The Supreme Court of Canada has narrowly upheld the acquittal of the first person charged under the country’s 7-year-old war crimes legislation.
By a 4-3 vote, the Supreme Court ruled March 24 that the 1990 jury acquittal of Imre Finta should stand. The court also strongly defended the war crimes legislation.
The Toronto man, 81, had been found innocent by a Supreme Court of Ontario jury after a six-month trial. The trial was the first in Canada under a 1987 amendment to the Criminal Code that broadened the definition of war crimes.
The amendment allowed for prosecution for war crimes committed outside Canadian jurisdiction against non-Canadians. A Justice Department war crimes unit was established to work with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police war crimes squad.
Finta, a captain in the pro-Nazi Royal Hungarian Gendarmerie during World War II, was accused of forcibly confining 8,617 Jews in the southern Hungarian city of Szeged from May 16 to June 30, 1944. He was also accused of stealing the detainees’ money, jewelry and valuables while using threats of violence.
The detainees were later deported to Auschwitz and other camps, where most perished.
According to the court’s majority opinion, it was not sufficient to prove that the offense would constitute robbery, forcible confinement or manslaughter had it been committed in Canada.
“An added element of inhumanity must be demonstrated to warrant a conviction under this section,” Justice Peter Cory wrote in the opinion.
TALKING ABOUT DEPORTATION
The minority opinion argued that this approach may thwart further such prosecutions.
B’nai Brith Canada said this ruling showed how difficult it is to resort to a criminal trial as a means of bringing Nazi war criminals to justice.
That option “must now be abandoned in most cases in favor of denaturalization and deportation,” B’nai Brith said. The group urged that proceedings to strip Finta of his Canadian citizenship commence without delay.
The Canadian Jewish Congress, however, saw the court’s ruling as optimistic, despite the legal technicalities that led to the acquittal of three of four men arrested here as alleged war criminals.
“Justice Department prosecutors should not be discouraged by the refusal of the court to order a new trial,” said CJC War Crimes Committee Chair Milton Harris.
Finta arrived in Canada in 1951 and later opened a Toronto restaurant that was frequented by government officials and celebrities.
He was arrested in Hamilton, Ont., in December 1987 as he waited to board a bus for the United States with a one-way ticket. A month earlier, Finta lost a libel suit to Sabina Citron of the Canadian Holocaust Remembrance Association. Citron won a $30,000 judgment in the suit.
The libel suit stemmed from an earlier statement by Citron, in which she called on the Canadian government to take action against war criminals living in Canada. Pressed by reporters, Citron cited Finta and his role in deportations.
At the time, Finta told a reporter for the Toronto Sun, “I’m not a Nazi. They are telling awful dirty lies.”
Finta had also sued the Canadian TV television network for libel after the network aired a show which implied that the had been involved in war crimes.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
