Prosecutor Links Artukovic to List of ‘Unspeakable’ Croatia Atrocities

In unusually emotional language, a federal prosecutor Friday linked accused war criminal Andrija Artukovic to a long list of “unspeakable” atrocities ranging from the rape of school girls in front of their mothers to the murder of unborn babies.

Assistant U.S. Atty. David Nimmer said that while Artukovic was minister of the interior for Croatia during World War II, he had responsibility for the actions of a Croatian “police force” known as the Ustasha.

“Their bestial savagery harkens back to an age before there had ever appeared any glimmer of morality or civilization, of God or compassion, of humanity,” Nimmer declared in a court document filed in advance of the scheduled start on Wednesday of an extradition hearing requested by Yugoslavia for Artukovic’s return on war crime charges.

Son Responds

Nimmer’s charge brought an immediate response from Artukovic’s son, Rad, that the government is echoing Communist propaganda in its allegations against the former Croatian government official.

Artukovic, 85, faces Yugoslav charges of multiple murder in connection with the concentration camp deaths of more than 700,000 Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and Orthodox Christians.

Nimmer, in outlining the Yugoslav charges, said the case against Artukovic has to be understood against the background of the activities of the Ustasha, which he described as a Croatian insurrectionist police force that acted as a division of the Croatian interior ministry during World War II.

“They directed a campaign of terror against the Serbian community, which followed the Eastern Orthodox rite and against Gypsies and Jews,” Nimmer said. “As shown by the evidence in this case, the Ustasha, driven by an insatiable blood lust, committed atrocities on an unspeakable scale.”

Wanton Murder

Nimmer said the Ustasha engaged in the wanton murder of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies, established the Jasenovac concentration camp in which hundreds of thousands of people died, murdered some victims by cracking their skulls with sledgehammers, induced cannibalism among concentration camp inmates, mutilated and tortured victims, raped school girls in front of their mothers, and killed infants by impaling them on bayonets.

Their crimes, Nimmer continued, included “slitting open the bellies of pregnant women” and “drinking the blood from the slashed throats of their victims.”

He said Yugoslav witnesses have said in depositions that Artukovic at different times ordered the slaughter of 5,000 Serbs, argued in favor of sending 200 intellectuals to a concentration camp, personally ordered Jews thrown into trucks and driven to Jasenovac, and signed orders barring Jews from full participation in Croatian society.

‘Hook, Line, Sinker’

Rad Artukovic, a Los Angeles businessman who has crusaded for his ailing father’s release from federal custody, said Nimmer’s charges were “straight out of the Communist literature on the subject.

“That’s what you call propaganda,” he said. “It’s one thing to make a case against my dad. But to go hook, line and sinker for the Communists is another thing.”

He said his father had nothing to do with the Ustasha police or military forces and was neither for nor against the Nazis who took over Croatia during World War II as a puppet government.