Second forum on Kalejs and Ozols this week

RIGA - A second international conference on alleged Nazi war criminals Konrads Kalejs and Karlis Ozols will be held this week in Riga.

The forum, which will take place Sept. 14-15, will summon experts from around the world to weigh the available evidence and make recommendations on whether the evidence gathered against the two is enough to start prosecution and set the extradition process in motion.

The first conference was held on Feb. 17, with 20 law enforcement officials, investigators and diplomats from Canada, the United States, Australia, Great Britain, Germany and Israel as well as Latvia. The second conference was scheduled for July, but postponed so that the prosecutor's office here could better review the large number of documents about Kalejs it obtained from Moscow archives this summer.

According to unofficial sources, the Russian Prosecutor General's Office will decline an offer to participate in the conference, but they took offense when they were not invited in February. There has been no official reply to the invitation sent in mid-August, but then again only four of the seven countries invited had confirmed their participation two days before the forum.

"You may feel someone is guilty," said Justice Minister Ingrida Labucka when The Baltic Times asked her recently about the difficulty of investigating war crimes. "We need to be very careful in accusing people in general. A lot of time has passed - many people are dead."

Asked whether there should be a statute of limitations on war crimes, Labucka said, "Cases don't expire. War crimes can't be forgotten."

But Efraim Zuroff of the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center based in Israel has repeatedly accused Latvia of dragging its feet in the investigations.

"We'll see if Latvia's talk of good will and justice has any validity," said Zuroff. "It's time for Latvia to put up or shut up."

Kalejs and Ozols, both suspected of participation in the mass murder of Jews during World War II as members of the notorious Latvian death squad the Arajs Kommandos, currently reside in Melbourne, Australia. Ozols' health is in serious decline, according to Australian officials. Kalejs is 86 and Ozols 88.

Latvia has met with criticism abroad for showing leniency towards Nazi war criminals, while vigilantly pursuing those who committed crimes under Soviet rule.