The Cabinet has extended by six months the official inquiry into Nazi war criminals living in Canada, conducted by former Quebec Superior Court Judge Jules Deschenes who was named a one-man commission by the government a year ago.
The commission has so far identified 600 alleged Nazis in Canada, including 15 against whom serious charges have been made. No names have been made public. Deschenes was to have submitted his final report and recommendations last month. The extension of his mandate until the end of June, 1986, will give him the opportunity to send two aides to the Soviet Union and four other Eastern European countries to gather further evidence.
Ukrainian and Baltic emigre groups in Canada have protested vehemently, maintaining that any evidence obtained from Communist sources would be “tainted.” Many war criminals exposed to date in the U.S. and Canada are not Germans but Ukrainians or Latvians who worked for the Nazis during World War 11.
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