Croat suspected of WWII war crimes dies:
Nazi-hunters
Agence France Presse (English) - December 5, 2007 Wednesday 1:30 PM GMT
ZAGREB, Dec 5 2007 - A former official of Croatia's World War II pro-Nazi regime
suspected of war crimes has died in Argentina, the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal
Centre said Tuesday.
"Ivo Rojnica passed away last week in Argentina without being processed" for war
crimes, the Centre's Israel director Efraim Zuroff told AFP in a telephone
interview.
"This is the failure primarily by the Croatian judicial system," Zuroff said
adding that Zagreb had been following up on the Centre's demands to investigate
Rojnica for the past two years without taking any action.
He said they had never submitted an indictment or asked for his extradition.
"The Argentine government was willing to send him to Croatia. The problem was
that that (extradition) request never came."
He expressed regret that the death of Rojnica, 92, was particularly disturbing
since the former official of Croatia's World War II Ustasha regime was an
"unrepentant war criminal."
The Wiesenthal Centre, which repeatedly warned Croatia over its failure to
prosecute Rojnica, charged that he had played an active role in the persecution
of Serbs, Jews and Roma in the area of the southern Adriatic town of Dubrovnik.
After World War II, Rojnica fled to Argentina, where he obtained citizenship and
became a leader in the local Croatian community.
Following Zagreb's proclamation of independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, the
late nationalist president Franjo Tudjman named Rojnica to the post of Croatian
ambassador to Argentina.
However Tudjman later gave up the idea under pressure from the international
community.
The Ustasha regime killed hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, anti-fascist
Croatians, Roma and others in Croatian concentration camps.
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