Croatian newspaper editor Anthony Schlegal was a supporter of the idea of a unified Yugoslavia in 1931, a time when many Croatians were campaigning across the region for their own independent state. Two of the regions political activists, Marko Hranilovic and Matja Soldin, took exception to the views he published in his newspaper, and they shot him dead.
The two men were tried, along with 21 other pro-independence activists, in the summer of 1931. They were hanged in Zagreb Prison on Saturday, September 26th, 1931, swelling the ranks of Croatian political agitators executed during this period. The movement for a Croatian independent state was brutally suppressed by the loyalist forces of the then ruler of Yugoslavia, King Alexander. The issue was finally settled in 1991, when Croatia left Yugoslavia after another terrible conflict with Belgrade.