Milivoj Ašner was a police chief in the Independent State of Croatia

Independent State of Croatia

The Independent State of Croatia was a World War II puppet state of Nazi Germany, established on a part of Axis-occupied Yugoslavia. The NDH was founded on 10 April 1941, after the invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers. All of Bosnia and Herzegovina was annexed to NDH, together with some parts...

 who was accused for enforcing racist laws under its Nazi-allied Ustaše

Ustaše

The Ustaša - Croatian Revolutionary Movement was a Croatian fascist anti-Yugoslav separatist movement. The ideology of the movement was a blend of fascism, Nazism, and Croatian nationalism. The Ustaše supported the creation of a Greater Croatia that would span to the River Drina and to the border...

 regime and murdering around three thousand Serbs

Serbs

The Serbs are a South Slavic ethnic group of the Balkans and southern Central Europe. Serbs are located mainly in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and form a sizable minority in Croatia, the Republic of Macedonia and Slovenia. Likewise, Serbs are an officially recognized minority in...

, Jews

Jews

The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...

 and Roma. He was born in Daruvar

Daruvar

Daruvar is a town in central Croatia, population 9,815 , total municipality population 13,243 ....

, Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia

Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia

The Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia or Croatia Slavonia was an autonomous kingdom within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was part of the Hungarian Kingdom within the dual Austro-Hungarian state, being within the Lands of the Crown of St. Stephen or Transleithania...

 and resided in Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

 at the time of his death in 2011.

Post war flight

Ašner fled to Austria at the end of the war in 1945 and adopted the name George Aschner.

Efforts to prosecute

In 2005, Croatia indicted Ašner for crimes against humanity and war crimes in the city of Požega

Požega, Croatia

Požega is a city in western Slavonia, eastern Croatia, with a total population of 26,403 . It is the administrative center of the Požega-Slavonia County.-Geography:...

 in 1941-42. In February 2006, Austrian judicial officials said they were close to deciding on whether to arrest Ašner. Austrian officials initially ruled he could not be handed over to Croatian authorities as he held Austrian citizenship. However, subsequent investigations by the state attorney's office in the province of Carinthia

Carinthia (state)

Carinthia is the southernmost Austrian state or Land. Situated within the Eastern Alps it is chiefly noted for its mountains and lakes.The main language is German. Its regional dialects belong to the Southern Austro-Bavarian group...

 revealed that he no longer held citizenship in Austria.

He remained on Interpol

Interpol

Interpol, whose full name is the International Criminal Police Organization – INTERPOL, is an organization facilitating international police cooperation...

's most wanted list,
and was considered by the Simon Wiesenthal Center

Simon Wiesenthal Center

The Simon Wiesenthal Center , with headquarters in Los Angeles, California, was established in 1977 and named for Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi hunter. According to its mission statement, it is "an international Jewish human rights organization dedicated to repairing the world one step at a time...

 as the fourth most wanted Nazi at large.

In June 2008, journalists reported that, despite the Austrian government's claims that he was in poor health, he appeared to be physically fit based on his presence at a European Championship

UEFA European Football Championship

The UEFA European Football Championship is the main football competition of the men's national football teams governed by UEFA . Held every four years since 1960, in the even-numbered year between World Cup tournaments, it was originally called the UEFA European Nations Cup, changing to the current...

 football match involving Croatia in Klagenfurt

Klagenfurt

-Name:Carinthia's eminent linguists Primus Lessiak and Eberhard Kranzmayer assumed that the city's name, which literally translates as "ford of lament" or "ford of complaints", had something to do with the superstitious thought that fateful fairies or demons tend to live around treacherous waters...

, where he lived. This prompted renewed calls for his extradition to Croatia.

The controversial then Governor of Carinthia, Jörg Haider

Jörg Haider

Jörg Haider was an Austrian politician. He was Governor of Carinthia on two occasions, the long-time leader of the Austrian Freedom Party and later Chairman of the Alliance for the Future of Austria , a breakaway party from the FPÖ.Haider was controversial within Austria and abroad for comments...

, praised Ašner's family as friendly and said of Ašner that "he's lived peacefully among us for years, and he should be able to live out the twilight of his life with us". This provoked further criticism, with Efraim Zuroff

Efraim Zuroff

Efraim Zuroff is an Israeli historian of American origin, who has played a role in bringing Nazis indicted for war crimes to trial...

of the Simon Wiesenthal Center saying that Haider's views reflected "the political atmosphere which exists in Austria and which in certain circles is extremely sympathetic to suspected Nazi war criminals".

Denial of involvement

In an interview that aired in Croatia on 19 June 2008, Ašner acknowledged that he was involved in deportations, but maintained that those who were deported were taken not to death camps, as is generally believed, but to their homelands instead. He claimed his conscience was clear and that he was willing to go on trial in Croatia, but also asserted that his health was a problem. In an examination in the same week, it was again decided he was mentally unfit. Zuroff expressed the suspicion that Ašner was pretending or exaggerating regarding his condition.