More than 29 months after a landmark denaturalization hearing ended, a federal court judge in Ottawa has ruled that Dutch-born Jacob Luitjens, a World War II Nazi collaborator, can be stripped of the Canadian citizenship he acquired by lying about his past.
The decision Wednesday by Judge Frank Collier in Ottawa cleared the way to deport Luitjens to Holland, where he was sentenced in absentia in 1948 to life imprisonment.
Following the court’s decision, Gerry Weiner, minister of state for citizenship, announced he would recommend to the federal Cabinet that Luitjens’ citizenship be revoked.
According to Gerrit Kulsdom, the Dutch consul general here, Luitjens, a resident of Vancouver, British Columbia, could be deported under the new extradition treaty between Canada and the Netherlands, which takes effect on Dec. 1.
Earlier requests for extradition were rejected on grounds that the old treaty did not cover the crime of collaboration.
The decision has breathed new life into war crimes prosecutions in Canada.
Luitjens, a former member of the Dutch Nazi Party, was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity. He belonged to the Landwacht, a paramilitary organization run by the German police and the SS in occupied Holland. Its job was to track down Jews and resistance fighters in hiding and turn them over to the Gestapo.
Luitjens operated in the Groningen and Drenthe provinces in northeastern Holland. He surrendered to Allied troops in 1945 rather than face the wrath of his own countrymen but escaped from a military prison in 1946. He spent a year in Germany and sailed for South America in May 1948 using the name Gerhard Harder.
‘A VERY SIGNIFICANT JUDGMENT’
Luitjens lived in Paraguay for 13 years before immigrating to Canada in 1961. He was admitted to the country and obtained citizenship 10 years later by concealing his Nazi past.
A retired lecturer in botany at the University of British Columbia, Luitjens faced denaturalization hearings, which ended on May 11, 1989.
After two years passed without a decision, the justice minister began to prod Judge Collier who, as recently as last month, was rumored not even to have begun drafting his ruling.
He finally presented it Wednesday, saying he found the accused evasive and unbelievable.
Jewish groups promptly hailed the belated decision. “This proves war crimes can be successfully prosecuted,” said Sol Littman, Canadian director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
Jack Silverstone, national executive director of the Canadian Jewish Congress, called it “a very significant judgment.”
According to Milton Harris, chairman of the CJC’s War Crimes Committee, the decision “will stand as a clear statement that Canada will no longer harbor or tolerate naturalized citizens who have knowingly hidden their Nazi past.”
B’nai Brith Canada spokesman Brian Morris concurred: “The remedy of denaturalization and deportation must be available to Canadian authorities, along with trial in Canada and extradition.”
(JTA correspondent Henriette Boas in Amsterdam contributed to this report.)
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