Investigators to review evidence against several suspected Latvian war criminals

Feb 03, 2000
By Richard Lein, Baltic News Service

"What is positive is that we will discuss not only the Kalejs case, but the Latvian president indicated a willingness to allow U.S. investigators to present evidence on other possible Latvian suspects," U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Stuart Eizenstat said after meeting Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga.

Law enforcement officials from Australia, Canada, Israel, Britain and the United States are set to meet with their Latvian counterparts in Riga on Feb. 16-17.

"Mr. Eizenstat's suggestion was that we could use the Feb.16-17 meeting to then look at as many of these cases as possible in the two-day period to expedite matters while we have all this expertise gathered together," said Vike-Freiberga.

The president said she agreed with this "absolutely."

The case of Konrads Kalejs sprang back into media attention earlier this month when Britain decided not to bring charges against the alleged co-leader of a Nazi-backed death squad, Arejs Kommandos, that killed 30,000 Jews, Gypsies and communists in Latvia during World War II.

Kalejs, 86, has denied participating in any war crimes, and is now living in Australia, where he holds citizenship.

Latvia has launched a criminal investigation into Kalejs' wartime activities, but called for the meeting of investigators after expressing concern that there was not enough evidence to bring him to trial.

Australian investigators concluded they did not have enough evidence to bring war crime charges, after two separate investigations.

But Eizenstat said there is compelling evidence against Kalejs.

"We believe there is very overwhelming evidence of that person's guilt," he told journalists.

Kalejs has been deported from both the United States and Canada after court proceedings based on his war record.

Neither Latvian nor US officials specified the number of cases to be considered at the meeting.

The Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center has promised to provide names of several possible witnesses against Kalejs, but warned that some may not want to testify for fear of betraying Latvia and called for the government to persuade them to talk.

"As long as people in Latvia think it is a betrayal of the country to testify against Latvian Nazi war criminals there will never be a single successful prosecution," said Efraim Zuroff, director of the center's Jerusalem office.

"And it is the government of Latvia that can convince them otherwise."

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