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Argentina defends two war criminals
2 June 2003

Source: http://ukinet.com

In a bizarre response to a resolution introduced in the US Congress on May 14 urging Argentina to open its remaining secret Nazi files, Argentina's new Secretary of Culture, Torcuato Di Tella, has sent a letter to US congressman Maurice Hinchey defending two known Croatian war criminals from what he claims are "unsubstantiated" charges against them.

In his letter, Di Tella asks: "Is it not time for the Wiesenthal Center to provide convincing, if not convicting evidence on its long unsubstantiated accusation of war criminality against Juan (Ivo) Rojnica and Esperanza (Nada) Sakic?"

Both Rojnica and Sakic have long been accused of war crimes: Rojnica for his role as the wartime commander of the city of Dubrovnik, where he issued racist decrees and sent Jews and Serbs to concentration camps, and Mrs. Sakic for her role at the Jasenovac concentration camp, where her husband, Dinko Sakic, was the commandant.

Di Tella when signing the letter seems to have been unaware that his own government had extradited Mrs. Sakic to Croatia in 1998, together with her husband Dinko Sakic, so that his claim that charges against her are "unsubstantiated" contradicts his own government's decision to extradite her. Rojnica, despite repeated requests by the Wiesenthal Center, has not been extradited.

Today, Monday, June 2, Di Tella reaffirmed his defense of both war criminals, telling the Buenos Aires daily "Página/12" that the Wiesenthal Center's charges have affected persons who "have nothing to do with anything."

Last December, the Wiesenthal Center appealed to the Argentine government for the release of certain specific Nazi-related documents. These are:

1) A secret 1938 order prohibiting the entry of Jews to Argentina,

2) The immigration dossiers of major Nazi criminals such as Auschwitz SS doctor Josef Mengele and the implementer of Hitler's "Final Solution," Adolf Eichmann,

3) The archives of General Juan Perón's Information Bureau, the secret service in charge of rescuing Nazis from Europe and arranging their passage to Argentina after the war.

4) Records of a secret meeting at the Vatican in 1946 in which Argentine Cardinal Antonio Caggiano informed Vatican Cardnial Eugene Tisserant that the Argentine government was willing to accept French war criminals (copies of these records have been requested as well from the Argentine Catholic Church),

5) Whatever records Argentina's SIDE secret service, the successor to Perón's Information Bureau, may have on Nazi arrivals in Argentina.

So far, Argentina has not released any of the requested documents.

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