Assassination of Ante Pavelić

Ante Pavelić, the former dictator of the Independent State of Croatia, was shot on April 10, 1957 in Buenos Aires, Argentina as he got off a bus. He would die 2 years later from the assassination attempt.

On 5 June 1945, Pavelić fled from Zagreb to Austria,^[1] where he remained for a few months before fleeing to Rome, where the Catholic Church sheltered him despite his condition as a war criminal (as evidenced in declassified documents from United States intelligence agencies).^[2] Briefly detained by the British in Austria, he was released.^[3] The center of aid for the exiled Ustaše in Italy was the San Girolamo degli Illirici College, run by Croats.^[4]

Ante Pavelić arrived in the Italian capital in 1946, disguised as a monk and with a Spanish passport.^[5] During that year and the following one he resided in the San Girolamo College and in other locations in the city.^[5] The United States secret services knew that he was living in Rome but were not interested in the arrest of any anti-communist from Eastern Europe, due to the growing tension with the Soviet bloc.^[5] After considering his arrest, the possible loss of sympathies among the Ustaše émigrés led the military authorities to desist from arresting him.^[5] Six months later, in November 1948,^[5] he fled to Argentina,^[6] on board the Italian ship Sestriere.^[5] During the war he maintained an extensive correspondence with the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Monsignor De Andrea, managing with the help of the Vatican to obtain false documents with an identity passport issued by the Red Cross, taking the identity of a Sicilian Jew fleeing Italy. With De Andrea's help he was able to enter the country under a false identity that allowed him to evade immigration controls.^[7]

In 1957 the government of Marshal Josip Broz Tito attempted to assassinate Pavelić on two occasions, through the Yugoslav secret services, surviving both attempts with injuries.^[5] The authorship of the attack is disputed, especially by his daughter, who maintained that it was planned by compatriots in order to seize control of the Croatian exile community.^[8]

On 10 April 1957 Pavelić was wounded in Buenos Aires by Blagoje Jovović, a Serbian nationalist.^[9] At that time he was reportedly sought by the UDBA, the secret service of Communist Yugoslavia, as well as by the Israeli secret services.^[10] As the Argentine government agreed to extradite him to Yugoslavia, he fled to Chile.^[9] He then took refuge with his family in Spain, in Madrid, with the agreement of the Franco regime, on the condition that he remain discreet.^[8]

Pavelić eventually died in 1959 from his injuries,^[11] in obscurity, in a German hospital in Madrid.^[6] Pope John XXIII sent him his personal blessing.^[12]

Pavelić was buried in the Saint Isidore cemetery^[13] in Madrid. His grave became a place of homage for Croats: for example, in 1996, Croatian footballer Davor Šuker was photographed in front of it.^[14]

The Spanish state, however, did not provide sufficiently convincing proof of Pavelić's death: no photograph was released, nor could any Yugoslav official confirm his death; consequently, the Yugoslav state doubted this information until 1980, the year of Tito's death. Between 1981 and 1987, the Yugoslav authorities requested access to Pavelić's remains to confirm his death, without success. The dissolution of Yugoslavia into several states from 1991 put an end to these proceedings.