The Simon Wiesenthal
Center and the Targum Shlishi Foundation officially launched their «Operation:Last
Chance» project today in Croatia at a special press conference
held at the offices of the Croatian Civic Committee for Human Rights
which is serving as the Center`s local partner in implementing
the project.
At the press conference the Center's chief Nazi-hunter Dr. Efraim
Zuroff revealed that he had already met this morning with Croatian
Attorney-General Mladen Bajic and submitted a fully-documented
file against Milivoj Ašner, the former Ustaša police
chief of the city of Slavonska Poega who had played an active
role in the persecution and murder of numerous civilians from that
town, and was the first suspect named in Croatia in the framework
of «Operation:Last Chance.»(His name was submitted
to Dr. Zuroff several weeks ago in the wake of the news that the
Center was planning to launch O:LC in Croatia.)Ašner, who
still plays an active role in Croatian politics as the founder
of the Original Peasants Party, returned to Croatia from Austria
after the dismemberment of Yugoslavia.
Zuroff and Dr. Zoran Pusic, president of the Civic Committee, met
this morning with Croatian president Stipe Mesic who expressed
his fullest support for the project.
Croatia is the seventh country in which the Wiesenthal Center and
the Targum Shlishi Foundation, founded and headed by Aryeh Rubin
of Miami, Florida,have launched «Operation: Last Chance.»To
date,the names of 296 suspects have been submitted,of which 72
have already been turned over to local prosecutors. Fifteen murder
investigations have been initiated against approximately 40 suspects.The
project will be launched in Hungary (July 13), Argentina (August),
Germany (September 21) and the Ukraine (fall 2004).
For more information call: 972-51-214156
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