U.S. Probing Perjury Claims Against Nazi-Hunting Unit

The Justice Department is investigating claims that officials of its Nazi-hunting unit lied under oath and withheld crucial evidence involving a former Southern Californian convicted of war crimes by a Yugoslav court, it was learned Thursday.

A source familiar with the internal investigation, however, said that there are no indications that the late Andrija Artukovic was falsely convicted of bearing responsibility for hundreds of deaths during World War II.

The claims of misconduct and related documents have been presented by Artukovic’s son, Radoslav, a Los Angeles stockbroker who has waged an international legal battle for more than six years, first to prevent his father’s prosecution and, more recently, to clear his name.

Artukovic, who had been in poor health for years, was 88 when he died of natural causes in a Yugoslav prison in early 1988, several months after his conviction. He had been identified as a cabinet minister in a Nazi puppet government in wartime Croatia that carried out the execution of thousands of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies.

Artukovic emigrated to the United States in 1948 under an alias and lived in Seal Beach before his extradition to Yugoslavia.

The Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, created in 1979 to investigate and assist in the prosecution of Nazi war criminals, once considered Artukovic the most important World War II criminal in U.S. hands.

FBI agents are involved in some aspects of the internal inquiry, which is being directed by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, according to sources.

The younger Artukovic has supplied investigators with documents he claims show that the Office of Special Investigations, contrary to the sworn testimony of Director Neal M. Sher, actively sought to extradite his accused father to Yugoslavia in 1986.

Sher has vigorously contended that the extradition initiative came from Yugoslavia, not from U.S. officials, saying that the Justice Department was only complying with a legitimate Yugoslav request.

Artukovic’s son also has alleged that OSI officials withheld evidence that might have cast doubt on two witnesses who testified against his father.

The younger Artukovic has obtained State Department documents under the federal Freedom of Information Act, including cables from the American Embassy in Belgrade involving a visit by Sher and others to that capital in 1983.

Copies of the documents were made available to The Times.

One cable marked “confidential” says that the “principal purpose of visit is to raise the possibility of a Yugoslav extradition request to the U.S. for Andrija Artukovic.”

Another cable reads in part: “The objectives of the USG (U.S. government), as seen by the DOJ (Department of Justice) team, (include an) attempt to successfully extradite Artukovic to Yugoslavia.”

Sher’s office said he was not available for comment. Department spokesman Doug Tillett, after conferring with OSI, said: “I am not able to comment on these allegations or on the inquiry.”

The younger Artukovic also has dug up conflicting affidavits by witnesses against his father, charging that OSI officials unfairly withheld those that were less favorable to their case.

In one instance, a former Serbian police chief named Fronjo Truhar swore in 1952 that “Artukovic himself sent the order for Dr. Jesa Vidic (an imprisoned lawyer) to be killed, which was also carried out . . . in July, 1941.”

However, in another affidavit given a year earlier but not made part of the court record, Truhar never mentioned Artukovic’s alleged order to kill Vidic. Truhar simply said that Vidic “never returned” from the place where he was imprisoned.

The younger Artukovic also has submitted materials attacking an affidavit obtained in 1984 from Bajro Avdic, a Yugloslav who said that he was a motorcycle escort for Artukovic in 1941. Avdic claimed that he saw Artukovic order soldiers to massacre innocent civilians.

But Artukovic’s son has told investigators that he found Avdic had given three previous statements dating back to 1946 that differ substantially in details and recollections. He said that OSI helped suppress these statements for fear they would damage his credibility.

“He changed his story each time he told it,” the younger Artukovic said.