TALLINN- The Jewish human rights organization, the Simon Wiesenthal Center has
once again ranked Estonia among the countries that have completely
failed in bringing Nazi criminals to justice.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center's report on the worldwide investigation and prosecution
of Nazi war criminals covering the period from
April 1, 2007 to March 31, 2008, published lately,
again gives Estonia the low rating of F2, as
Australia, Croatia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania
and Ukraine.
F-2 is described
as "failure in practice" and it is given to countries in which "there are no legal obstacles to the investigation and prosecution of suspected
Nazi war criminals, but whose efforts, or lack
thereof, have resulted in complete failure during
the period under review, primarily due to the
absence of political will to proceed and/or a
lack of the requisite resources and/or expertise."
Ranked in
cetegory F-1, or "failure in principle," were Norway, Sweden and Syria. The Simon Wiesenthal Center says these are countries
which refuse in principle to investigate suspected
Nazi war criminals because of legal (statute
of limitation) or ideological restrictions.
When asked
by BNS for comment, superintendent of the Estonian
security police Andres Kahar said that crimes
against humanity and crimes of genocide are the
most grave crimes.
"In
the investigation of such crimes it is not possible
to base one's actions on any quotas, or the country
or regime by which or in the interest of which
these crimes were committed," he said.
Kahar said
that in the investigation of such crimes the
security police was acting solely on the basis
of concrete evidence, not someone's beliefs or
convictions.
"I
would like to specifically emphasize that in
a country of rule of law the purpose of criminal
proceedings cannot be to get into a scoreboard," Kahar said.
Ranked as
A in the survey were only the United States.
Next, at B, came Canada, Germany and Italy.
The category
C included Austria, Poland and Serbia, while
D was given to Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Denmark
and Switzerland. The rating E was given to Finland,
Greece and New Zealand.
In category
X came countries which failed to submit pertinent
data: did not respond to the questionnaire, but
clearly did not take any action to investigate
suspected Nazi war criminals during the period
under review.
Ranked as
the latter were Belarus, Belgium, Bolivia, Bosnia
and Herzegovina, Colombia, Costa-Rica, the Czech
Republic, France, Great Britain, Luxembourg,
the Netherlands, Paraguay, Romania, Russia, Slovakia,
Slovenia, Spain, Uruguay and Venezuela.
baltictimes.com
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