Artukovic Will Face Firing Squad : Found Guilty of War Crimes During Nazi Rule of Croatia

Andrija Artukovic, who was pried from his California refuge by Yugoslavia after three decades of legal maneuvering to avoid facing charges of Nazi war crimes, was convicted today of the mass murders of civilians and POWs during World War II and sentenced to death by firing squad.

Artukovic, 86, sat stone-faced and silently behind a specially built bulletproof glass screen as Chief Judge Milko Gajski read the verdict and sentence to the packed courtroom.

Artukovic “ordered the persecution, torture and murders of . . . hundreds of thousands of Jews, Serbs, Croats and Gypsies, many of them children and women,” the judge said in announcing the verdict of a panel of three judges and two jurors.

‘Defendant Is Guilty’

“The defendant is guilty . . . and is sentenced to the death penalty,” the judge said.

Death by firing squad is the only type of capital punishment in Yugoslavia.

No date for the execution was set. Artukovic’s lawyers said they will appeal the conviction and sentence to the Croatian Supreme Court. Death penalty sentences are automatically appealed under Yugoslav law.

Artukovic, extradited from the United States on Feb. 12 after a lengthy legal battle, went on trial April 14 in the Croatian capital of Zagreb in western Yugoslavia.

The defendant was police and justice minister in the Nazi puppet state of Croatia from 1941 to 1945. His ministry was responsible for the operation of the concentration camps in Croatia, where Yugoslav officials say more than 700,000 men, women and children were murdered.

Convicted on 4 Charges

Artukovic was convicted of all four charges that led a judge in Los Angeles to order his extradition.

The charges included ordering the massacre of villagers at Vrgin Most southwest of Zagreb in 1942; ordering the slaying of about 450 people at the Kerestinec camp near Zagreb; ordering the unjust deportation of a lawyer in 1941, and ordering several hundred captured Yugoslav partisans killed in 1943.

Gajski said the four counts were proved by testimony of 26 witnesses and 19 written statements by witnesses who are dead or were unable to attend the trial.

“He is guilty because he was under the protection of and in collaboration with the Nazis,” Gajski said.

During the 18-day trial, Artukovic denied involvement in war crimes, calling the charges “a common lie.”

‘Political Charade’

Artukovic’s son, Rad, 38, who came from Los Angeles to attend the trial, was not in the courtroom today, but he called the verdict a “political charade” and vowed an appeal. (Story, Page 2.)

Gajski said Artukovic was following his “Nazi-fascist doctrine of the pure race in Croatia” by carrying out his wartime duties and by being a member of the Ustashi organization of extreme Croatian separatists, which ran Croatia for the Nazis.

The judge rejected defense arguments that Artukovic was too old and ill to stand trial.

Artukovic is legally blind and suffers from Alzheimer’s disease and the effects of several operations. But the judge noted that doctors examined the defendant daily and found him fit to participate.

Artukovic was arrested Nov. 14, 1984, at his suburban Los Angeles home by federal marshals acting on an extradition request by Yugoslavia. He had been working as a bookkeeper for his brother’s construction firm.