It’s Not Too Late to Prosecute

Britain stands alone among the World War II Allied powers in lacking laws to prosecute suspected war criminals. If the House of Lords has its way, that’s how things will stay.

The Lords, who hold their positions by heredity or lifetime political appointment, have rejected a bill passed overwhelmingly by the elected House of Commons to permit prosecution of suspected war criminals who were not British citizens at the time of their alleged crimes. A government-commissioned report last year identified three cases of suspected war criminals living in Britain in which prosecution was feasible. Another 75 cases were recommended for further investigation. This is not an insignificant number of possible war criminals.

Even if the number of potential defendants were far smaller, Britain would be remiss if it failed to align itself with its World War II partners, including other Commonwealth countries, in enacting a war crimes law. There is no statute of limitation on murder. There should be no end point beyond which those who took part in unspeakable atrocities in Nazi-occupied Europe and escaped punishment should be able to feel that they are beyond the reach of law and justice, even 50 years after the fact.

Opponents of the war crimes bill in the Lords fretted that it would be impossible to assure fair trials, citing the difficulty now in finding credible witnesses. If that’s a plausible reservation, it’s also an implicit condemnation of Britain for failing to act decades ago to identify, prosecute, expel or punish war criminals to whom it unwittingly gave refuge.

It’s wrong in any event to hold a war crimes bill hostage to the dubious test of whether prosecution would be practical. From the beginning, from the Nuremberg trials on, war crimes trials were intended not only to punish the guilty but to fix a moral standard for the future. As the years go by, the need to emphasize that moral dimension becomes even more compelling. There are parliamentary procedures for overriding the House of Lords. The war crimes bill is important enough for them to be invoked.