EXCLUSIVE: Victorian RSL connected to neo-nazis & convicted war criminals

Serbian-Australian war criminal Capt. Dragan was connected to the upper echelons of Australia peak war veteran’s body, the RSL.

In a special investigation by the Goldman Report, it was found that a convicted Serbian-Australian war criminal from the former Yugoslavia was connected to the upper echelons of Australia’s peak war veteran’s body, the Returned and Services League, also known as the RSL. 

In a year-long investigation, the Goldman Report can now reveal that Daniel Sneddon aka Dragan Vasiljković also nicknamed ‘Captain Dragan’, a commander of a brutal Serb paramilitary unit during the Yugoslav Wars was well-known to the national leadership of the RSL. 

In 2005, prosecutors in Croatia found Captain Dragan guilty of committing war crimes during the 1990s Yugoslav wars. A warrant for his arrest was subsequently issued by Interpol. He was arrested in Australia in January 2006 and ordered to prison by the High Court of Australia in anticipation for extradition to Croatia to face prosecution for his alleged crimes.

Capt. Dragan (right) and well known Serbian war criminal Vojislav Seselj (left).

He was the first Australian citizen to be extradited overseas – in this case to Croatia in July 2015 after losing his thirteenth appeal and sentenced to 15 years in prison in September 2017 by the County Court in the city of Split. He was released from prison in March 2020 and now lives in Serbia.

It can now further be revealed that Vasiljković using his anglicized name of ‘Daniel Sneddon’ sent an email to Victorian RSL in 2011 offering his personal condolences at the death of former RSL National head and lifelong Serbian Chetniks supporter Bruce Ruxton.

The email was sent on behalf of the ‘Australian Serbian Association and Ravna Gora Veterans’ - the main Chetnik groups that march in the ANZAC Day parade evert April 25th across Australia.

This is no surprise considering it was Ruxton that forced the RSL into accepting these very same Serbian Chetnik units into the RSL, despite the fact that it was common knowledge and well-known even in RSL circles that they Nazi collaborators since December 1941.

Capt. Dragan’s email to Victorian RSL in 2011 offering his condolences at the death of former RSL National head and lifelong Serbian Chetniks supporter Bruce Ruxton.

 It was also Bruce Ruxton who for decades acted as the Chetnik’s ‘wingman’ as it were, deflecting criticism from many RSL members including those with Jewish backgrounds like Arnold Blashki MBE, a past Federal President of the Australian Legion of Ex-servicemen and Women, who were outraged at the idea of marching alongside known Nazi collaborators.

Chetniks relaxing with German Nazi Officers, Bosnia, 1943.

The Australian government has been well aware of this issue relating to the Chetniks Nazi collaboration for decades. For example, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) in a letter to an enquiry to a retired New Zealand veteran way back in May 1993 wrote: 'Serbia was not an ally' and that 'it is true that the Chetniks were collaborators'.

The Australian War Memorial also considers the Chetniks as Nazi collaborators, as does the Department of Veterans Affairs and most, if not all Australian historians who deal with World War Two.

Yet, despite all this overwhelming and irrefutable evidence, these units continue to march openly in our major cities every ANZAC Day, April 25th, which is organised by the RSL.

Chetniks with their Italian Fascist Allies, 1942.

To make matters even worse, some high-ranking Serbian RSL members have gone on to form alliances with neo-Nazi groups such as the now discredited Golden Dawn, which was implicated in the Srebrenica Massacre, nationalist Russian Cossacks on ASIO watchlists such as Simeon Boikov and various local far-right extremists like Jim Saleam and Kim Vuga.

Chetniks marching in ANZAC Day march.

Although most countries around the world as well as the Australian, New Zealand, UK, US, Russian, French, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Bosnian, Slovenian, Croatian and even Serbian government’s insistence that the Chetniks were Nazi collaborators, the RSL, in particular the Victorian sub-Branch, refuses to accept this fact and continues to allow the Serbian Chetniks to march alongside legitimate veterans,.

In spite of all the overwhelming evidence to the contrary provided to the heads of the RSL over many years, some of it by RSL members, the RSL ‘s leadership continues to cling to the fantasy of Chetniks somehow being ‘allies’, a notion thats has been proven untrue many times over.