Jozef Roháč a.k.a. Potkan (September 6,áč 1956) is a Slovak criminal, terrorist and mafia hitman, specializing in explosives. He is mostly known for installing the explosive device in the Assassination of Róbert Remiáš and in assassinations of numerous organized crime bosses in Slovakia and Hungary. According to newspaper SME, Roháč had at some point connections to both the Slovak and Hungarian Secret Services. Despite international search by the Interpol, he managed to evade the law for 9 years.
A career criminal for most of his life, in 1984 Roháč was sentenced to 15 years for terrorism under communist Czechoslovakia for kidnapping the Deputy Minister of Health and attempting to take him out of the country. Later, he became the first prisoner ever to escape from Ilava prison. Soon re-captured, he became one of the organizers of the 1989 Leopoldov Prison mutiny. He was released in 1990 because of a wide-ranging amnesty by President Václav Havel.
In April 2011, Roháč was extradited to Hungary, where he faced charges for multiple assassinations: Ferenc Domák, pander in 1996, János Fenyő, media magnate in 1998, and Tamás Boros, maffia boss in 1998. In the latter crime three bystanders were also killed in the explosion. In March 2016 the attorney requested lifetime imprisonment for Roháč in a joint trial of his crimes.
Name
Jozef Roháč is identified in the Slovak media as Potkan (Rat), his other alias being Čiapočka (Little hood). The following identities have been used by Roháč in the past: Josef Fink; Miloš Lukáč (before 1989); Milan Lupták.
Early life
Jozef Roháč was born in Levice, Czechoslovakia and as of today, he still has his official residence listed here. He was one of five siblings and his father was an alcoholic, who beat the children, although not very often. In his own words, his childhood was not particularly happy and he used to get often into fights. Later, he started a career of petty crime: "fights, alcohol, badmouthing the communist regime, policemen and suspended sentences" recalls Roháč in the early 1990s.
Career under communism
Jozef Roháč committed his first high-profile crime in 1985, in communist Czechoslovakia, when armed, he kidnapped the Deputy Minister of Health to negotiate the crossing of the border to escape from the country.
He was 29 years old at that time, having just finished serving the compulsory military service in Czechoslovakia. After officially asking for the permit to travel to Austria, Roháč was openly speaking about staying there. His permit was denied and two policemen came to his home and confiscated his passport. Together with a friend he obtained two guns and they both stumbled upon the Deputy Minister of Health Kováč, kidnapping him immediately. They got stuck, however at the Petržalka-Berg border crossing, where they were surrounded by the police. Roháč later claimed that he decided to surrender after Kováč's health had begun deteriorating in the car due to missing pharmaceuticals.
Jaroslav Toman, husband of future Minister of Labour of Slovakia Viera Tomanová, who worked as a high ranking police officer in Bratislava at that time was one of the engaging policemen and Roháč's bullet allegedly missed him only narrowly. Toman's witness account served as a basis to accuse Roháč of the intent to kill, which Roháč denied. For his actions, Toman was awarded a medal for protecting the borders of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. Despite the whole incident was declared a state secret, Toman immediately told his wife. The story was broken by TV JOJ in 2008. When interviewing Tomanová, she declared that her husband was scared of Roháč for the rest of his life and that her whole family was threatened at that time.
Jozef Roháč was sentenced to 15 years for terrorism, starting his sentence in Ilava. He became the only person under communism ever to escape from Ilava prison, earning him respect among other prisoners. He was eventually re-captured and another four years in prison were added on top of his original sentence. During his subsequent stay in prison, he started writing poetry. He claims he was regularly beaten in Leopoldov Prison.
Career after 1989
Leopoldov prison mutiny
Jozef Roháč was one of the organizers of the Leopoldov Prison mutiny in 1990 and he was one of the few prisoners to negotiate directly with the Federal Minister of Interior at that time, Ján Langoš.
Already notorious and respected prisoner because of his successful escape from Ilava prison, Jozef Roháč bolstered his reputation also by an incident where he was brutally beaten by prison guards after talking to some prisoners, yet he refused to even tell them who he was speaking with.