An official of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service office here said a team of four INS attorneys left for Israel today to interview witnesses against at least eight alleged former Nazis living in the United States suspected of World War II crimes. Some of the witnesses “probably will be brought here at government expense to testify against the alleged war criminals at hearings seeking their deportation,” Immigration Commissioner Leonard F. Chapman said.
The team is headed by Paul C. Vincent, chief trial attorney for the INS, according to Henri Wagner, INS assistant director for investigation. Wagner said the team was on a 30-day assignment but that the period could be extended, if deemed necessary.
An INS spokesman said that in addition to the eight cases, 77 others were being looked into from list of 155 originally compiled on the basis of information supplied by Simon Wiesenthal, the head of the Jewish Documentation Center in Vienna, and other agencies and sources, including individuals.
The spokesman refused to disclose any names of the suspects or the alleged crimes at this stage but said the initial list had been reduced to 85 after others on the list turned out to be dead and some of the others cleared. He said the evidence collected by the INS team in Israel could, be used to deprive suspects of their U.S. citizenship and to deport them if they are proved to have concealed past activities when they arrived in this country.
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