Artukovic May Escape Firing Squad Because of His Poor Health

Andrija Artukovic, convicted nearly a year ago of ordering more than 1,000 deaths during World War II, may escape a Yugoslav firing squad because of his poor health, family members have been told.

A Yugoslav court has informed Artukovic’s attorney that the 87-year-old man’s execution has been postponed because “a medical review determined that he is in no condition to be executed,” said Radoslav Artukovic, the ailing man’s son. The proceedings toward execution might continue if his father’s health improves, the son said.

“I believe that he was in no condition (to be extradited to Yugoslavia and tried) from day one,” Radoslav Artukovic said Saturday from his Los Alamitos home. “They (Yugoslav officials) had their charade and carried it out.”

Artukovic is being held in Simungradskoj prison hospital in Zagreb. He is legally blind and suffers from Alzheimer’s disease and an aortic aneurysm, his son said.

“He incorporates the past and present all in one,” his son said. “He can’t differentiate. He’s never all the way there. Most of the time at the trial (in Zagreb) he thought he was in the United States.”

Artukovic was extradited from the United States on Feb. 12, 1986, after a lengthy legal battle. He went on trial two months later in the Croatian capital in western Yugoslavia. Last May, he was convicted and sentenced to death by firing squad.

Artukovic was charged with ordering the massacre of villagers in a town 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.

The crimes allegedly were committed while Artukovic 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.

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

Pete Martinez, a U.S. State Department spokesman, said Saturday that he could not comment on the reported stay of execution.

Radoslav Artukovic said he spoke with his father’s Zagreb attorney on Thursday, shortly after the attorney had received word of the stay of execution. The younger Artukovic also heard Thursday that the Yugoslav Consulate had granted him a 10-day visa. He said he will leave for Zagreb today to see his father.