Doctors
have said Croat descent suspected Nazi war criminal Milivoj
Asner, 96, is not fit to stand trial after new tests were
carried out by authorities keen to rebuff claims they were
not doing enough to bring him to justice.
Previous examinations had said he was unfit for trial but Austrian officials
had asked an external expert to examine Asner.
Norbert Jenny, spokesman for Klagenfurt
court in southern Austria, said: "He is unfit to stand a trial."
The court had brought in Norbert
Nedopil, head of the Department for Forensic Psychiatry
in Munich, as an external expert in the case.
"Dr Nedopil did not
find out anything contrary to what experts who previously
examined Asner had found," Jenny added.
Austrian authorities have always
said Asner suffers from dementia.
The Croatian-born retired police
chief was last summer seen watching a Euro08 football match
in the fanzone of Klagenfurt where he lives. Critics blasted
Austria for "sheltering" Asner from Croatia, which wants to try him for atrocities against Serbs, Jews
and Gypsies, when he served as a top-ranking police officer
during World War II.
Asner fled to Austria at the end
of the war in 1945 and adopted the name George Aschner.
In 2005, Croatia indicted Asner for crimes against humanity
and war crimes in the city of Pozega in 1941 and 1942.
Austrian officials initially ruled
he could not be handed over to Croatian authorities because
he held Austrian citizenship. However, subsequent investigations
by prosecutors in Carinthia, where Asner lives, revealed
that he no longer holds citizenship in Austria.
Leading Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff
had recently attacked Austria for failing to bring Asner
to justice. Zuroff, head of the Israeli branch of the Simon
Wiesenthal Center, urged officials to seek the extradition
of Milivoj Asner. croatiantimes.com
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