Talk:Milivoj Ašner

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[edit] War criminal

I removed the Category:War criminals from the article. It should stay this way unless:

  • there's overwhelming evidence that Ašner commited war crimes, or
  • Ašner is found guilty of war crimes by a court of law

Until that time, he is a suspected war criminal, which is not sufficient for inclusion in said category. GregorB 21:19, 2 April 2006 (UTC)


  • On the Category:War criminals category page, it states: "This category contains the names of people convicted or accused of war crimes." Since he has been indicted for war crimes, then by definition, he has been accused of war crimes. Where did you get your criteria for adding "War criminals" as a category? Of course I can accuse anyone of war crimes and then add them to the category since they are now "accused", so I am not sure that the criteria on the category page is right. Though since I am a newbie, I'm not going to change it yet, but it seems like you should since you disagree with it. In this specific case though, the odds are that Asner will not be convicted because Austria seems to not want to hand him over to Croatia and he could very well die before a trial finishes since he is in his nineties. What do we do then? And who gets to decide if the evidence is overwhelming? Davidm82 23:49, 2 April 2006 (UTC)


Where did I get my criteria? Here: Presumption of innocence. This is precisely why the criteria on the category page are seriously problematic. In most jurisdictions calling someone a "(war) criminal" is slanderous, even if the person is actually indicted for the crime. (Of course, an indictment by itself cannot be a slander.) Indeed, what if Asner dies? He gets stuck with a "war criminal" tag, with no way to erase it?
For extremely clear-cut cases like Adolf Hitler the decision is easy, and again for not-so-clear-cut cases like Ariel Sharon it is very difficult. Still, in matters like these, it is better to err in one way than to err in the other.
On a side note: I missed two more ways for Asner to earn inclusion:
  • publicly admitting the crime (good enough for me)
  • refusing to deny it after being publicly accused (qui tacit consentire videtur - probably also good enough; interestingly, I don't recall that Asner has explicity denied it) GregorB 21:48, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
Well I don't see that he publicly denied it, and he doesn't seem to be in a hurry to go back to Croatia to clear his name. Also, the fact that a former Croatian official has been indicted for war crimes by a Croatian government carries a lot more weight for me than if he had been indicted by a tribunal from another country or an international organization. Since he is still alive and there is a chance he may face justice, I'll leave off adding him as a war criminal for now (I'm not even the one who put that in in the first place).
As a side note, the fact that you compare Sharon to Hitler says a lot about you, but I'll leave it at that. Davidm82 23:40, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
You have misconstrued my comment. I never compared the two, on the contrary: I gave two examples which are extreme opposites. That's why Hitler is tagged a war criminal and Sharon isn't, which is correct. On Sharon's end of the spectrum I could have named Winston Churchill or Harry Truman, but that doesn't mean I'm comparing them to Hitler - that would be ludicrous.
Two more things for the record. First, I personally feel Asner is guilty, but that's just my feeling, not an encyclopedic truth. Second, immediately before stripping the "war criminal" tag from the Asner article I added the same tag to the Mirko Norac article. So, I don't think it's like I'm giving quarter to anyone here. GregorB 16:46, 5 April 2006 (UTC)