early in November, it was Vjekoslav Brajkovic’s turn in the witness box. He was cross-examined for days by the court’s investigation lawyers and police lawyers, trying, it seemed to me, to discredit him and even to subject him to ridicule. The questions in the domain of his own political history, his Croatian identity, exceeded, in my opinion, all limits of relevance and respect for human rights regarding political opinions. But Brajkovic held himself brave and confident. To introduce into the inquiry the history of World War Two, Jasenovac Camp, Bleiburg Massacres, and mass murders of Croats committed by Josip Broz Tito of communist Yugoslavia as a way to establish motives or foundations as to why a patriotic Croat could resort to violent revengeful behaviour against institutions of a foreign country that had provided refuge to those fleeing communist oppression, to lash out against Tito and Serbs and communist Yugoslavia seemed to me utterly nasty and far-fetched. It was in fact put to Vic Brajkovic in court by police lawyers that before the 1945 events of Bleiburg massacre of Croats the then Croatian Government established concentration camps (such as Jasenovac) “where Serbians along with Jews and Gypsies were murdered”, failing to mention murdered Croats, and that these historical events were of regular concern to people like Brajkovic living in Australia who wanted to overthrow the communist Tito regime. It was put to Brajkovic that these historical matters formed the motives for the bombing plots The Croatian Six were convicted of.
It was satisfying to me to see witnesses for the Croatian Six throughout the inquiry not becoming intimidated or bothered by this old, evidently twisted hand used so often after World War Two to discredit and characterise patriotic Croats across the world.
Virkez, or rather MIsimovic, was clearly central to the UDB’s plan to discredit the HRS [Croatian Republican Party] in Australia and thus Croatian patriots in general. The goal, namely the discrediting of Croats, especially HRS members, was, as we have seen and experienced, very successful. The divisions of the Croatian community in the diaspora into patriotic Croats who aspired to an independent Croatia and Croats who supported Yugoslavia followed with greater intensity than before after 1981, when the Croatian Six ended up in prison for a crime they always claimed they had not committed. No Croatian group in the diaspora that sought an independent Croatia and against communist Yugoslavia could operate without fear of UDB penetration, false accusations, persecutions. Suspicions of each other meant that cooperation and unified Croatian action were almost impossible – until the late 1980s when Franjo Tudjman showed that the aspiration for an independent Croatia made sense and could be achieved. In addition to all this, a dark cloud still hangs over the Croatian name around the world because of this very case concerning the Croatian Six from Australia. Lawyers for all parties involved in this judicial inquiry have the rest of this month, December 2024, and March 2025 to submit their closing arguments and requests to Acting Judge Hulme and support their opinion with clear arguments about what the judicial inquiry should bring. After that, Acting Judge Hulme will step out of the courtroom and make his decisions or recommendations for the judicial inquiry. Whether Acting Judge Hulme will issue a conclusion that will recommend to the Supreme Court that the convictions against the Croatian Six from 1981 were unsafe and should be overturned, or not, will perhaps not be known until mid-2025 or a few months after that. In the meantime, the Croatian community is still collecting financial assistance, fundraising for the costs of this judicial inquiry and thanks to everyone who has provided their assistance so far. Ina Vukic
Further reading:
An excellent and more detailed recent essay reportage on this topic was written by Hamish McDonald “Is this our biggest miscarriage of justice?” published in Inside Story on 22 November 2024 and I recommend it.
