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Former Nazi too sick for trial, but not for drinking in cafes By Assaf Uni BERLIN - A Croatian police officer suspected of helping to send hundreds of Jews, gypsies and Serbs to their deaths in concentration camps during World War II has been discovered living peacefully in the Austrian town of Klagenfurt. The Austrian government claims that Milivoj Asner, 95, is unfit to stand trial, as he suffers from poor physical health and dementia. But the British tabloid The Sun published pictures of him yesterday taking a lengthy stroll with his wife; sitting in cafes, sipping wine and chatting with the waiters; and cheering on Croatia's national team in the European soccer championships, which are currently being held in Klagenfurt. Advertisement Moreover, the paper's reporter spoke with Asner, who denied his alleged crimes in a perfectly coherent fashion. "It's not true. It's hilarious," he said. "I didn't have anything to do with it. I was just an officer with the Justice Department - a lawyer. I never did anything bad against anybody." The Simon Wiesenthal Center, which put Asner in fourth place on its list of the 10 most-wanted Nazi criminals, termed the discovery of his whereabouts very significant, and expressed hope that Austria would now change its mind and extradite Asner to Croatia to stand trial. Croatia asked Austria to extradite Asner three years ago, and Interpol issued an international arrest warrant for him on suspicions of crimes against humanity and genocide. But although he was known to live in Klagenfurt, his exact whereabouts until now were unknown, as he had successfully hidden under an alias. Asner was born in Croatia in 1913 and became a lawyer. Under the reign of the Ustashe, the Nazis' Croatian allies, he served as a police officer in the small town of Pozega. On Christmas eve 1941, some 150 Jews from the area were rounded up, along with hundreds of Serbs and gypsies, and sent to a Croatian-run concentration camp, where they were murdered. Over the past few years, Croatian witnesses who described Asner's part in the round-up have been located, along with documents connecting him to the event. In an interview three years ago with another British paper, the Guardian, he admitted to having been a police officer in Pozega, but insisted that he dealt only with traffic violations, theft and other minor crimes. Asner fled to Austria after the Ustashe regime fell, and lived there until Croatia's election of the nationalist president Franjo Tudjman in May 1990, after which Asner returned to his Croatian hometown. In 2004, however, on the very day when the Wiesenthal Center finally located him and asked the Croatian government to indict him, he fled back to Austria. Initially, the Austrians refused to extradite him on the grounds that he was an Austrian citizen. Two years ago, however, it emerged that he had actually been stripped of his Austrian citizenship when he returned to Croatia. The Austrians then claimed - in private conversations - that the statute of limitations on the crimes of which he was suspected had expired. Then, last year, they announced that doctors had examined Asner and concluded that he suffers from Alzheimer's and dementia, and was therefore unfit to stand trial. "The pictures prove that Asner is completely fit to stand trial," Efraim Zuroff, head of the Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, told Haaretz in response. "Following their publication, we are demanding that the Austrians let an independent doctor examine him. We always suspected that [the dementia excuse] was a big performance, and now we're convinced of it." Zuroff, who termed Austria a "paradise for Nazi criminals," said that its refusal to extradite Asner fits the pattern of its behavior in many similar previous cases. He added that he plans to fly to Vienna next week to press the government on this issue. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Religious pressure Tel Aviv supermarket chain agrees gradual Shabbat closure. Overgenerous diplomacy UN envoy: Israel has given Syria a 'huge gift' for free.

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