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VIENNA (AFP)---The Simon Wiesenthal Center called Thursday for a new psychiatric report by international experts to determine whether alleged Croatian Nazi war criminal Milivoj Asner is unfit to be questioned, as Austrian doctors claim he is.
"Austria is shielding Asner," the Center's director Efraim Zuroff told a news conference in Vienna.
So far, four separate medical reports in Austria have concluded that Asner, 95, suffers from dementia and is thus not fit to be questioned.
Efforts to extradite Asner -- who has been living in Klagenfurt since 2006 under the name Georg Aschner -- to Croatia were dropped as result of those reports.
But Nazi hunter Zuroff has repeatedly questioned the reports' findings, especially after pictures were published in the British newspaper The Sun showing Asner and his wife relaxing on a terrace among Euro 2008 football fans.
Zuroff, who met Austrian Justice Minster Maria Berger to discuss the case on Thursday, said that international treatment of former war criminals "shows that where there's a will there's a way" when it comes to punishment.
"I don't see that will here in Austria," he said.
Asner, the "fourth most wanted Nazi" on the Simon Wiesenthal Center's list, is accused of having organised the deportation of Serbs, Jews and gypsies to Nazi concentration camps, where most of them died. He allegedly served as police chief under the fascist Ustase movement, which governed Croatia during World War II in alliance with Nazi Germany.
"I have to repeat my accusation that Austria is a paradise for war criminals," Zuroff said.
Asner does indeed appear to lucid, and has given a number of interviews in recent days. In an interviewed aired Tuesday, he told Austrian public television ORF he was ready to surrender to Croatian authorities.
On Wednesday, Justice Minister Berger had said that prosecutors were still examining the latest experts to see if Asner is fit to be questioned.
If so, he will be extradited to Croatia, Berger had said.
ejpress.org
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