Downing Street aides advised Margaret Thatcher not to mention the shooting of a Yugoslav dissident in Fife in case it sparked a diplomatic row, secret files have revealed.
The attempted murder of Nikola Stedul in his adopted home of Kirkcaldy shocked Scotland in 1988.
Stedul, who had campaigned for independence for his native Croatia, was shot five times while walking his dog outside his home.
Despite suffering serious injuries, Stedul survived and the gunman, Vinko Sindicic, was arrested at Heathrow airport while trying to flee the country.
The PM was due to meet Yugoslav foreign minister Budimir Loncar at the time of Sindicic’s High Court trial.
Newly released government files have revealed a briefing note to Thatcher from her private secretary Charles Powell, who wrote: “We suspect that the Yugoslav security services were responsible for the shooting of the Croatian émigré in Scotland.”
But Powell warned “there is no definitive evidence to that effect“, and advised Thatcher the assassination attempt “is better not raised” at the meeting.
On May 4, 1989, Sindicic was convicted of attempted murder at the High Court in Dunfermline. Sentencing him to 15 years in prison, trial judge Lord Allanbridge called the shooting “a callous, calculated, and carefully planned attempt to murder Mr Stedul”.
Four days later, the Joint Intelligence Committee briefed the PM that the Yugoslav secret service was almost certainly behind the attack.
“You saw the JIC note last night about the probable involvement of the Yugoslavian Intelligence Service in the attempted assassination of an émigré dissident in Scotland,” Powell wrote to Thatcher on May 9.
“The question arises whether we should now take some action, e.g. by expelling a member of the Yugoslav Embassy.”
It’s not known if any diplomatic action was taken by Thatcher’s Government against the former Yugoslavia.
Sindicic, now in his late 70s, served 10 years of his sentence at Perth prison before being extradited to Croatia, by then independent, to face trial in connection with the murder of another dissident.
The trial collapsed but he was arrested in Spain in 2018 over claims he lied during a trial in Germany in 2008.
Stedul, 83, returned to Croatia where he is understood to be still living.
