Until now, he is considered the perpetrator of the assassination of ex-police officer Róbert Remiáš, who died in a car explosion 30 years ago.
For a while, the mafia killer Jozef Roháč was prosecuted together with the former boss in the case SIS Ivan Lex. However, the police never managed to clarify the case.
Remiáš was the best friend and liaison of the crown witness to the kidnapping of the president’s son Oskar Fegyveres.
After testifying about the SIS’s involvement in this crime, he fled to Hungary out of fear for his safety. The secret service tried to track him down and therefore focused on Remiáš. He died in a car explosion on April 29, 1996.
At the time of the thirtieth anniversary of Remiáš’s death, Roháč himself spoke about her for the first time, who is currently serving a life sentence for other murders in a prison in Seged, Hungary. He is 69 years old.
Like Mikuláš Černák in the past, Roháč also recently finished a book from prison about life in the underworld, which dominated Slovakia especially in the wild nineties.
The publication of Roháč’s book is being prepared by the Columbus publishing house, which has provided the section regarding Remiáš to the editors for inspection.
The publishing house is run by Martin Feldek, the son of Ľubomír Feldek, who met Roháč during the Gentle Revolution in 1989. Poet Feldek represented the VPN in negotiations with representatives of the rebels in the Leopoldov prison. Roháč was one of the leaders of the rebellion and presented himself to Feldek as a writer even then. He provided him with his manuscripts and they became close.
In the forthcoming book, Roháč denies guilt in the case of Remiáš’s murder. At the same time, however, he confirms the version according to which the SIS under the leadership of Ivan Lexa was behind the crime. According to him, the death of ex-police officer Remiáš was an accident.
Jozef Roháč
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At the time of the Gentle Revolution, he was serving a sentence for terror in prison,
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together with an accomplice in 1985, he kidnapped the deputy minister of health, they used him as a hostage in an attempt to shoot himself across the border into Austria,
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he got 13 years. In 1986, he managed to escape from the prison in Ilava, he was caught after six days,
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he was released from prison based on the amnesty of President Václav Havel in 1990.
Accusation and escape
Roháč was first accused of planting explosives in Remiáš’s car together with his alleged accomplice Imrich Oláh.
At the end of November 1999, the then chief of investigators, Jaroslav Ivor, informed that POLICE she searched the homes of both of them and declared a search for them. They failed to hold back.
Jozef Roháč at the court in Nitra in March 2011. (source: TASR)
“When we come to the conclusion which specific person was behind the order, or participated in the murder, it will be the duty of the investigator to bring charges against him,” Ivor stated two weeks later.
Even then, it was known that the customer was supposed to be someone from the SIS management. The assignment went through the head of the Sýkorov team, Miroslav Sýkora (he was shot in February 1997, editor’s note).
Around the time the investigation started, Lexa also fled Slovakia. He was accused of instructing the murder of Remiáš only in December 2002, when he was already back after being escorted from of the Republic of South Africa.
What Roháč writes
In the upcoming book, Roháč calls himself Rebel, he talks about himself in the third person. He also refers to other people with nicknames, and names others directly.
He writes that the Sikor family had information about his planned arrest in 1999 in advance from an unnamed police officer who worked with them.
Roháč received an echo from a person who appears in the book under the nickname George. It follows from the context that it was an influential member of the gang who had previously been Sýkor’s chauffeur. He is also referred to as “boss”.
In 1996, when Remiáš’s murder took place, Sýkora was driven by a member of the group, Ladislav Bališ. Later, he worked his way up to become the head of the murder squad that operated in Bratislava. After his arrest, he began to cooperate with the police. He is currently serving a 25-year sentence in prison.
George allegedly also brought internal information from the investigation to Roháč at that time. He found out that “Lefty” from the east began to testify falsely in the case of Remiáš’s murder against Roháč. “He tagged you and some Oláh with whom you were sitting in Leopoldov,” George allegedly told him the day after the failed arrest operation.
They agreed that Roháč would travel to Prague. Havel was supposed to take him to a “safe place”. (nickname of Petr Havaši, who was murdered in June 2004, editor’s note).
From left, Róbert Remiáš, Oskar Fegyveres and former SME editor Peter Tóth. Meeting in Hungary during Fegyveres’ stay abroad. (source: ARCHIVE – OF)
Error on the SIS side
The events are recorded in the upcoming book in the form of a conversation between Rebel (Roháč) and George.
In it, the character George claims that he knows everything about the Remiáš case. Rebel refuses participation in Remiáš’s murder, saying that he deals “only with colleagues from our industry.” George proves him right by saying that Rebel wasn’t even with the titmouses at that time.
Next, George mentions how, when he was still alive, he drove Sýkora to the parliament in the evenings, where he met the head of the secret service at the back entrance.
It is said that Remiáš’s death was not intentional, Sýkora was only authorized to detain him. SIS tried to get Fegyveres, with whom Remiáš was in contact. “They needed to silence Fegyveres and not Remiáš, who was only making him a clutch,” says George.
He continues by saying that SIS made a mistake when it did not tell Sýkor that Remiáš’s car had been modified to run on gas. He admits that the secretaries did not even know about it. According to the plan, they wanted to stop and detain Remiáš in a suitable place with the help of a smaller explosive system.
“He was no good to anyone dead.” However, the detonation caused a gas explosion and a subsequent fire, during which Remiáš burned to death.
“No one expected such an own goal, but everyone was furious. From Mečiar, through Lexa, to Sýkor.”
According to Roháč, the accusation in the case of the death of Remiáš based on the testimony of the penitent Lefty was purposeful. As evidence in the book, he cites the fact that Lefty subsequently stopped cooperating, ran away from the forest cabin where he was guarded as a protected witness and sent a letter to the police in which he retracted everything.
