The Region - News from Feb. 7, 1985

A Los Angeles federal judge has dismissed a civil suit filed by five Jewish survivors of the Holocaust against accused war criminal Andrija Artukovic on grounds that the suit was filed too long after the alleged war crimes took place. U.S. District Judge Pamela Ann Rymer also ruled that a U.S. court does not have jurisdiction over events that took place in the Nazi puppet state of Croatia during World War II. The civil suit was filed against Artukovic, 85, last March by concentration camp survivors Leo Handel, Isaac and Hanna Hordy and Leon and Shari Kabiljo. It was the first attempt by Holocaust survivors to bring claims against alleged war criminals in U.S. courts. Artukovic, former minister of the interior in Croatia, is fighting an extradition request by Yugoslavia for alleged complicity in the mass murder of more than 700,000 Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and Orthodox Christians during World War II.