Dinko Sakic's Portfolio
From the Press
Srpska Mreza

ZAGREB) - The Zagreb public prosecutor on Monday demanded an investigation into the activities of a World War Two concentration camp commander to decide whether Croatia should request his extradition from Argentina.

Dinko Sakic, 76, told Argentine television earlier this month that he had commanded Jasenovac camp from 1942 to 1944, during Germany's wartime occupation of Yugoslavia.

``We issued a request to launch an investigation against Dinko Sakic,'' Zagreb county prosecutor Radovan Santek told Reuters.

Croatia has said it is prepared to put Sakic on trial if there is enough evidence against him. He was proclaimed a war criminal in 1946 by a commission investigating the crimes of World War Two occupying forces and their collaborators, but was never formally charged with war crimes.

``We have now gathered evidence which indicates that... Sakic may have committed war crimes against the civilian population,'' Santek said.

Sakic, who has been living in Argentina since 1945, has asked to be sent back to Croatia so that he can prove his innocence, but the Argentine authorities have not arrested him.

The Jasenovac camp, run by the Nazi-backed Ustasha regime, came to be known as the ``Auschwitz of the Balkans.''

The number of prisoners who died there remains a matter of dispute, varying from 85,000 according to independent Croatian estimates to 700,000 according to Serbian accounts.

Under Croatia's legal system, the supreme court has to authorise the county court to supervise a formal inquiry into the war crimes, crimes against humanity and violations of international law of which Sakic is suspected, the state news agency HINA reported.

In urgent cases, the investigation can be conducted within a day or two, Santek said. If appropriate, an extradition demand could follow immediately afterwards.

Yugoslavia, from which Croatia seceded in 1991, said last week it would compete with Croatia to extradite Sakic because he was a Yugoslav citizen when he commanded the camp and because the area where the camp was located was populated mainly by Serbs.