26 Facts About Ivo Rojnica

Ivo Rojnica was a Croatian Ustase official and intelligence agent who was active in the World War II Axis puppet state known as the Independent State of Croatia from 1941 to 1945.

In May 1945, Ivo Rojnica fled to Italy, and was arrested by the British Army the following year.

Ivo Rojnica emigrated to Argentina under a pseudonym in 1947 and was granted Argentine citizenship in 1951.

Ivo Rojnica died in Buenos Aires in 2007, at the age of 92, having never been indicted or stood trial.

Ivo Rojnica was born on 20 August 1915 in the village of Cista, near Imotski, in what was then Austria-Hungary and is Croatia.

On 23 May 1941, Ivo Rojnica was appointed as the commissioner of Dubrovnik.

The historian Nikola Anic argues that Ivo Rojnica was among those most responsible for these murders, given that he was Dubrovnik's most senior Ustase official.

Ivo Rojnica was succeeded by Vlado Herceg, who had previously served as a warrant officer in the Poglavnik's Bodyguard Brigade, which was tasked with guarding Pavelic.

In May 1945, with the Yugoslav Partisans approaching Zagreb, Ivo Rojnica retreated to Austria with elements of the Croatian Armed Forces.

In late March or early April 1947, Rojnica landed in Argentina as a stowaway aboard the passenger ship Maria C His escape had been facilitated by the Ustase functionary and Roman Catholic priest Krunoslav Draganovic, one of the main organizers of the network of ratlines smuggling fascist war crimes suspects out of Europe.

Ivo Rojnica entered the country under the same pseudonym he had used in Trieste.

Ivo Rojnica became an active member of Argentina's Croatian emigre community, helping establish several cultural societies and publications.

Ivo Rojnica contributed his own writings to Nikolic's quarterly, as well as to another journal known as The Morning Star.

In recognition of his charitable work, Ivo Rojnica was awarded the Order of St Gregory the Great by the Holy See.

Ivo Rojnica was suspected of financing several Croatian nationalist aircraft hijackings that took place in the United States and Europe in the early to mid-1970s.

Ivo Rojnica was released eight days later after Rojnica paid her captors 70 million Argentine pesos.

In 1974, Ivo Rojnica attended the inaugural meeting of the Croatian National Council, a body representing various Croatian emigre organizations, in Toronto.

In 1991, Ivo Rojnica was appointed as the Authorized Representative of the President of Croatia to Argentina and Latin America.

Ivo Rojnica was a close associate of Carlos Menem, who served as the President of Argentina between 1989 and 1999, and exploited this relationship to illegally procure Argentine arms for Croatia.

Ivo Rojnica established a paramilitary camp on Argentine soil to recruit and train Croatian mercenaries.

Several weeks later, a representative of the Simon Wiesenthal Center met with Argentine officials demanding Ivo Rojnica's arrest, noting that his name figured prominently in a list of eighteen war crimes suspects alleged to be hiding in Argentina that the organization had given to the country's Minister of the Interior, Jose Luis Manzano.

Ivo Rojnica held out as the Authorized Representative of the President of Croatia to Argentina and Latin America until 1994, orchestrating diplomatic activities "from the shadows," in the words of author Uki Goni, before leaving the role that January.

In March 1997, Menem acceded to a request from the Simon Wiesenthal Center to hand over the bank records of 334 Nazi officials and their wives and mistresses who had fled to Argentina after the war; Ivo Rojnica's name was absent from the files.

When pressed on the issue, Croatian officials stated they did not have sufficient evidence to indict Ivo Rojnica and seek his extradition.

Ivo Rojnica became the subject of renewed media scrutiny in May 1998, following the widely publicized arrest of former Jasenovac commander Dinko Sakic, who had settled in Argentina after the war.

Ivo Rojnica died in Buenos Aires on 1 December 2007, at the age of 92.