Will Gecas be extradited from Scotland?

  • 2001-01-18
  • Rokas M. Tracevskis
Vilnius - Alleged Nazi war criminal Anton Gecas may be extradited from Scotland to Lithuania. Lithuanian prosecutors are to ask Britain to extradite the 85-year-old Gecas from his home in Edinburgh, Scotland.

According to the Lithuanian general prosecutor's office, Gecas was commander of the 12th Auxiliary Police Service Battalion, which assisted the Germans in killing Jews in Lithuania and Belarus during Nazi occupation.

"There are no live witnesses, but there's some proof. I won't comment on the proof not because I don't want to comment but because I can't do so at the moment. I just can say that there are some documents," Rimvydas Valentukevicius, head of the Lithuanian prosecutor general's special investigation department, said speaking to The Baltic Times.

He also said that he is preparing official charges against Gecas. Valentukevicius said he would ask the Vilnius court for approval of the extradition request. "We are preparing the necessary legal procedures. It's not difficult, there are just some procedures and they'll take some two months," Valentukevicius said.

He expressed hopes of convincing Britain's Home Secretary Jack Straw to send Gecas home for a trial.

The Scottish media have been reporting for more than a decade Gecas was a member of a Nazi death squad. However, in the early 1990s Scottish law officers refused to prosecute him because they believed that there was insufficient evidence. However, British officials can extradite Gecas to Lithuania.

"Our legal authorities will look at that [Lithuanian prosecutors'] evidence and will consider whether or not to accept the request," British Labor MP Lord Janner, the secretary of the British Parliament's war crimes group, told The Edinburgh Evening News . He added that he would be surprised if Britain didn't extradite Gecas if "there is sufficient evidence." "The people allegedly murdered were Lithuanians, the murders were committed in Lithuania and Gecas was a Lithuanian," Lord Janner said.

Efraim Zuroff of the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Institute in Jerusalem, welcomed the Lithuanian prosecutors' plans. He's been unsuccessfully pressing British authorities for an extradition bid for more than two years.

"If it's true, this is fantastic. There is no comparison between what a private Jewish agency can do and what the Lithuanian government can do. If it goes ahead it will be a wonderful development, very significant and I can think of nothing better to look forward to. It's also important that it be done in Lithuania," The Edinburgh Evening News quoted Zuroff as saying.

At the moment Gecas lives behind the closed doors of a Georgian-style home in the Scottish capital city. The Evening News had managed to talk only to Gecas' Sri Lanka-born wife Astrid. "He is not available for comment. What is all this about anyway? We thought all of this had come up last year. We don't know why it has come up again," she said.

A couple of years ago, a journalist with the Lithuanian daily Lietuvos Rytas daily managed to get into Gecas' house. The Lithuanian reporter pretended to be a tourist. However, Gecas wasn't eager to speak about Jews and his past. Gecas denies all accusations of participation in the killings.

Gecas' biography is very colorful, according to the Scottish media. Ian Pope, a journalist with The Edinburgh Evening News, calls Gecas "twice a hero." In 1943, Gecas was awarded the Iron Cross by the Germans.

In October 1944, Gecas arrived in Italy and surrendered to the U.S. army.

He was grilled by American intelligence officers and after passing that test he volunteered once again for military service - this time against the Nazis.

Gecas was admitted into the second Polish corps of the British Eighth Army as a lieutenant. Later he was attached to the 6th Tank Regiment.

"Gecas led his platoon on a counter-attack against a German unit, forcing it to surrender. He ended the war on a high note and his actions led him to receive his second major decoration. For bravery in action, he was later awarded the Polish Military Cross," writes The Edinburgh Evening News.

After the war, Gecas moved to Britain. He has lived there for more than 50 years. He worked as mining engineer. However, Scotland's largest daily newspaper The Scotsman states that Gecas also became an agent of the British Secret Intelligence Service and later joined its special branch MI6. Ian McKerron, a journalist with The Scotsman, wrote that the SIS is eager to defend Gecas from accusations of participation in Nazi-organized genocide.

Journalists with The Scotsman and The Edinburgh Evening News wrote that the British Intelligence Service granted him immunity from prosecution for his alleged Nazi past.

The Scottish media don't believe that Britain will meet the request for extradition from Lithuanian prosecutors.

Gecas is one of thousands of British citizens with an alleged Nazi past.

"Britain is thought to have allowed 8,000 Nazis into the U.K. after the war," The Edinburgh Evening News wrote. It also stated that "the [British] government is under pressure to probe allegations that up to 1,500 former members of a Ukraine-based Nazi SS unit live in Britain.