15/Mar/2009 12:14  ejpress.org
Austria orders new psychiatric tests on suspected Nazi criminal Milivoj Asner

VIENNA (AFP)---Austrian judges said they had ordered a new psychiatric expertise to determine if Milivoj Asner, a suspected Nazi criminal living in Austria, can be expelled to Croatia to stand trial.

The new expertise will be conducted by Norbert Nedopil, the head of the forensic psychiatry department at the Munich University clinic, the Austrian judges' association added.
" Mr Nedopil will conduct a new expertise to determine Asner's sanity and state of mind," said the vice-president of the association, Manfred Herrnhofer.
Four previous medical reports had concluded that Asner, 95, who has been living quietly in the southern Austrian town of Klagenfurt since 2006, suffered from dementia and was not fit to be questioned.
As a result, efforts to extradite him to Croatia were dropped.
Last year, a Swiss psychiatrist was supposed to examine him but eventually dropped the case citing low pay, Herrnhofer added.
Nazi hunters have repeatedly questioned the report findings, especially after pictures were published in the British newspaper The Sun last year showing Asner and his wife relaxing on a terrace among Euro 2008 football fans.
The "fourth most wanted Nazi" on the list of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Asner is accused of having organised the deportation of Serbs, Jews and gypsies during World War II to Nazi concentration camps, where most of them died.

Asner gave a number of interviews last year in which he did appear to be lucid. In June, he told Austrian public television ORF he was ready to surrender to Croatian authorities.

ejpress.org