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| Caribbean-Latin America |
| Venezuela, Colombia get failing grade in Nazi hunt |
| 2004-09-30 |
| 01 October 2004 BOGOTA: With time running out, Nazi hunters are making a new push to track down aging war criminals still living in South America, a region notorious for opening its doors to those responsible for the Holocaust. Almost 60 years after Germany's surrender in World War II, the Jerusalem-based Simon Wiesenthal Centre is pressing Colombia and Venezuela to help investigate 29 suspects who entered after the war. The centre is focusing on those Andean neighbours because it says both countries have ignored its requests for information. For more than three years the centre's chief Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff said he has asked them to help determine which suspects are still alive. While the centre believes there may be dozens more suspects across Latin America, other countries such as Argentina have been more cooperative than Venezuela and Colombia. "This kind of investigation can only be done with the cooperation of government because it depends on immigration files and other official records," he said in a telephone interview. Colombia and Venezuela got a failing grade in the center's latest annual report issued this month for "refusing in principle to investigate, let alone prosecute, suspected Nazi war criminals despite clear-cut evidence that such individuals were living within their borders." LIVING LARGE IN CARACAS One suspect is millionaire Harry Mannil, an 84-year-old Caracas-based auto sales magnate, member of Venezuelan high society and major collector of pre-Columbian art. Zuroff accuses him of crimes while serving in the Estonian Political Police during the Nazi occupation of Estonia. The force was "involved in the arrest and murder of at least many dozens of civilians, Jews and communists," Zuroff said. Since the accusations became public several years ago Mannil has written at least one newspaper editorial, in Venezuela's El Nacional in May 2001, denying them. In May 2004 he told Exceso magazine he was only a junior office employee for the secret police and never a Nazi collaborator. He has been cleared of the accusations by the Estonian government but remains on a US watch list that bars him from entering the United States. His secretary said he was on holiday and unavailable for comment. Venezuela officials did not respond to requests for information from Reuters. Meanwhile, Colombia may still be home to 11 suspects, Lithuanians believed to have entered the country as refugees between 1947 and 1952. Two of them, Stepas Kuprys and Zenonas Garsva, served in the 12th Lithuanian Auxiliary Police Battalion, involved in the mass murder of Jews in Lithuania and Belarus, Zuroff said. Lithuania has initiated legal proceedings against both, who would be in their 90s. The Wiesenthal centre is trying to determine if they are still alive and in Colombia. Colombia is investigating, said a spokesman for the country's detective force, known by it Spanish initials DAS. But the inquiry is secret. "We are not permitted to discuss this information with outside organizations," the spokesman said. Colombia is in a 40-year guerrilla war that has left huge areas of the country in the hands of Marxist rebels or hard-right paramilitaries, both of which fund their operations with money from the country's cocaine trade. "Everyone understands that Colombia has problems that are more pressing. We are not asking the government to devote an extraordinary amount of resources," Zuroff said. "We simply want them to tell us how many of these people are still living in Colombia so we can try and make some progress while the suspects are still alive and justice can still be achieved," he added. "Even governments that are busy need to take a stand." HARBORING FUGITIVES Odessa, the organization that helped Nazis to escape Europe, channeled many wanted Nazis to Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Paraguay. Argentina harbored fugitives like Adolf Eichmann, the bureaucrat in charge of implementing the final solution to Europe's "Jewish problem". Israel kidnapped Eichman from Argentina in 1960, tried him and hanged him in 1962. Zuroff said Eichmann was identified after one of his sons, living under his real name, went on a date with an Argentine girl who told her father, who was Jewish, about her new beau. The father notified a judge in Germany who relayed the information to Israel. Argentina objected to the capture of Eichmann, but has since been more cooperative. It extradited former concentration camp commander Dinko Sakic to Croatia in 1998 and sent former SS captain Erich Priebke to Italy in 1995 for the massacre of 335 men and boys in the Ardeatine Caves near Rome. "None of these countries ever made any serious effort to find these people on their own," Zuroff said. "I estimate there are still at least several dozen or more in Argentina and other countries." |
| Posted by:Mark Espinola |