World

Nazi Commander Gets 20 Years

October 4, 1999 / 11:22 AM EDT / AP

Dinko Sakic, the last known living commander of a World War II concentration camp, was found guilty Monday of crimes against humanity and sentenced to a maximum 20 years in prison.

Sakic, 78, was convicted of responsibility for the killings of about 2,000 people while he ran Croatia's infamous Jasenovac concentration camp in 1944.

Chief Judge Drazen Tripalo said the seven-member court panel found Sakic guilty of all charges, saying he Â"maltreated, tortured and killed inmates and did nothing to prevent his subordinates from doing the same.Â"

Jasenovac, described by Jewish groups as the Â"Auschwitz of the Balkans,Â" was the worst of more than 20 concentration camps run by the then pro-Nazi puppet state of Croatia. Tens of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and anti-fascist Croats perished in Jasenovac from 1941-45.

The state prosecutor had sought the maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

Sakic's defense lawyers said he merely obeyed his superiors' orders. The defense also appealed to the court not to make him pay for the atrocities carried out by the World War II fascist regime of dictator Ante Pavelic.

During the six-month trial, more than 30 camp survivors recalled starvation, untreated diseases and the killing of inmates deemed unfit to work. They remembered fearing for their lives, seeing others bleed or die. In the courtroom, they revived scenes of hangings, random killings and mass executions.

At least four witnesses testified to having seen Sakic empty his gun into the head of an inmate, physician Milo Boskovic.

Sakic sat calmly during their testimonies, looking completely unmoved, sometimes even bored. He laughed at one testimony and rejected others as Â"fantasiesÂ" or anti-Croat propaganda.

He never expressed remorse, claiming defiantly that all he did was for the good of Croatia and Croats and that Â"no harm was doneÂ" to the inmates.

Â"I have no guilty conscience whatsoever,Â" he said in his final remarks last week.

Sakic fled Croatia in 1945 when the country's fascist regime was crushed and he lived peacefully in Argentina until June 1998 when he was extradited to Croatia to stand the trial.