The Deschenes Commission on Nazi war criminals in Canada has asked Justice Minister John Crosby to extend its June 30 deadline to allow time for investigators to visit five countries, including the Soviet Union, to examine original documents on persons in Canada suspected of war crimes.
The commission, headed by Quebec Superior Court Justice Jules Deschenes, was created at the end of 1984 to investigate Nazi war criminals in Canada and recommend measures to deal with them. Its original deadline expired on December 31, 1985 but it received a six-month extension.
But the two lawyers employed by the commission to conduct the investigation overseas have yet to embark on their mission. One of them, Michael Meighen, said last month that none of the five countries has responded to letters from Deschenes seeking their cooperation. The countries are the United States, The Netherlands, Britain, Poland and the USSR.
Meighen said that even if the replies are forthcoming, the commission would be hard pressed to make the trip, analyze the findings and prepare a report for the government before June 30.
Deschenes asked the governments concerned to guarantee that the commission’s lawyers would have free access to original documents, independent interpreters, the right to examine witnesses in accordance with Canadian rules of evidence and the right to videotape the proceedings. While each country acknowledged receipt of the letters, none has responded affirmatively to the conditions.
FURTHER LEGAL OBSTACLES
The overseas investigation faces a further obstacle from legal action initiated by Ukrainian and Lithuanian groups in Canada. They seek to prevent the lawyers from visiting Poland and the Soviet Union unless accompanied by lawyers for the suspected war criminals who are of Ukrainian and Lithuanian origin. Members of those ethic groups in Canada have denounced the idea of accepting evidence from Communist countries, which they allege is fabricated.
Y.R. Butiuk, legal counsel for the Brotherhood of Veterans of the First Ukrainian Army, an army created by the Nazis to fight alongside the Wehrmacht on the Russian front in World War II, demanded Tuesday that “anyone accused of being a Nazi war criminal in Canada should be tried here and not extradited to the Soviet Union.” He claimed the veterans of the First Ukrainian Army are innocent of war crimes and that the Soviet Union “is behind all of these accusations.”
‘A BUREAUCRATIZATION OF EVIL’
Meanwhile, the Canadian Jewish Congress has continued to submit briefs to the Deschenes Commission. Its legal counsel, McGill University law professor Irving Cotler, told the commission Tuesday that “Canadian policy on Nazi war criminals has been a bureaucratization of evil that emerges as a blueprint for government inaction.”
He said that “what is most disturbing is the relative ease with which suspected Nazi war criminals entered Canada” after World War II “when contrasted with the insurmountable difficulties met by Jewish refugees in their attempts to find haven in Canada. Those charged with keeping the Jews out were the same people making decisions about who got in,” Cotler said.
He cited as an example the sanctuary given by Canada to such war criminals as Jacques de Bernville, the former right-hand man to Klaus Barbie, the “butcher of Lyon,” who was admitted in 1946. Cotler said that when deportation orders were issued against people like de Bernville, the government passed orders-in-council allowing them to remain. De Bernville fled to Brazil in 1951 after a public outcry forced the government to take action against him, Cotler said.
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