Trial Proved His Innocence, Artukovic Says

Facing an expected verdict of guilty and a possible death sentence for alleged war crimes, Andrija Artukovic insisted Friday that his four-week trial here has proved him innocent.

“Thank God my innocence has been proved, judge,” said the minister of justice and the interior in the puppet state of Croatia set up by Nazi Germany during World War II.

The 86-year-old resident of Seal Beach, Calif., spoke in a firm voice after his attorneys had delivered their final arguments Friday afternoon, and he was asked by the court if he wished to make a final statement.

The Croatian nationalist, whose ministry oversaw a system of concentration camps in which 900,000 people are believed to have been killed, added a sardonic political declaration:

“Allow me to thank you with all my heart and soul,” he said from the bulletproof glass booth in which he has faced the court since April 14. “Not only on my own behalf, but on behalf of all the Croatian people, the present day will be recorded in history.”

Verdict on Wednesday

Presiding Judge Milko Cajski said the two judges and three jurors who heard the case in Zagreb District Court will announce a verdict next Wednesday.

Throughout the trial Artukovic’s three attorneys, noted for defending human rights causes, sought to have the charges dropped on grounds that Artukovic is too senile to participate intelligently, but the court overruled them. Each morning, a panel of three physicians examined him and declared him fit to continue.

Artukovic was extradited to Zagreb from the United States on Feb. 12. He had entered the country illegally, under a false name, in 1948.

Although he was tried on only four specific charges, the prosecution’s wide-ranging indictment associated him with the systematic torture and annihilation of Jews, Gypsies and Serbs from 1941 to 1945, and held him responsible for the mass murder of many fellow Croatians and others.

Second in Command

Artukovic was said to have been second only to the dictator Ante Pavelic in the “independent state of Croatia” that was established in Yugoslavia by Adolf Hitler. Pavelic fled after the war and was shot by an assassin in Argentina. He died not long afterward in Spain, where he was taken for treatment of his wounds.

In their final arguments, Artukovic’s attorneys sought to lay a legal base for appeal by protesting that the four charges should have been brought against Artukovic under the 1929 Yugoslav criminal code. It provided for a statute of limitations under which Artukovic could not have been prosecuted after 1983.

Moreover, the defense argued, the prosecution had produced only one purported witness to three of the alleged crimes and they said he was unreliable because of contradictions in his testimony.

The defense lawyers said that Artukovic, whom they described as an administrator with no real power, displayed “behavior typical of a person suffering from senile dementia.”

Agreed With Lawyers

Asked by Judge Gajski if he fully understood and agreed with the argument of his lawyers, Artukovic replied in a firm voice, “I accept it in its entirety.”

More than a score of witnesses, most of them former concentration camp inmates, testified against Artukovic. One, who said he had been Artukovic’s driver, said that Artukovic and Pavelic “ordered that six captured British and American pilots be liquidated” in Northern Croatia. “I was a witness,” he went on. “I was standing only a few meters away.”

Another, a former police chief, testified that Artukovic boasted of killing Jews and seizing their property. He quoted Artukovic as telling him: “You see how I solved the Jewish question faster and more efficiently than Hitler? I take their property and then I kill them.”

A former inmate recalled his experiences at one of the concentration camps.

‘Struck With Sledge Hammers’

“People had to dig graves for themselves and lean over,” he said. “They were struck with sledge hammers. They fell spurting blood. Some of them still alive. When the graves were full, earth and limestone were shoveled over them.”

Artukovic said he knew nothing of any atrocities, but he defended the establishment of concentration camps.

“Camps were not formed without any need, just for fun,” he told the court. “If they were set up, then there was a need for these camps. It was not just without any reason.”