Authorities order new medical, psychiatric tests of Milivoj Asner, seen watching soccer match in June.
By AP, JPOST.COM STAFF
Austrian authorities have ordered a new round of medical and psychiatric tests to determine whether a suspected Nazi is healthy enough to be extradited to Croatia to stand trial for alleged atrocities.
The public prosecutor's office in the southern Austrian province of Carinthia said Saturday it hopes a fresh evaluation of 95-year-old Milivoj Asner will lay to rest doubts about his fitness.
The Croatian-born retired police chief caused a stir last month when he was seen watching a soccer match in the city of Klagenfurt. Critics contend Austria is sheltering Asner from Croatia, which wants to try him for World War II-era atrocities against Serbs, Jews and Gypsies.
Austrian authorities have said Asner suffers from dementia.
In late June, the Simon Wiesenthal Center requested for a panel of international medical experts to assess Asner's health.
Asner, who allegedly enforced racist laws under Croatia's World War II Nazi-allied regime, fled to Austria following his exposure by the center's 'Operation: Last Chance' project.
In a meeting in Vienna with Austrian Justice Minister Maria Berger, the center's chief Nazi-hunter and Israel director Dr. Efraim Zuroff said that recent photos, videos and interviews of Asner by journalists from the British daily The Sun clearly disproved the testimony of court- appointed Austrian doctors claiming Asner suffered from dementia and was too ill to be extradited to Croatia to stand trial for his crimes as Pozega's police chief.