"The authorities are doing all they can to collect data on people suspected of war crimes," Bajic told Hina on Tuesday. He said that WWII ended nearly 60 years ago which made it very difficult for the authorities to find witnesses.
Most of the evidence is collected by searching various archives and the Interior Ministry is working on both cases opened by the State Prosecutor's Office, Bajic said.
He said that Croatia was currently investigating two so-called Nazi cases -- the case of a high-ranking Ustasha officer from Dubrovnik, Ivo Rojnica, and the case of a high-ranking Ustasha official from Pozega, Milivoj Asner. The State Prosecutor's Office is intensively cooperating with colleagues and secret services in Argentina on the Rojnica case. Since Rojnica lives in Argentina, the pace of solving his case will considerably depend on that country, Bajic said.
After receiving the Milivoj Asner case from the SWC, the State Prosecutor's Office in July handed the case over to the Police Directorate's war crimes department which has not yet completed the investigation, Bajic said.
The case was handed over to the police because the Prosecutor's Office decided that related documents submitted by Alen Budaj of Pozega were not sufficient for issuing an indictment. In the meantime, Asner fled Croatia.
Bajic declined to talk about any information on that case.
He said the State Prosecutor's Office was also investigating crimes committed "by the other side", such as those in Bleiburg and the Macelj woods.
"We are facing identical problems in those cases as well," he said.
The SWC report covers the period from 1 April 2003 to 31 March 2004 and the monitored countries are divided into categories from A to F depending on how much efforts they are investing in the prosecution of Nazi war criminals.
Croatia is in the D category, which consists of "those countries which have ostensibly made at least a minimal effort to investigate Nazi war criminals but which failed to achieve any practical results during the period under review".
There is no reference to the Asner case in the SWC report.