70 Nazi War Crime Suspects May Be in Australia, Panel Says

A government commission announced Friday that as many as 70 suspected Nazi war criminals may be living in Australia and said a special body should be set up to investigate and perhaps prosecute them.

The commission’s report said it had given the government a secret list of the alleged criminals, who it said had entered Australia as ordinary immigrants or refugees immediately after World War II.

Their alleged crimes included “the murder of many persons, in some cases hundreds of persons, in circumstances of the utmost cruelty and depravity,” the report said.

The commission, set up five months ago, said most suspects are now Australian citizens and were non-Germans from East and Southeast Europe.

Two Broad Groups

The report said the alleged crimes fell into two broad groups:

--Participation in police or in so-called “security” units which deported, maltreated or murdered people on racial or political grounds, either under German orders or independently; and

--Participation as guards or administrators in the operation of German-established concentration camps or prisons where large numbers of people were murdered or otherwise ill-treated.

No one was included in the list merely for having been a member of the Nazi party or a Nazi sympathizer, the report said.

The report said there was no evidence that any Australian government or official knowingly allowed suspected war criminals into the country.

Except for one case, the allegations against the suspects were not specific, the report said. It recommended that a special prosecution unit be set up to investigate further.

Andrew Menzies, a former official of the attorney general’s office who headed the investigation, recommended that Australian war crimes legislation be amended to clear the way for prosecutions of the suspects and that a special unit be set up under the federal prosecutor’s office to deal with extradition requests and handle preliminary investigations. He also called for further inquiries.

But Sen. Gareth Evans cautioned that any move to provide special new extradition arrangements, “especially with countries with judicial systems markedly different to our own, is particularly sensitive” and that the government is not inclined to pursue that option.