Dinko Sakic's Portfolio
From the Press
Srpska Mreza

Buenos Aires

Officials in Argentina Wednesday were hunting for a Croatian man suspected of having run a notorious World War II death camp in the Balkans after his country's diopmatic mission denied a report that he had sought refuge there.

"He's not here," said a statement from Croatian Ambassador Neda Rosamdic. The newspaper La Nacion reported several hours earlier that Dinko Sakic, 76, fled to his country's consulate in Argentina amid moves to have him stand trial for war crimes.

Papers reported Tuesday that Sakic has been living under his real name in the small Argentinian town of Santa Teresita on the Atlantic coast for more than 50 years. He was found by a television investigative team.

La Nacion newspaper said Tuesday that as the last commandant of the World War II Jasenovac camp in the former Yugoslavia, Sakic was accused of being responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Serbs, Jews and gypsies. The camp was known as the "Auschwitz of the Balkans".

The camp, where victims were either executed or gathered before transportation to other camps, was erected at Jasenovac, south of Zagreb, in August 1941 under the Ustasha puppet regime, which pledged allegiance to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.

Argentina's Jewish community has already called for Sakic to be expelled from the country and President Carlos Menem has now urged judicial authorities to arrest the man. Sakic denies committing war crimes and claims prisoners in the Jasenovac camp died of typhoid.

Estimates of how many people were killed at Jasenovac differ widely. In the former communist Yugoslavia the number was put as high as 600,000. Croatian President Franjo Tudjman once claimed 50,000 people were killed in the camp but backtracked in the face of fierce criticism.

In April 1945, as German troops fled and Serbian partisan forces under Marshall Josip Broz Tito moved towards the camp, inmates at Jasenovac staged a revolt. It was brutally put down by Ustasha guards with an estimated loss of 2,000 lives.