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The
Jewish human rights organization, the Simon Wiesenthal
Center has once again ranked Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania
as 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.
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