People who helped Pol Pot and engaged in “”ethnic cleansing” in former Yugoslavia are not covered by Australian war-crimes legislation and should be, according to former war-crimes investigator, Bob Greenwood, QC.
Mr Greenwood said this week that present war-crimes legislation applied only to World War II, and even these investigations had been stopped, leaving unfinished cases, including one involving systematic multiple murders by a Latvian who joined the Germans. The man, in his late 70s, now lives in suburban Melbourne.
The war-crimes legislation should be extended to all conflicts, Mr Greenwood said. He expressed concern that people who engaged in crimes with Pol Pot were resident in Australia or citizens and there was no law to prosecute them. There was some evidence that there were such people in Australia. They could not be extradited to Cambodia because the country was a shambles and there could be no trial, similarly with former Yugoslavia.
At the time of the break-up of Yugoslavia some men from there went back to fight, but there has been no direct evidence of any former Yugoslav Australians being engaged in any atrocities.
Mr Greenwood said investigation of war crimes by people now citizens of Australia during World War II had been wound up too early. The case of the Latvian should have been pursued to trial. It had required only a small amount of further investigation for a prosecution to be launched, but the Government had stopped it.
The Government had citied Mr Greenwood’s earlier prediction that all investigation would be complete by June 30, 1992, as an excuse to stop investigations, however, that prediction had been made before the upheaval of the Soviet collapse which had delayed investigation. He thought costs or something else were the real reasons.
“”We are talking multiple murder,” he said. “”No-one would blink at the costs if they were Australians who were slaughtered. It’s disgraceful.”
When the two cases in South Australia end, towards the end of the year, it will be the end of war-crimes trials in Australia. One other case that went before the courts was dismissed at committal stage. The prosecution was unable to bring some witnesses from Europe because they were too frail.
Mr Greenwood said that now the fourth case had been stopped, it was possible that the Ukraine or another Eastern European nation would ask for extradition. He was sure the man would receive a fair trial now. When eastern Europe was communist the likelihood of an unfair trial and execution was a bar to extradition. That was one of the reasons for passing the law in 1988 permitting trial in Australia.
An extradition request directed at an Australian citizen would cause some embarrassment to the Australian Government because it would show the inadequacy of Australian laws designed to deal with this situation.
The Government has put a ban on the present director of the War Crimes Prosecution Support Unit, Graham Blewitt, citing the possibility of prejudicing the South Australian trials. In the past Mr Blewitt has been critical of the Government’s premature winding up of the investigations unit.
The prosecution case in the trial of Ivan Polyukhovich has ended and the court is to take defence evidence in Ukraine by video, probably next week. It will later be played to the jury in Adelaide. His trial began in March after a two-year delay because of a High Court appeal.
In the other case, the South Australian Supreme Court will hear a defence application to permanently stay the case. If that fails, the trial will begin in August and go for about six weeks.