Setting Up a System to Pursue Alleged War Criminals in U.S.

Kelbessa Negewo, a former head of Ethiopia’s secret police, became a naturalized U.S. citizen five years ago, even though an American court had determined he tortured three women during Ethiopia’s “Red Terror” campaign in the late 1970s.

Ruling in a civil suit in 1993, a federal judge ordered Negewo to pay $1.5 million in damages to the three plaintiffs who now are living in the United States. But Negewo has never paid the judgment, filing for bankruptcy instead, and his lack of a criminal conviction opened the way for his citizenship.

Negewo’s case is not unique. While the Justice Department continues to pursue aging Nazi war criminals of a half-century ago, a new generation of war criminals--including torturers and executioners who have fled Yugoslavia, Haiti and Guatemala--is being allowed to live freely in the United States.

Human rights lawyers say the reason for the apparent disparity is a gap in the federal bureaucracy: It’s not clear who has the primary responsibility for investigating war crime allegations against immigrants living here. Unless an immigrant is suspected of being a former Nazi, for which Congress created a staff of investigators at the Justice Department 20 years ago, his human rights record is unlikely to attract attention.

“It’s a big black hole,” declares Shawn Roberts, legal director of the Center for Justice and Accountability, a San Francisco-based human rights group.

The group estimates that at least 60 former torturers or executioners now live in the United States, despite the government’s leading role in a 1994 international convention against torture. The U.S., along with more than 100 other nations, pledged to investigate and prosecute all suspected human rights violators.

Yet “once someone is here and has been identified as a violator of human rights, it’s not clear who should investigate--the FBI, the Immigration and Naturalization Service or a U.S. attorney’s office somewhere,” Roberts says.

Justice Department spokesman John Russell agrees that “it is unclear where the jurisdiction lies.”

Now, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) has taken the first step to assign responsibility for investigating these abusers.

Leahy, an ex-prosecutor with a keen interest in immigration problems, has drafted a bill to expand the authority of the Justice Department’s Nazi-hunting office, known as the Office of Special Investigations, to include any immigrants in this country accused of human rights violations.

“War criminals should find no sanctuary in loopholes in our current immigration policy,” said Leahy, noting that an accused Serbian war criminal named Zihad Music is living in his home state.

Leahy said that Music, who entered the United States by claiming to be a victim of Serbian “ethnic cleansing,” “has been identified by many people, including his own relatives, as a member of a Serbian paramilitary group responsible for the torture, rape and murder of countless innocent people.”

Music, a Bosnian Muslim who worked for the Serbs, denies being part of the group but told reporters that to protect his family he was “forced to do all kinds of things” he now regrets.

Roberts said U.S. officials maintain a “watch list” to keep known war criminals and other undesirables from immigrating here. But when allegations arise against an immigrant already in this country, it is nearly impossible to have that person deported without overwhelming proof and years of effort by government lawyers.

Leahy said the Justice Department’s OSI could bring considerable experience to the task. Thanks to that office, 61 ex-Nazis have been stripped of their U.S. citizenship, 49 have been removed from the United States and more than 150 have been denied entry, he said.

Negewo was working as a bellhop in an Atlanta hotel when he was recognized by a waitress as the man who had tortured her in Ethiopia. That woman and two others who sued him won the $1.5-million judgment despite his denials that he had ever seen them. Negewo came to this country under political asylum, claiming he had been imprisoned after a falling-out with the regime.

Federal officials reviewing these allegations concede they probably will not result in Negewo’s deportation. While civil lawsuits rest only on a preponderance of evidence, revoking citizenship or permanent residency requires clear, unequivocal and convincing evidence, which is harder to obtain, they said.