30. 04. 09. - 16:00 croatiantimes.com
Asner unfit for trial, says new medical opinion

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