H6: War Criminals

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The War Crimes Act

In March 1990 a War Crimes Bill was presented to Parliament. The House of Commons generally supported it whilst the House of Lords put up fierce opposition. Peers put up arguments against the bill, but through reasonable political engineering it eventually became law on 10 May 1991. For the first time, the path was clear to prosecute Nazi war criminals in the UK.

Respecting the law

Following the due legal process is the only just way of dealing with suspected Nazi war criminals. Allan Ryan, former director of the Office of Special Investigations which is the US Government agency responsible for investigating alleged Nazis living in America, explains:

"We give them law. How much law did they give their victims? How much due process was there at Treblinka, or in the villages of the Ukraine? When the Jews of Bucharest were hung on metalhooks, where were hearings, or appeals or rules of evidence or defence lawyers? By what conceivable right are these men who let loose havoc and terror entitled to the protection of the laws of a country they are not even entitled to be in?

Rage, not reason, is the heart's response to seeing the law protect these men in ways it never protected those they murdered... but recognise why we give them benefit of law. It is not for their sake but for ours... they are entitled to law, not because they have earned it, but because we cannot afford to sacrifice it. A civilised society that resorts to barbarism to deal with barbarians begins to let go of its civilisation."

Action in other countries

The 1988 War Crimes Inquiry Report notes that Britain is the last of the major Allied powers to be bringing war criminals to justice. Australia, Canada and the United States have all passed laws to allow for proceedings against Nazi war criminals living in their countries. In the US, war criminals can be stripped of their citizenship and deported. Special investigation units exist in each of these countries to enforce these laws. In Western Europe: France, Holland and Germany continue to mount investigations and prosecutions.

International Law

The war crimes trials held in Germany and Japan after World War II set the standard for such proceedings, establishing the principle that people may be held responsible for atrocities committed during war. Since then, a series of Geneva conventions have codified and defined violations under three general headings:

- WAR CRIMES, such as mistreatment of prisoners and targeting civilians.

- CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY, such as enslavement, deportation and murder of civilian populations, and racial, ethnic and political persecution

- GENOCIDE, defined as "deliberately inflicting on a group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part."

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