In a letter to Austria's Ambassador to Israel, Kurt Hengl, the Director of the Centre, Efraim Zuroff, said that despite the fact that Austrian authorities have been aware for months of Asner's presence in Klagenfurt no legal action has been taken against him.
Zuroff noted that this was in direct contradiction of the declarations by Austrian leaders of their determination to bring Holocaust perpetrators to justice.
"Despite the plethora of incriminating evidence against Asner and his important role in the persecution, and deportation to concentration camps where they were murdered, of hundreds of Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies, the Austrian government has hereto refrained from taking any legal measures against this Nazi war criminal," said the letter, which was sent to Hina from Jerusalem.
Zuroff said that Asner was currently under investigation by Croatian authorities, but expressed fear that he would not be indicted and put on trial.
"Under these circumstances, I urge you to convey to your government the necessity of urgent legal measures by the Austrian authorities, whose actions in this matter will finally lend practical credence to their professed good intentions and declared determination to hold Holocaust perpetrators accountable for their crimes," the chief Nazi hunter said in the letter.
The Pozega County Court recently ordered an investigation into Asner, 92, who served as police chief in Pozega in 1941 and 1942. He is suspected of committing war crimes against civilians.
Zuroff filed a criminal report against Asner last year based on research by Alan Budaj, an amateur historian from Pozega, as part of the Operation Last Chance project on the suffering of the Jews in the Pozega region in the early 1940s.