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Vjekoslav "Maks" Luburić (April 21, 1911 - April 20, 1969) was a Croatian Ustaše, a war criminal, and the commander of the Jasenovac concentration camp.
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He was born in Humac village (part of Ljubuški), Austria-Hungary. In his youth, he was involved with petty crime. On one occasion he was charged with vagrancy and got sentenced to two days in prison on 7 September 1929. Two years later on 5 December 1931, the District Court in Mostar sentenced him to five months in prison for embezzlement of funds belonging to the public stock exchange in Mostar. He was arrested for embezzlement once more after that.[1]
Luburić went abroad after Pavelić and was trained in brutality in various Ustashe camps in Italy and Hungary.[2] In the beginning of the Second World War, Luburić was the commanding general for the area of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) around the Drina river, which is why he is sometimes referred to as General Drinjanin (General of the Drina).[3] He was the founder and first commander of the concentration camps in Croatia.[4]
Vjekoslav Luburić, as the commander-in-chief of all the Croatian camps, announced the great "efficiency" of his Jasenovac concentration camp at a ceremony on October 9, 1942. Vjekoslav Luburić gave gold and silver medals to Ante Pavelić and Andrija Artuković because they were the most efficient soldiers.[5][6] He enjoyed unlimited Pavelić's trust and had had instructions for extermination of the Serbs from Pavelic himself.[7]
Besides running the camp, Luburić would come to Jasenovac to participate in the executions in person.[8][9] It is estimated that 70,000 people were killed at Jasenovac during World War II.
Those who were without papers were, without trial, interned into the camp, providing that they were able to work and with a profession that suited the Ustaša's needs. Those who had permits to remain three years were immediately taken to liquidation, and those who had special permits were dealt with according to what the permits were for.
Mladen Lorković and Ante Vokić who were planning a coup against Pavelić in 1944 when their machinations were discovered, were arrested and sent to the camp at Lepoglava, where they were tried & sentenced to death on Maks Luburić's orders in May 1945.[10]
In February 1945 Pavelić sent Luburić to Sarajevo with instructions to destroy the resistance movement. The postwar commission on war crimes identified 323 victims of Luburić's reign of terror in Sarajevo. The results of this brutality were witnessed by Landrum Bolling, an American journalist [11]
...who arrived in the city on April 7 after its liberation by Partizan forces. He was shown a room containing bodies "stacked like cordwood on top of one another. We were told these Serbs whom the Ustashs had hanged by barbed wire from lampposts in Sarajevo, " he said, "Luburic's brief reign of terror constituted the Ustasha's final gruesome legacy in Sarajevo. As his last sadistic acts were being carried out, Sarajevo's destiny was being decided on the field of battle in the hills around the city.
Near the end of the war, after the NDH was defeated, Luburić led the Crusaders (Križari) paramilitary until November 1945 but was unsuccessful, escaped to Hungary and later in Spain.[12]
He helped form a terrorist organization called the "Croatian National Resistance" (Hrvatski narodni odpor, HNO). It became the most violent of the Ustashe organizations which were born after the WWII. Luburić commanded the organization for twenty five years from his refugee in Spain He frequently traveled to Croatia and it was said he had two wives, one in Croatia and another in Spain. His organization was heavily involved in racketeering, attempted murder, extortion, hijacking, terrorist bombing, and other violent crimes. After his death, his successors on the organization commanding post, sought out criminal organization ties with La Cosa Nostra, the Provisional IRA, and the Croatian Mafia in San Pedro[13].
Luburić was killed by Ilija Stanić on April 20, 1969, in Carcaixent, Spain,[14] after Stanić infiltrated Luburić's organisation. Ilija Stanić was Luburić's godson, and the son of Luburić's comrade-in-arms Vinko Stanić.[15] However, Stanić claims (in the Globus newspaper as per Jutarnji list, a Zagreb newspaper) that he killed Luburić because Luburić abandoned Pavelić. Stanić wasn't UDBA agent at the time of murder, but later.[16]