A Canadian Supreme Court ruling barring federal prosecutors from using videotaped evidence in court has dealt a legal blow to the war crimes case pending against Michael Pawlowski.
As a result of the ruling the Justice Department will have no live eyewitness testimony against Pawlowski when pretrial proceedings resume March 13.
Pawlowski, 74, was charged in November 1989 with eight counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the deaths of 410 Jews and 80 Poles killed in 1942 in the Minsk region of White Russia, now independent Belarus.
Federal prosecutors had hoped to send a team to Belarus, formerly the Soviet republic of Byelorussia, to gather evidence against Pawlowski.
But the Supreme Court last week barred an appeal of a ruling issued last May by Justice James Chadwick of the Ontario Court General Division, which found that videotaped evidence from witnesses in the former Soviet Union was inadequate as the central basis of the case.
That month a key witness died in Canada who was to have given critical testimony involving the massacre of 80 Poles and eight Jews in the village of Yeskovichi.
David Matas, a lawyer for B’nai Brith Canada, urged the Justice Department “to proceed with the case and address the evidence-gathering issue at trial.”
Matas, who is the author of a book called “Justice Delayed: Nazi War Criminals in Canada,” said war crimes trials are suffering from a low priority and a lack of sympathy and attention from the judiciary.
NO CONVICTIONS YET IN CANADA
Sol Littman, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Canadian office, said that in view of the decision on videotaped evidence, Canadian courts should follow the example of a Scottish court that traveled to Lithuania to hear the evidence against a war crimes suspect.
Littman acknowledged the difficulties of mounting a trial half a century after the crimes were committed but accused the government of dragging its feet in delaying investigations.
“If there is any sincerity whatever in Canada’s prosecution of war criminals, then they will not stop now and, if necessary, they will simply move the venue over to the country where the crimes were committed.”
Pawlowski, a retied carpenter, has been living since 1951 in Renfrew, Ontario, 65 miles west of Ottawa. He is the second person arrested under war crimes legislation enacted by Parliament in September 1987.
Unlike in the United States, Canadian law allows for the criminal prosecution of certain offenses perpetrated on foreign soil before the accused entered the country, in addition to civil proceedings, like deportation or extradition.
A 1986-1987 royal commission headed by Justice Jules Deschenes identified 20 prime Nazi war crimes cases to be urgently pursued. The Quebec Superior Court judge also recommended another 200 cases be further investigated.
Since then, one accused war criminal has been denaturalized, but none has been convicted on war crimes charges.
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