Austria - "a paradise for war criminals"?

The Sun enters the Nazi's lair

I looked into the ice-blue eyes of one of the world's most wanted Nazis and was chilled by the piercing stare of a man who has evaded justice for more than 60 years. And yesterday wartime Croatian police chief Milivoj Asner sensationally declared he is ready to face trial. The Sun caught up with the world's fourth-most hunted Nazi as he mingled with Euro 2008 football fans in his adopted home town of Klagenfurt, Austria


By BRIAN FLYNN
Story from The SUN
Published: June 17, 2008


We told yesterday how the 95-year-old strolled unaided for hours beside wife Edeltraut - making a mockery of Austrian officials' claims that he is too ill to be extradited to Croatia to face a court for alleged war crimes. And he and I locked eyes as he coolly invited me into his smart third-floor flat, where he has lived comfortably with second wife Edeltraut for four years.

The stubble-covered cheeks are hollower than in the passport photograph attached to his Interpol international arrest warrant, and the frame is thinner. But his clear, bright eyes and the unflinching gaze that met my own betrayed a sharpness and an arrogance that has not deserted him in old age. Well-spoken, studiously polite and unruffled despite being confronted unexpectedly by a foreign reporter, he exuded the confidence of a man who seemed to believe he was untouchable.

His drab brown lounge was clean, odourless and sparsely decorated. Books were piled up and photos of relatives on display. But any showing his younger days were noticeably absent. Asked about his past, Asner - who lives in Austria under an assumed name - at first insisted I had the wrong address. Yet he finally confessed his identity when I pointed out our photos matched those of him on record.

Speaking lucidly and clearly, he then denied he was responsible for any wartime atrocities in the Croatian town of Pozega, dismissing accusers as "airheads". At times, he insisted his memory had failed - making a play of asking his wife how many children he had. He has three. Yet despite this, he was able to clearly remember his own father's career - and to detail his own job as a "senior civil servant" amid the 1940s conflict.

Told there was an Interpol international arrest warrant out for him citing genocide, he insisted he knew nothing of it - laughing: "There's an arrest warrant to extradite me? Why?" But he and Edeltraut are clearly aware of the document. She quickly interjected to explain their lawyer has the details. The history books describe how Pozega's entire Jewish community was wiped out in World War II - sent to the evil Jasenovac concentration camp where 700,000 were exterminated.

Asner is alleged to have overseen the deportation from Croatia of hundreds of Jews, Serbs and gypsies to concentration camps - signing the necessary forms. He was indicted in 2005 for crimes committed when he was a Ustashi police chief under Croatia's Second World War fascist puppet regime. His Interpol warrant lists the category of offences as "genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity".

And academics have detailed how on Christmas Day 1941 - when they allege Asner was police chief - 150 Jews were rounded up, robbed and put on cattle wagons bound for camps. Yet despite archive documents pin-pointing his role, he insisted he had never been a police chief there. And he claimed his signature must be fake. Astonishingly, Asner also denied any Jews were deported to death camps from his home town. Laughing again, he said: "I don't know of anyone deported from Pozega. Nobody was murdered. I never heard of one single family murdered in Pozega." Denying he sent anyone to Jasenovac, he said: "That is not the way I was. I never, never took part in it."

Despite Austrian officials ruling out extradition on health grounds, Asner said he was well enough to face trial. He said: "I have a clear conscience - I can appear in front of any court. I would welcome the chance to answer these accusations in a Croatian court. I don't have anything to do with it. I did not have enough responsibility to order deportation."

Asner admitted he supported the Ustashi fascists, but claimed he was never a member. He said: "I was not with them but, as a Croatian, I respected that they restored order. "However, I was against the Nazis because I am a democrat."

Austria's Justice Minister Maria Berger was last night under pressure to review the case and agree extradition after our exposé provoked global outrage. Officials revealed they may order a new medical examination. As I prepared to leave, Asner took me firmly by the arm and invited me to stay and share a cognac, telling me I was clearly an honourable man. I declined and shook his offered hand out of politeness (his grip was surprisingly firm for his age). But, as I met those sharp blue eyes again, I felt unable to return his compliment.


(Published: 10.07.2008.)