Yugoslavia Reindicts Artukovic in Mass Deaths

The government of Yugoslavia, invited by U.S. Magistrate Volney V. Brown Jr. to amend its war crimes indictment against Andrija Artukovic so he could be tried for more than a single murder, filed documents Thursday in Los Angeles charging him with killing several thousand people during World War II.

Shortly after prosecutors from the U.S. Justice Department submitted the documents to Brown on behalf of Yugoslav authorities, Artukovic’s attorney, Gary B. Fleischman, attacked the legal maneuver as “improper and illegal.”

“We plan to file an appeal to the magistrate’s allowing this kind of evidence to be filed after the completion of a criminal proceeding,” Fleischman said. “It clearly violates Artukovic’s constitutional rights.”

Held in Missouri

As the legal battle over his extradition continues, the 85-year-old Artukovic, legally blind and suffering from a variety of physical and mental ailments, is being held at a federal prison hospital in Missouri.

Brown, in a March 4 ruling that ordered Artukovic returned to his homeland after living 37 years in the Orange County community of Surfside, said he could find evidence of only one specific homicide in the indictment charging Artukovic with responsibility for 700,000 murders of Serbs, Gypsies and Jews while he was minister of the interior for the Nazi puppet state of Croatia.

But Brown gave the Yugoslav government 60 days to bring back an amended indictment. It did so Thursday, specifically charging Artukovic with the killing of:

- “Between four and five hundred persons murdered by machine-gun fire, after being removed from a motorcade traveling to Kerestinec, in late 1941.”

- “The entire civilian population of several villages, near Vrgin Most, murdered in a nearby valley by machine-gun fire in early 1942.”

- “Approximately 5,000 persons, murdered by rifle fire . . . near Moscenica in the Kozara region in 1942.”

- “Several hundred persons captured in the Zumberg region, murdered by machine-gun fire and by being crushed to death underneath moving tanks, in the vicinity of a castle near Samobar in early 1943.”

The amended indictment also included the charge that Artukovic was responsible for the death of Dr. Jesa Vidic, which was the one murder count on which Magistrate Brown had ordered Artukovic’s extradition.

According to Assistant U.S. Atty. David Nimmer, the next step in the proceedings will be for Brown to sign an amended certificate of extradictability, which would then be forwarded to Secretary of State George P. Shultz for a decision on whether Artukovic will actually be sent to Yugoslavia.

However, Artukovic’s attorneys have 60 days to appeal Brown’s order. Such an appeal would be heard first by Chief U.S. District Judge Manuel Real in Los Angeles and could be further appealed to higher courts.