ZAGREB (AFP) – The Croatian parliament yesterday approved the appointment of two senior ministers as the government announced measures to fight a crime wave after a series of gangland attacks in the capital. The parliament voted to approve Tomislav Karamarko as the new interior minister and former deputy foreign minister Ivan Simonovic as the new justice minister, with 80 and 81 votes respectively in the 153-seat parliament. “The fight against organized crime and the mafia goes on and we will not stop until it is eradicated,” Prime Minister Ivo Sanader told the parliament, adding the new ministers were “top professionals.” Sanader said that he and President Stipe Mesic had “agreed on a package of anti-mafia laws” at the session of the national security council held earlier yesterday. “The aim is to speed up the whole system,” said Sanader, adding that among the proposed measures is the introduction of obligatory DNA testing for all convicts. The vote came after Sanader on Monday dismissed Berislav Roncevic from the interior ministry and Ana Lovrin as justice minister, as well as the head of the national police, after another suspected organized crime killing in the heart of Zagreb.

BELGRADE (AP) – Serbia’s war crimes prosecutors formally requested a probe yesterday of a World War II suspect accused of participating in mass killings of Jews, Serbs and Gypsies during the Nazi occupation of the Balkans. Prosecutors said in a statement they had filed papers with the Belgrade war crimes court seeking an investigation of Austrian citizen Milivoj Asner, who is now 95. Prosecutors urged the court to seek Asner’s extradition from Austria to Serbia. The moves are the first step toward a formal indictment and a trial. The prosecutors’ statement said Asner is suspected of acts of genocide during World War II. It said he took part in the killings of 438 Serb civilians in a concentration camp in Croatia – which was ruled by a Nazi puppet regime during WWII – and the deportation of 28 Jewish families that led to their murder. Last month, leading Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff, head of the Israeli branch of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, visited Serbia and urged authorities to seek extradition of Asner and two other WWII suspects. War crimes prosecutors said the investigation of Asner is being carried out with help from the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

SOFIA (AFP) – Bulgaria’s security agency admitted Friday to having conducted “unjustified” surveillance of journalists while investigating the leaking of classified information to the media. “Information was collected about people, companies and media that can hardly be considered to have any relation to the aim of the investigation,” State Agency for National Security (DANS) spokeswoman Zoya Dimitrova said. She said that the purpose of the investigation called Galeria was to probe the source within the DANS of leaked classified information to an anonymous website and was not meant to target journalists. DANS has come under fire from the media following the closure of the website and the subsequent assault in late September of its editor Ognyan Stefanov. The website, Opasnite, published a number of scandalous allegations about senior politicians, police officers and businessmen.

Bulgarian and Polish police and border guards have broken up a gang involved in trafficking Bulgarian women to Poland and forcing them into prostitution, officials announced yesterday. A total of 11 Bulgarian men who allegedly organized and managed the sex trade were arrested in Poland, Bulgarian border police spokeswoman Lora Lyubenova announced. Police also found 12 Bulgarian women victims of trafficking who were kept in a motel and forced to prostitute themselves on the E30 highway between Poznan and Berlin, she added. (AFP)

Kosovo police have arrested a Serb suspected of killing two people during the 1998-1999 conflict in the northwestern town of Vucitrn, a spokesman said yesterday. “Dejan Tomic was detained upon an arrest warrant based on suspicion of his involvement in a double murder in April 1999,” Besim Hoti told AFP. The district court in Mitrovica ordered the 35-year-old Serb to be held in custody until his next appearance before the court on Monday, police said in a statement. According to local media, Tomic was suspected of having killed two Albanians during the war. (AFP)