August 07, 2002 11:53:00 Reuters     Nazi hunter slams Estonia on atrocities suspects     By Burton Frierson RIGA, Aug 7 (Reuters) -- A top Nazi hunter slammed ex-Soviet Estonia on Wednesday for failing to investigate war crimes suspects thought to have helped Hitler exterminate Jews in a massacre 60 years ago in Belarus. The criticism comes after weeks of urging by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre for a probe into participation by some Estonians in the August 7, 1942, Novogrudok massacre. It also follows negative reaction in editorial pages and in the provinces to the Centre's new initiative to hunt war crimes suspects in the Baltic states. The issue has cropped up at a particularly sensitive time for the image-conscious Balts, who hope to win invitations to join NATO and wrap up talks on entering the European Union this year. Last month the Wiesenthal Centre sent a list of possible war crimes suspects to Estonian authorities. Separately, it also announced financial rewards for information leading to arrests and convictions of citizens of all three Baltic states involved in World War Two atrocities. Shortly after receiving the list, Estonian security police said they had found no evidence that the suspects, former members of the Nazi-organised Estonian 36th Police Battalion, had attacked Jews. This contradicted the conclusions of a special state commission that said the battalion took part in the 1942 killing of almost all the Jews still surviving in the town of Novogrudok. Some 2,500 Jews were murdered there. "Despite subsequent feeble explanations...the truth is that the stance of the Security Police Board is, more than anything else, a reflection of the lack of political will in Tallinn to bring Estonian Nazi murderers to justice," the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's Jerusalem head Efraim Zuroff said in his English version of the editorial he submitted to the Eesti Paevaleht daily. The Nazis occupied Estonia in 1941, driving out the Soviets who had invaded the Baltics the year before in an occupation in which tens of thousands were executed or shipped to Siberia. Almost 95 percent of the pre-war Jewish population in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania was killed after Germany invaded. NO CONVICTIONS Though there have been several attempts, no war crimes suspect has been convicted and sentenced in the Baltics in the decade since independence from Moscow. Nazi hunters have blamed foot-dragging on local prosecutors. In a final attempt to beat a race against time, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre said last month it would pay $10,000 for information leading to successful legal action in a "Last Chance" programme unveiled in the Baltics. While reaction to the initiative has been negative in some quarters, Zuroff said the centre had received offers of information. "On the one hand we're getting a lot of information, on the other hand we're getting a lot of flack," he told Reuters. In provincial Lithuania, a far-right member of the Taurage district council last month burned a mock Israeli flag with the sounds of Nazi marches blaring in the background. In Estonia, a small county government representative offered $20,000 for information on Jewish communists responsible for Stalin-era crimes in a letter published in a small weekly newspaper. ________________________________________________________________________