ZAGREB, Oct 4 (Hina) - "Today should be a proud day to Croatia, an independent state of Croatia, which has shown that it does not fear facing its past and learning the lessons from a painful chapter of its history", Tommy Baer, the
honorary chairman of B'nai B'rith, told reporters in Zagreb on Monday.
ZAGREB, Oct 4 (Hina) - "Today should be a proud day to Croatia, an
independent state of Croatia, which has shown that it does not fear
facing its past and learning the lessons from a painful chapter of
its history", Tommy Baer, the honorary chairman of B'nai B'rith,
told reporters in Zagreb on Monday. #L#
The Zagreb County Court today pronounced Dinko Ljubomir Sakic (aged
78), a former commander of the Jasenovac concentration camp, guilty
of the war crime against civilians and sentenced him to 20 years in
prison.
"With the conclusion of this trial and Dinko Sakic's conviction,
Croatia becomes the first nation in the former communist East,
Central and Eastern Europe, to convict a World War II war criminal",
said Baer, who attended the Sakic trial as an international
observer at the invitation of Croatian President Franjo Tudjman.
Baer said he was impressed with judge Drazen Tripalo who had been
fair toward all witnesses and had excellently conducted a very hard
trial.
"...there is not and there can be no statute of limitations on
crimes of this magnitude, on war crimes, for the simple reason that
however much time passes, the message must be sent out to those who
had committed such crimes in the past and who regrettably will
commit such crimes in the future, that ultimately the long arm of
the justice will catch up with them and they will pay for those
crimes", said Baer.
"We hope that the outcome of the Sakic trial will be a wake-up call
to other countries in the region to seek the extradition of WWII
criminals at large and to fully prosecute those war criminals who
are living in or have returned to their countries of origin", said
Baer mentioning Lithuania, Latvia, and Hungary as countries which
have failed to try WWII war criminals.
The vast majority of unprosecuted Nazi war criminals live in
Germany, Austria, and Argentina, Baer said, adding the last trial
of war criminals in Austria took place in the 70s.
He said that B'nai B'rith, which was the first organisation to
uncover the Sakic case in 1995, would after this trial insists even
more on the need to bring all war criminals to justice and convict
them.
According to Bear, the interest of the world community was
currently focused on the payment of compensation to the Holocaust
victims and B'nai B'rith wanted to stress that time was running out
both for the victims and the criminals.
"We therefore make an appeal today to both governments and the press
media to end this century and begin the new with a determination
that those who committed those crimes will not go unpunished and
unnoticed", he said.
B'nai B'rith is the largest and oldest Jewish organisation, with
offices throughout the world and permanent representatives in the
Security Council and the European Union. After an interruption of
several years, the B'nai B'rith office in Croatia was reopened last
year.
(hina) jn rml, ..