A Canadian federal judge has halted denaturalization and deportation proceedings against three accused Nazi war criminals.
Leaders of Canada’s Jewish community criticized last week’s ruling.
Judge Bud Cullen halted the proceedings July 4 because of what he said was a breach of judicial independence. The breach allegedly involves an assistant deputy justice minister asking Chief Justice Julius Isaac to speed up the pace of the proceedings against the accused Nazis.
Eventually, the alleged request became public, and Judge James Jerome, who was presiding over the case against the accused Nazis, stepped down and a judicial inquiry was called.
The three accused war criminals are Johann Dueck, Helmut Oberlander and Erichs Tobiass, all Canadian citizens living in southern Ontario.
“This is an appalling decision and a moral outrage,” said Bernie Farber, national director of community relations for the Canadian Jewish Congress.
“We agree that this discussion [between the minister and the judge] was inappropriate and misguided, and that it shouldn’t have occurred. But we believe the remedy by the judge far outweighed what was necessary.”
Irving Abella, a past president of the congress and the national chairman of its war crimes committee, said, “To end these proceedings is to deny natural justice to the thousands of Jews who were allegedly murdered by these three individuals, and that’s obscene.”
He added, “These cases should be decided on the evidence. They should not be halted on a procedural issue.”
Dueck, 76, a retired mechanic, is accused of taking part in the killing of Jews and other civilians as a member of the Selidovka district police in German- occupied Ukraine from 1941 to 1943.
Oberlander, 72, is accused of having been a member of a commando unit that massacred hundreds of thousands of Jews in Ukraine and Crimea after the German army’s advance into the southern Soviet Union in the summer and fall of 1941.
Tobiass, 84, is accused of participating in the execution of civilians in Latvia from 1941 to 1943 as a member of the Latvian security police, an SS auxiliary unit responsible for the deaths of 30,000 Latvian Jews.
Despite a 1987 federal war crimes commission that urged the government to act quickly against dozens of alleged war criminals here, the government has continued to move slowly.
The setbacks in Canada’s attempts to prosecute or deport Nazi war criminals reflects “a failure of public will,” said David Matas, senior counsel for B’nai Brith Canada.
John Simms of the attorney general’s office said the government would continue its program of going after accused war criminals.
“We’re still committed to ensuring that Canada is not a haven for war criminals from WWII,” he said.
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