On the 16th of September 1972, Sydney was rocked by the detonation of bombs outside two Yugoslavia-affiliated travel agencies in George Street. These were the Adriatic Trade and Travel Centre, and the other at the Adria Travel Agency. Sixteen people were injured in this attack, two seriously. Politicians and the public were shocked by these nationalist outrages. Occurring in the leadup to the 1972 election, eleven days after the massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich, and the hijacking of a Swedish Airliner in Spain by Croatian nationalists, this bombing demonstrated that Australia was not immune to the threat of terrorism. The NSW Government quickly announced a $20,000 reward for information, which was later matched by the federal government.
Now fifty years later, these crimes remained unsolved. Who bombed these travel agencies and why has never been answered. Further, these attacks were part of a larger pattern of unresolved Yugoslavian-related nationalist attacks in Australia. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s there were attacks on Yugoslavian social clubs, consulates, trade offices and airlines not just in Australia, but throughout the western world.
With the announcement of a one-million-dollar reward for any information regarding the 1982 bombings of the Israeli consulate in Sydney’s CBD and the Hakoah Club in Bondi, Yugoslavia-related terrorism in Australia needs to be re-examined. The NSW Police described the 1982 bombings as Australia’s first terrorism cold case, but the perpetrators of these earlier and equally abhorrent attacks remain unknown.
Just as the 1982 bombings were quickly associated with Palestinian terrorism, the 1972 attacks were assumed to be part of the campaign by Croatian nationalists in Australia to attack symbols of the Yugoslavian state. Australia was a hotbed of extreme Croatian nationalist activity during the Cold War. What these Croatians wanted and why has been largely forgotten in the story of terrorism in Australia. Overshadowed by the horrors of more recent nationalist attacks and the conflagration that tore apart Yugoslavia in the 1990s, these historical cases are scarcely mentioned in Australian terrorism discourse.
The multiethnic Yugoslavian state’s perennial problem was holding together the myriad of ethic groups that populated it. A significant proportion Croatians, the second most populous nationality in Yugoslavia, wished independence for Croatia. Some had been opposed to the Yugoslavian project from the Second World War period when Croatian extremists sided with Nazi Germany and fought against the Communist Partisans who established the post-war Yugoslav state, and others were anti-Yugoslavia for different economic, social and religious reasons.
These nationalists had limited success within Yugoslavia itself, but abroad they established themselves as a sophisticated movement. Croatian-Australian extreme nationalists were able to twice pull off armed incursions against Yugoslavia, sending militants into that country in 1963 and 1972 in an attempt to start an uprising. By 1972 they were considered by ASIO to be the largest nationalist threat to Australia, despite that organisation’s perceived sympathy for all anti-communist movements in Australia.
However, the obvious explanation that Croatian nationalist planted these bombs to target Yugoslavia has detractors. From as soon as they were detonated, an alternative explanation has been proposed. Yugoslavian intelligence, a highly capable and feared service also had motives to bomb these agencies. Discrediting and framing nationalists was central to its mission to destroy émigré threats. Famously in 1981 six Croatian-Australian men were imprisoned for terrorism. It has now been proven these men were set up by Yugoslavian intelligence. The mystery of the 1972 Sydney bombings and a myriad of other Yugoslavia-related attacks seems no closer to being resolved. With increased attention on the 1982 bombings against Israeli targets perhaps it is finally time for substantial rewards to be offered regarding these earlier cases. Fifty years on is a long time and the window of opportunity for justice and closure is closing.