ZAGREB (AFP)---A leading Nazi-hunter organisation on Sunday
slammed Croatia over its failure to prosecute a World War II official suspected of war crimes who has taken refuge in Argentina.

"Croatia’s failure to prosecute Ivo Rojnica, the Ustashe governor of
Dubrovnik, currently residing in Buenos Aires, Argentina, is one of the most disappointing results of the period under review," said Efraim Zurrof, Israel director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, in a statement.

The center released on Sunday an annual report on 44 countries on
investigation and prosecution of Nazi war criminals, a copy of which was obtained by AFP.

"Despite the explicit promise of attorney general (Mladen) Bajic that the Rojnica case would be decided in early 2007 at the latest, there still has been no decision in the case, which only brings Rojnica closer to eluding justice," the statement said.

Rojnica was an official of Croatia’s Nazi-allied Ustasha regime in the
southern Adriatic town of Dubrovnik.

The Wiesenthal center charges that he played an active role in the
persecution of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies in the Dubrovnik area.

After the war Rojnica fled to Argentina, obtained Argentine citizenship and became a leader in the Croatian community there.

After Zagreb proclaimed its independence from the former Yugoslavia in 1991, Rojnica was the late Croatian nationalist leader Franjo Tudjman’s nominee for the post of Croatian ambassador to Argentina. However, responding to international pressure, Tudjman gave up the idea.

Croatia opened a probe into his case but no decision over it has been made so far.

Due to the Rojnica case the report branded Croatia along 13 other countries as "failing" to prosecute Nazi war criminal.

The Ustasha killed hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, anti-fascist
Croatians, Roma and others in Croatia’s concentration camps.