Dinko Sakic, at 87; head of WWII Croatian camp

ZAGREB, Croatia - Dinko Sakic, the last known living commander of a World War II concentration camp, died in a Croatian hospital while serving a 20-year sentence for war crimes, officials said Monday. He was 87.

Mr. Sakic, a former chief of Croatia's infamous Jasenovac camp, died in a hospital in Zagreb, Justice Ministry spokeswoman Vesna Dovranic told the Associated Press.

Mr. Sakic fled Croatia at the end of the war, when Croatia's pro-Nazi regime was crushed. He had lived peacefully in Argentina for decades until 1998, when he was extradited to Croatia for a trial.

In 1999, Zagreb district court sentenced him to 20 years in prison, the maximum penalty at the time, for carrying out or condoning the torture and slayings of inmates while in charge of the Jasenovac camp in 1944.

Tens of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, and antifascist Croats were killed in Jasenovac, the worst of about 40 camps run by the then-Nazi puppet state in Croatia.

When he was found guilty, Mr. Sakic mockingly applauded.