VIENNA, Austria - Milivoj Asner caused
a stir just by showing up at a soccer game: The frail 95-year-old
is ranked No. 4 on a leading list of most-wanted Nazi war
crimes suspects.
Now Austria's most notorious far-right politician, former Freedom Party leader
Joerg Haider, has touched off an even bigger scandal by praising
Asner as a "treasured" neighbor who should be allowed to live out his days in peace.
"This could only happen
in Austria," Efraim Zuroff, chief Nazi hunter for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The Associated
Press.
Officials in southern Austria, where
Asner lives openly despite being indicted for crimes against
humanity in his native Croatia, contend the retired police
chief is mentally unfit for questioning, extradition or trial.
But Asner's recent appearance at a "fan
zone" near his home in the southern city of Klagenfurt , where he reportedly looked
fit and lucid as he and his wife watched Croatia play in
the European Championship , has some questioning whether
this alpine country with a tortured World War II past is
shielding him from justice.
Asner stands accused of persecuting
hundreds of Jews, Serbs and Gypsies and dispatching them
to their deaths in WWII-era Croatia, which was ruled by a
Nazi puppet regime.
"Austria has the habit
of closing its eyes," renowned Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld told French television Thursday. The Asner
case, he said, is fresh proof the country is a safe haven
for suspected war criminals.
Haider's impassioned defense of Asner
has only reinforced that impression.
Haider, who brought the Freedom Party
into Austria's coalition government in 2000 on a platform
tinged with anti-Semitic and xenophobic undertones, is the
governor of the province of Carinthia where Asner lives.
"He's lived peacefully
among us for years, and he should be able to live out the
twilight of his life with us," Haider told the newspaper Der Standard this week.
"This is a nice family.
We really treasure this family," he was quoted as saying.
Such praise is unconscionable, said
Zuroff, who has been pressuring the Austrian government to
arrest Asner and hand him over for trial as part of "Operation: Last Chance" , an effort to bring aging top suspects to justice before they die.
"This is clearly a reflection
of the political atmosphere which exists in Austria and which
in certain circles is extremely sympathetic to suspected
Nazi war criminals," Zuroff said in a telephone interview from Israel.
Asner, he added, "has
never showed any remorse for actions which affected the fates
of hundreds of people."
Asner's indictment alleges he actively
enforced racist laws while police chief in the eastern Croatian
town of Pozega in 1941-42, and sent his victims to a Croat-run
death camp. The Wiesenthal Center ranks him No. 4 on a list
of 10 top Nazi fugitives.
Asner has maintained his innocence,
and in an interview aired Thursday on state-run Croatian
television, declared: "My conscience is clear."
"I am ready to come to
face the court in Croatia, but I'm not in the best health," Asner said, adding that if the judges were honest, "they would have to acquit me."
He acknowledged he participated in
deportations of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies, but insisted the
deportees were sent to their homelands and not to camps.
Austria's Justice Ministry said it
is reviewing a request from Zuroff to make a fresh assessment
of Asner's physical and mental state and prove he is suffering
from dementia as experts have ruled in the past.
Without a new evaluation declaring
him physically and mentally fit, "our hands are tied," said ministry spokesman Thomas Geiblinger.
Croatia demanded Asner's extradition
in 2005, the year he was formally indicted. But the Austrians
demurred, first on the grounds that he was an Austrian citizen.
Later, they claimed the statute of limitations for his alleged
crimes had expired.
Austria eventually conceded that Asner
was not an Austrian citizen, which normally would have opened
the way for his extradition. But in 2006, independent experts
declared Asner mentally unfit, and they did so again in April.
Among those challenging that assessment
is Gerhard Tuschla, a reporter for Austrian public broadcaster
ORF. Tuschla said he recently interviewed Asner, who began
living under the name George Aschner after fleeing Croatia
for Austria in 1945, and found him to be "a jovial, whiskey-drinking old man."
"We suspected from the
very beginning that he might have been faking it , making
a specific effort to appear as unfit as possible," Zuroff said. "That might be easier to fake than physical issues."
Austrian authorities have angrily
denied they are giving Asner safe haven.
Manfred Herrnhofer, a federal court
spokesman in Klagenfurt, said officials are merely trying
to comply with complicated extradition guidelines "and in no way are protecting a suspected Nazi war criminal."
"Austria is a constitutional
state, not Guantanamo. We don't toss our principles overboard
for political gain," he said.
The affair comes just as Austria takes
over the chairmanship of the Task Force for International
Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research
, a 25-nation panel dedicated to maintaining the memory of
Nazi atrocities.
Members who met in the western city
of Linz this week credited Austria with making huge strides
toward coming to terms with its complicity in crimes after
Hitler's Germany annexed the country in 1938.
"I think that Austria is
quite advanced in a number of areas where other countries
are still struggling," said Yehuda Bauer, a Holocaust scholar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
who serves as the task force's honorary chairman.
Yet right-wing politicians like Haider
still exert influence, and efforts to establish an institute
in Vienna to house the archives of Wiesenthal, who died in
2005, have bogged down in a dispute over funding.
Austria needs to take Asner into custody
and hand him over if it wants to demonstrate it has truly
overcome its dark past, Zuroff said.
"The Austrians have totally
mishandled this," he said. "I really can't think of a worse way to remember the Holocaust than to not arrest
a leading Nazi war crimes suspect."
philly.com
|