Speaking after talks with Austrian Justice Minister Karin Gastinger and
Interior Minister Liese Prokop, Efraim Zuroff told a press conference that Nazi criminals in Austria could be open about their crimes.

"Austrian authorities are not scrupulously looking for proof" of crimes
because "the (only) question suspects are asked is whether they took part in such and such activity", said Zuroff.

If they deny it, their case is closed, he added.

"Austrian laws protect Nazis and the situation should be an embarrassment for the acting president of the European Union," Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel, Zuroff said.

“In understand his position, he has difficulties understanding that certain elements of criminal offences have statutes of limitations in Austria. Nevertheless, Austria is a constitutional state, “ the Austrian Justice minister told the local daily newspaper “Der Standard.”

A Justice ministry spokesman, Christoph Poechinger, rejected Zuroff's criticism as "objectively not justified but emotionally understandable."

"We can only open a case if there is a suspicion of murder. Crimes such as genocide cannot be prosecuted because they did not exist at the time," he said. "All this is not satisfying but we cannot change the laws."

Zuroff said he received conflicting information from the two Austrian
ministers about Aribert Heim, a guard of the Nazis' Mauthausen concentration camp, known to have been particularly sadistic and wanted by the Wiesenthal center.

Heim has been spotted in Spain but his current whereabouts are unknown.

Under the center's “Last Chance Operation”, Zuroff has counted 328 suspected Nazi criminals in Austria since 2003 and opened an investigation into 77 of them.

The others have died or disappeared.

ejpress, 5.02.2006