Andrija Artuković
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Andrija Artuković (19 November 1899 - 16 January 1988) was a Croatian lawyer, politician and senior Ustaše member who served as Minister of the Interior of the Independent State of Croatia from 1941 - 1942, and then again in 1943. He then served as Secretary of State from 1943 - 1945. He signed into law a number of racial laws disadvantaging Serbs, Jews and Roma and oversaw the establishment of a series of concentration camps in which thousands were tortured and murdered. He was convicted of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in 1986 and died in custody two years later.
Biography edit
Artuković was born in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1899. In 1929 he joined the ultranationalist Ustaše organization and in 1932 orchestrated an attempted uprising in the Lika region, fleeing to Italy before the uprising occurred. Ante Pavelić, Supreme Commander of the Ustaše, appointed Artuković as an adjutant to the Main Ustaše Headquarters.
Artuković was arrested in London in 1934 after King Alexander I of Yugoslavia was assassinated in France by the Ustaše. British authorities agreed to extradite him to France and he spent three months in prison in Paris before being further extradited to Yugoslavia, where he spent an additional 16 months in prison before being acquitted of all charges. Afterwards he travelled to Germany to meet with German fascist supporters.
Following the outbreak of World War II, the Axis Powers invaded Yugoslavia in 1941 and allowed the Ustaše to establish the Independent State of Croatia. Slavko Kvaternik formed an interim government with Artuković as Minister of the Interior, a position he retained once Pavelić assumed power. On 17 April 1941, Artuković signed into law the Law Decree on the Defence of the People and the State, a law instituting the death penalty as punishment for "acting against the interests of the Croatian people", a sentence which could be passed summarily and without trial. On 22 April Artuković announced the Ustaše government's intent to pursue The Holocaust and issued further racial laws similar to those in other Axis countries a week later.
On 6 June 1941, Artuković accompanied Pavelić on his visit to Nazi Germany. In February the following year he declared to the Croatian parliament that the Ustaše government would take greater action against the Jews than the Nazi government. This preceded an extensive campaign against the Jewish, Serbian and Romani population of Croatia which included the deportation of undesirables from Croatia, the forced assimilation of Serbs into Croatian culture and the establishment of concentration camps all over Croatia in which Serbs, Jews and Roma were tortured and killed. A government reshuffle following this speech saw Artuković temporarily relieved of his position, but he was re-instated in April 1943. He was later promoted to Secretary of State in October 1943 and held this post until the end of the war and the fall of the Ustaše government.
Artuković fled Croatia on 6 May 1945 as Allied forces closed in. He was apprehended in Austria but was soon release and fled to Switzerland under the alias "Alois Anich". He then emigrated to the United States. The Yugoslavian government entered a formal request for Artuković's extradition on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in 1951. The request was refused after a seven year bureaucratic delay because it was judged that Artuković would not receive a fair trial in Yugoslavia. Another request was submitted in 1984; this was approved, and Artuković was arrested in New York City.
Artuković was extradited to Yugoslavia on 11 November 1986. He was charged with having overseen the deportation of thousands of people to death camps, ordered the executions of two political opponents in 1941, ordered that 450 men, women and children be machine-gunned because there was no room for them in a concentration camp, ordered that the population of several villages be wiped out in reprisals and ordered that several hundred prisoners of war be machine-gunned and run over by tanks in Zagreb. He was convicted on all counts and sentenced to death, but was reprieved due to his advanced age and died in prison in Zagreb two years later.