An internationally wanted 'Nazi war criminal' has been spotted supporting his national team at the Euro 2008 football championships in Austria.
Mr Asner is wanted by Interpol for alleged genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during his service as a police chief in Croatia during the Second World War, when the country was ruled by a Nazi puppet regime.
But Mr Asner, 95, who now lives a quiet and undisturbed life in Klagenfurt, Austria, has been seen taking leisurely walks, sipping wine with his wife Edeltrat and mingling with Croatian football fans prior to the matches of his country’s national team.
He is the number four on the most wanted list of the Nazi-hunters and Croatia has demanded his extradition.
But Austrian authorities have refused to deliver Mr Asner, claiming that he is unfit for a trial due to his advanced age and the onset of dementia.
Efraim Zuroff, the head of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which tracks down Nazis around the world, told The Telegraph that the pictures and videos of Mr Asner circulating indicated that he was perfectly fit for a trial and that Austrian authorities were lenient towards cases like his.
"The pictures and the videos clearly show that Mr Asner is in a relatively good health and that he could be brought to justice for." said Mr Zuroff.
"There is no statute of limitations for what he did. If Austria is to dispel the notion that it is a paradise for Nazi criminals, it needs to act now.
"I will point that out to the Austrian Justice Minister following the new revelations about Asner."
Mr Asner, who also goes by the name of Dr Georg Aschner, was allegedly the chief of the notorious fascist Ustasha police in the Croatian town of Pozega during the war, when he is accused of deporting hundreds of Jews and Serbs into concentration camps. He is also accused of involvement in other atrocities against Jews.
He fled Croatia in 2004, when the Simon Wiesenthal Centre tracked him down, and has been living in Klagenfurt ever since. Despite demands for extradition on behalf of Croatia, Austrian authorities have first claimed that he was an Austrian citizen, but when it emerged that he had, in fact, been stripped of his Austrian citizenship, authorities claimed he was unfit for trial.
Medical experts commissioned by the Austrian Justice Ministry found that he was suffering from dementia and therefore not able to appear in a court of law.
According to Austrian law, a person deemed unfit for a trial cannot be extradited to a foreign country, even if they are foreign citizens.
But in a statement issued today, Mr Asner has denied the accusations against him.
Speaking about the claims he is a war criminal responsible for the deportation of hundreds into death camps, he said: "It is not true. It’s hilarious.
"I didn’t have anything to do with it. I was just an officer with the justice department — a lawyer. I never did anything bad against anybody."
Br Mr Zuroff said: "There is enough evidence against Mr Asner. Austrian authorities are only preventing the course of justice in his case. The new revelations clearly show that he is fit to stand trial."
Erna Wallisch, another suspected war criminal who worked as a guard in the Polish concentration camp at Majdanek and reportedly confessed to having sent children into gas chambers, died aged 86 in February in Vienna without having faced trial.
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