ZAGREB, 08. AUG. 2016 – Unknown “artists” painted one hand and leg of the monument unveiled recently to Nazi Ustasha terrorist Miro Baresic in Drage, Croatia, has been painted red, Croatian media are reporting. The monument, raised to honor the killer of Yugoslav Ambassador to Sweden Vladimir Rolovic, who was murdered in 1971 in Stockholm. The organization Antifa Sibenik announced on Facebook that “the final detail was missing on the monument to a killer.” The commenters to the post suggested he now had “bloody hands.” The monument was recently unveiled in Drage in the presence of two Croatian cabinet ministers, causing strong reactions in Serbia, and also in Rolovic’s native Montenegro. Baresic was sentenced to life in prison by the Swedish authorities for the murder of Yugoslav ambassador Vladimir Rolovic in Stockholm in 1971. He died in the war in 1991. Croatian war veterans minister Tomo Medved was one of two officials from the current interim government who attended the inauguration of the two-metre-high statue, describing Baresic as a patriot who fought for an independent Croatia. “Miro Baresic is one of the greatest Croatian patriots whose work and sacrifice we have to respect,” Medved said at the ceremony. Serbia and Montenegro reacted angrily to the decision to erect the monument to a man they dubbed a “terrorist”, sending protest notes to the Croatian government. Baresec was released from prison in Sweden in 1972 after a Scandinavian Airlines plane was hijacked by armed Croat militants, to fulfil the hijackers’ demands. He was given permission to enter Paraguay, which at the time was notorious for serving as a hiding place for wanted people like Nazi war criminal doctor Joseph Mengele and ousted Nicaraguan military dictator Anastasio Somoza. In 1977 and 1978, he even worked under a false identity as a bodyguard and an interpreter for the Paraguayan ambassador in the US. The US authorities sought his extradition from Paraguay in 1979, under suspicion that he was involved in extorting money from Croat emigrants in the US. After the charges against him were dropped, he was extradited to Sweden in 1980. His sentence was reduced to 18 years in 1985, and he left prison in 1987 and moved back to Paraguay, where he lived until he returned to Croatia in 1991. He was killed by rebel Serb forces in southern Croatia on July 31 that year.
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