ZAGREB COUNTY STATE ATT. - ZUROFF SUBMITTED ONLY INITIAL MATERIAL

ZAGREB, Feb 4 (Hina) - The Zagreb County State Attorney, Radovan Santek, on Thursday told Hina "Simon Wiesenthal" Centre director Efraim Zuroff had not submitted any "evidence" in the Nada Sakic case to Croatian judicial authorities. "That was only starting material from which a suspicion emerged. We ourselves gathered much more, yet it still had to be all checked during pre-trial investigations," Santek said in comment on Zuroff's latest remarks that his centre had submitted evidence charging Nada Sakic with war crimes against civilians in a Croatian concentration camp in Stara Gradiska during World War Two. Zuroff on Tuesday reacted to a Zagreb State Attorney's Office decision of February 1 by which the prosecution of Sakic was discontinued given that pre-trial investigation had not yielded evidence corroborating the charges. On Wednesday, Zuroff told BBC Radio Croatia's extradition request for Sakic from Argentina was based on such evidence. He also said he did not understand what had happened to the documents in question afterwards. "(Zuroff) had submitted sufficient material to make the issue suspect, and the proceedings were initiated, among else, on the basis of that material," Croatian Assistant Justice Minister Lidija Lukina-Karaljkovic said on Thursday. According to Santek, "Zuroff isn't familiar with the state of the case and with legal proceedings, with the difference between material suitable for initiating investigation and evidence necessary to issue an indictment." "Anyone with legal interest can see the entire file. It is at the court and available," Santek said. He added the file, among else, contains articles and memoirs, and a text referring to Maja Budzon, the commander of the women's camp in Stara Gradiska. "There are some indications about some acts, but there are no direct witnesses' statements charging (Nada Sakic)," Santek said. Not one of 26 witnesses questioned during the three-month pre-trial investigation had even "heard" that Sakic had committed a crime, he said, adding it was a well-known fact that concentration camp prisoners knew even about crimes they had not seen. Former camp inmate Dragan Roller told Voice of America Radio on Wednesday he had talked to other former camps prisoners, of whom none was able to say anything about Nada Luburic, Nada Sakic after marrying Dinko Sakic. Roller last year testified in a pre-trial investigation against Dinko Sakic, former commander of Jasenovac, another concentration camp in WW2 Croatia. Dinko Sakic was late last year accused in Zagreb of war crimes against civilians. Roller said then he remembered Nada Sakic but added she had held no camp duties. "I believe, like my other camp prisoner friends, that (Nada's) release is entirely justified," Roller said. He added she could not be tried today only because of her ideology or the fact that she wore a Ustasha uniform. The president of the Association of Anti-Fascist Soldiers of Croatia, Ivan Fumic, said the association was surprised by the Zagreb County State Attorney's Office decision to release Nada Sakic. "When Nada Sakic's extradition was requested, it was done on the basis of some evidence, because extradition cannot be requested without evidence. The pre-trial investigation focused exclusively on witnesses, disregarding other evidence," Fumic said. Asked about the evidence, Fumic said 85,000 people were killed in the Jasenovac camp and that it was a known fact that the executioners had been the people who worked and guarded in the camp. Those people were responsible for those crimes, he said and pointed out Stara Gradiska had been one of Jasenovac's four camp complex. Two of the camps were shut down in 1942. "There is the executioner, the participant, the assistant, the instigator," Fumic said. "Nada Sakic should have been brought to trial and sentenced at least symbolically, the crime should have been condemned," he asserted. (hina) ha jn