Nikola Kavaja, the guy who back in 1979 tried to assassinate Tito, has just died in Belgrade after a cardiac arrest.
His fail-proof plan to eliminate Tito by hijacking a 727 jet in the USA and than subtly crashing it into the communist party headquarters in Belgrade was never implemented because he said he “didn’t know where the building was exactly located”. The building in question was Usce Tower aka CK building (who did get hit in a NATO bombing several times, but somehow did not collapse). This insane plan aside, he was arrested and delivered to the US for hijacking the plane in the first place. Before that brilliant attempt, he claims to have tried assassinating Tito at least three more times, but something always went wrong.
Just like communism itself, Nikola Kavaja remains a controversial topic in the Serbian history. People like bragging stories, and they pump them up even more as time goes by. From the 707 jet he most probably used, it advanced to 727, and I would suspect a 747 story is coming in a couple of decades. From what I can tell by reading stories and hearing legends about him now, at least half of what he claimed to be heroic deeds are nothing more than made-up stories to impress girls. Plus, the commie regime must’ve also benefited from a “Serbian terrorist sent by the evil CIA to kill the great leader.”
If you want to know more about the life of this bigmouth, see this interview from The Independent. It’s a good read.
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Interesting story.
Here you can find the documentary “Lovac na Tito” (The Hunt for Tito)
http://video.google.com/videosearch?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=nikola%20kavaja&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&um=1&sa=N&tab=wv#
thanks for the link, I forgot about that film. The original title is “Lovac na Tita” – I tried to embed it, but it seems it’s not possible from Google video – so go to their site and watch the documentary.
btw, nice site, Saputnik