Murder or Accident?

After Jörg Haider was killed Oct. 11 in a car accident many Austrians believed he was deliberately murdered.

According to an Internet survey of 2000 people published on the webpage of the Austrian daily Heute, 79% of Internet users believe that Haider, president of BZÖ (Bündins Zukunft Österreichs) and regional governor of Carinthia was murdered in cold-blood. Only 16% believe it was his fault.

Were people influenced by his widow Claudia Haider (52), who postponed his autopsy on the suggestion by Volkswagen that someone must have sabotaged his car, since he survived the accident, in spite of having 1,8 percent in his blood?

Professor Ogorevc, a member of Slovenian minority in Carinthia claims, that this is "complete non-sense. No one wanted to kill him. He was just too drunk to drive."

She also claims that she has heard people saying they are sure that "Slovenian minority had something to do with his death." But the accusations are "even more crazy" than the idea it was a "planned murder,"

Marjan Sturm, president of Central Union of Slovenian Organizations of Carinthia remembers: "I met a friend of mine, wearing a T-Shirt with a BZÖ logo, almost crying, asking me, if Slovenian minority got him killed. After I explained that we had nothing to do with it, he seemed relieved."

So far it seems that Haider´s death will stay wrapped in a veil of secrecy, unless the Italians, who were chosen by Haider´s widow, find out what the real reason was for the accident. For some, it is all too reminiscent of the accident the killed Alexander Dubcek, first secretary of Czechoslovakia’s communist party. Dubcek died on November 8th 1992, when he succumb to injuries from the accident, in which he was thrown from the car while driving in a very high speed. The chauffeur survived.