Lithuanian legal authorities are investigating whether Yizhak Arad, the persecutor of  those who murdered Jews, took part in a massacre of Lithuanians perpetrated by the Soviet army. The Israeli press reports about such suspicions.

LTV reports that historian Yizhak Arad, a citizen of Israel, was appointed by the President of Lithuania  as a member of the international commission that investigates crimes of the Nazi and Soviet occupations.

The Israeli press claims that the Lithuania-born researcher of Jewish genocide Arad escaped from the ghetto in 1941 and joined the Soviet partisans. Now it is being investigated whether  he could have been involved in the murder of Lithuanian citizens.

Lithuanian officers started an investigation last year already and brought charges of genocide and murder of war prisoners against him.

According to the statement from the Prosecutor General’s office, the charges are not personal and the request to present the charges against Arad was sent to the Ministry of Justice of Israel.

“This was really a request for legal help addressed at the government of Israel. I cannot comment  on the content, because all this belongs to the pre-trial investigation, but I can say now that certain negotiations are taking place via the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, after which further decisions will be made,” claimed Gintaras Jasaitis, the Deputy Prosecutor General.

Emanuelis Zingeris, head of the commission, of which Arad is a member, says that he has not heard about such charges, but that he had to answer to prosecutors’ questions about Arad.

“Legal authorities have the right to do this, but he never made any statements about Soviet crimes or the reduction of their extent and  he worked in a constructive way during the sessions [of the commission]. How can I invite this person to the commission [anymore] when he is a target of an investigation and feels stress?” said Emanuelis Zingeris,  head of the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania.