UDBa "TORTURE CHAMBER" IN CANBERRA

“UDBA down under” – documentary film about Communist Yugoslav spying in Australia.

FILM'S SHOCKING ALLEGATION: COMMUNIST TORTURE CHAMBER IN CANBERRA

The Former Yugoslav Embassy in Canberra with the alleged torture chamber. In 2011 it was handed over to the Republic of Macedonia.

Photo: The handover takeover ceremony of the Embassy of the Republic of Macedonia, July 2011. Mr Nikola Stavrevski is on the far right of photo. The Ambassador Mr Pero Stojanovski is in the centre, white shirt, black suit and wearing glasses.

Mr Nikola Stavrevski, who runs a successful photography business in Melbourne, has revealed in a camera interview for an upcoming Australian documentary film, that he saw what appeared to be a torture chamber in the old Yugoslav Embassy in Canberra, the Australian capital.

Mr Stavrevski, also the editor of a popular news website for the Australian-Macedonan community known as Informator, agreed to make his shocking allegation on camera for the documentary film “UDBa down under”, directed and produced by Melbourne independent film maker Sasha Uzunov, which details the former Communist Yugoslav regime's use of its secret police to discredit emigre Croats, Macedonians and other dissidents.

Mr Nikola Stavrevski agreed to make his allegations on camera for the documentary film: "UDBa down under." Photo by Sasha Uzunov 2012.

Mr Stavrevski was invited by the Ambassador of the Republic of Macedonia to Australia, Mr Pero Stojanovski, to photograph the handover-takeover ceremony of the former Yugoslav Embassy in Canberra by the Macedonian government in July 2011. Serbian diplomatic officials handed over the keys.

After the collapse of Communist Federal Yugoslavia (SFRJ) in 1991, the various diplomatic missions were split up amongst the successor states, Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Slovenia.

“Ambassador Stojanovski told me,” Mr Stavrevski said, “that I wasn't permitted to photograph a particular room inside the embassy. This room had been left closed up and unused for many years.”

“When we opened the door to have a look inside, I was shocked at what I saw,” Mr Stavrevski.

“The room was sound proofed, dark, and had a bathtub in the middle with a wooden rack used to to either tied down or secure something.”

He said that he immediately got the impression it had been a torture chamber used by the then Yugoslav Embassy and its secret police, UDBa.”

“Ambassador Stojanovski said to me that it was a delicate matter at the moment and that in due course the matter would be revealed in full detail.”

Mr Stavrevski further alleged in the filmed interview that he knew of Australian-Croats and Macedonians who had been “kidnapped” off the streets in Melbourne and Sydney and tortured by UDBa officers during the 1970s and 1980s.

Ambassador Stojanovski later became the centre of controversy over a legal dispute with his then girlfriend Lidija Dumbaloska over a failed relationship.

Link: Sydney Morning Herald article:

www.smh.com.au/national/exlover-menaced-diplomat-20110101-19cin.html

Film details

UDBa down under (45 minutes running time) – release date: late 2012 / early 2013.

An Australian a documentary film about the Yugoslav secret police (UDBa) in Australia, with a release date in early 2013. Directed and produced by Sasha Uzunov/Luke Leon Media. Interviewed on camera are Croatian and Macedonian community leaders, ex-Australian state police officers involved in counter-intelligence operations, and former spies both here in Australia and overseas.

The trailer/preview of UDBa down under - Yugoslav spying in Australia.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuMIDTPyGe0&feature=share

Sasha Uzunov's film making resume:

Director/Producer

Timor Tour of Duty (Documentary film) 2009

Brave Love (Short film) 2011 -

Kate's Screen test (Short film) 2012 -

UDBa down under (Documentary film) - 2012/13

Cameraman

Afghanistan: Outside the wire (Documentary film) – Canadian Cable TV News (CPAC) 2011.

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Hamish McDonald

Respected Australian journalist Hamish McDonald's recent article titled, Framed: the untold story about the Croatian Six, in the Sydney Morning Herald, dated: 11 February 2012,

www.smh.com.au/national/framed-the-untold-story-about-the-croatian-six-20120210-1smum.html

McDonald in the longer e-book version (kindle) of his article writes:

“In a new video, the Macedonian-Australian documentary journalist Sasha Uzunov says he has evidence Sindicic set up the Croatian six conspiracy with the main UDBa official in Australia, Georgi Trajkovski, who operated under diplomatic cover as Yugoslav consul-general in Melbourne."

Who was the Croatian Six Mastermind? article by Sasha Uzunov.

http://teamuzunovmedia.blogspot.com.au/2011/07/croatian-six-mastermind.html”

THE CROATIAN SIX MASTERMIND?

Why did Australia's domestic spy catchers ASIO keep Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser (1975-83) in the dark over a foreign diplomat's true identity?
PART 5 – THE FIGHT AGAINST YUGOSLAV INTELLIGENCE IN AUSTRALIA

Fifth part in a series on Yugoslav intelligence activities on Australian soil from the 1970s to the early 1990s.

A twenty year investigation…TEAM UZUNOV on the trail of a Yugoslav master spy…London, Brussels, Skopje, Belgrade, Zagreb, Melbourne...who managed to fool ASIO twice...

TEAM UZUNOV cracks open the Croatian Six Case…

WHO WAS THE CROATIAN SIX MASTER MIND?

By Sasha Uzunov

One of Australia’s worst miscarriages of justice, the Croatian Six terrorism case in 1979-80, may have been perpetrated by a Yugoslav master spy posing as a diplomat and who, would you believe it, not once but twice managed to outsmart Australia’s domestic spy catchers, ASIO, and even shook hands with an unsuspecting Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser.

Intelligence sources in Washington and in the Republic of Macedonia, one of the successor states of the former communist Federal Yugoslavia, have confirmed that Dr Georgi Trajkovski, the Yugoslav Consul General in Melbourne, Australia during 1978-79 was “hardcore UDBa (Yugoslav intelligence) and a key player in the Croatian Six set up.”

In 1988, Trajkovski with the same modus operandi, the use of agent provocateurs and exaggerated claims of anti-Yugoslav subversion, had a fellow Yugoslav diplomat removed from his post in Melbourne right under the nose of ASIO. This story, told for the very first time, will be detailed in part 6.

In 1991 legendary ABC TV investigative reporter Chris Masters dropped a bombshell on the Four Corners program about The Croatian Six case.

An agent provocateur set up members of Australia's Croatian community in 1979. Six Croats were imprisoned on false charges of wanting to plant bombs in Sydney.

Masters tracked down the agent provocateur, Vitomir Visimovic, who was an ethnic Serb living in Bosnia but had passed himself off as a Croat.

In fact, ASIO, the Australian Federal Police (successor of the Commonwealth Police) and the infamous and corrupt New South Wales Police Special Branch were all aware that Visimovic was an UDBa operative but suppressed the information during the trial of the Croatian Six. Moreover, the alarming thing was the Australian authorities let the man depart the country. This was during Malcolm Fraser’s tenure as Prime Minister (1975-83).

An UDBa hitman Vinko Sindicic was arrested in Scotland in 1988 after a failed assassination attempt on Croat dissident Nikola Stedul. At Sindicic's trial it was revealed he “had been in Australia in 1978, working with another Yugoslav agent on a plan to link Croatian political activists with terrorism.”

In all probability co-ordinating with Trajkovski the Croatian Six set up.

The irony is that two months after NSW Police arrested the Croatian suspects in early 1979, Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser paid a visit to the Yugoslav Consulate General in Melbourne to offer his condolences at the death of Yugoslav leader Edvard Kardelj, and shook hands with Trajkovski.

We know this because a book "Art Treasures of Yugoslavia" with a special annotation was offered on the web by the prestigious auction house Downies:

www.downies.com/aca/Auction303/Catalogue_031.html

“Inside the book is an inlaid letterhead dated 18th April 1979 addressed to the Honourable J.M.Fraser MP, Prime Minister of Australia with typewritten message "With this small token,we wish to express our thanks that you found the time to visit this Consul General (which represents the Yugoslav community) to express your condolences. Please accept this book in appreciation of your thoughtfulness" and hand signed by Consul General Dr Georgi Trajkovski.”

The question remains why did ASIO keep Fraser in the dark over Trajkovski's true identity?

Trajkovski, an ethnic Macedonian, was regarded as a fanatical Titoist and a specialist on foreign affairs. He authored Diplomatski Protokol, regarded as a text book on international relations in the then Yugoslavia.

Having pulled off the Croatian Six set up in 1979, Trajkovski repeated his shtick in 1988 with the removal of a fellow Yugoslav diplomat right under the nose of ASIO.

BACKGROUND -

Yugoslavia was a multi-ethnic communist federation founded in 1945, modelled on the Soviet Union, and fell apart in 1991 into various independent nation states.

Yugoslav intelligence (UDBa) later known as SDB, together with Yugoslav military counter-intelligence (KOS) were largely pre-occupied with silencing dissident Croats, Macedonians, Serbs and Albanians living in Western Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand, who were agitating for independence from Yugoslavia.

UDBa was so ruthless and efficient it at one time rivalled the old Soviet KGB and Mossad in liquidating opponents. In Munich, West Germany, a whole section of a cemetery was set-aside for Croats assassinated by UDBa.

Communist strongman Marshal Josip Broz Tito ruled Yugoslavia until his death in 1980 and during the height of the Cold War managed a great balancing act between East and West. He was seen as an indirect ally of the West after his infamous split with Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in 1949.

A number of Australian left-wing politicians, including Victorian State MP Joan Coxsedge, began to allege that ASIO was turning a blind eye to extremist Croatian elements, who were secretly training on Australian soil to undertake terrorist attacks on Yugoslav territory or upon Yugoslav diplomatic missions in Australia.

In this atmosphere of terrorism mania during the 1970s Australia’s Croat community were looked upon as the bad guy.

We now know that the alleged Croatian terrorism on Australian soil was the work of UDBa.

TOP JOURNALIST ON THE TRAIL - Hamish McDonald (pictured above)

One of Australia's most distinguished investigative reporters and authors, Hamish McDonald of the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, has told TEAM UZUNOV in a filmed interview that he became interested in the Croatian Six case after following the Balibo Five story, the murder of five Australian based newsmen at the hands of the Indonesian military during its invasion of neighbouring East Timor in 1975.

According to McDonald, vital evidence in proving the innocence of the Croatian Six and Indonesian culpability in the murder of the Balibo Five was suppressed by the Australian federal government on the grounds of "national security."