That other criminal period

The state prosecutor has initiated a procedure to prosecute Milivoj Aschner, the chief of police in Požega in 1941 and 1942, for violations committed as an official of the Ustaša regime, reports Vuk Đuričić in Slobodna Dalmacija. The prosecutor's report charges Mr Aschner with carrying out racial laws, with arrests and taking of property on the basis of religious and ethnic identity, and with direct participation in abuses. Among the incidents to which he is connected are the mass imprisonment, on 26 August 1941, of 600 Serbs from Derventa in the Požega camp where 358 of them were killed the same day. He is also charged with the dispossession and deportation of 28 Jewish families from Požega on 16 October 1941, who were sent to the Jasenovac and Đakovo camps at the end of year, after which no further traces of them are known. He is also charged with the arrest of 19 alleged Communists between 19 and 22 February 1941, who were psychologically abused and tortured before 18 of them were released a month later by a court for lack of evidence.

If the court accepts the prosecutor's report, they will be asked to request that Mr Aschner be extradited from Austria, where he lived from 1945 to 1991, when he moved to Daruvar, before returning (Slobodnjak's atricle says he "escaped," but does not specify from what) to Austria last year.