May 10



RUSSIA:

Russia Moves to Prosecute WWII Deniers at Home and Abroad


As Russia celebrated the 64th anniversary of the end of the Great
Patriotic War on May 9th, its government was preparing to introduce
legislation to aggressively prosecute those who would downplay the Soviet
triumph over Germany.

Most Russians agree. According to a survey by the VTSIOM pollster, 60
percent of Russians believe that denying the Soviet Victory in World War
II is an act deserving of criminal proceedings. Communist Party
supporters and respondents over 60 were most likely to back the idea,
while younger Russians and self-described democrats were more likely to
hold the opposite view. The poll was conducted during April in 42
regions.

In his video blog, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev spoke against the
distortion of history and decried whitewashing the tragedy and
significance of the war.

We are all the more often encountering what are called historical
falsehoods, he said. Also such attempts are becoming tougher, more
malicious and aggressive.

As the Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper reported earlier, legislators were
planning to introduce draft legislation to counteract historical
whitewashing, both in Russia and the former Soviet Republics. Russian
officials have been angered by attempts to remove Soviet-era monuments and
honor anti-Soviet resistance movements in Estonia, Lithuania, Ukraine and
other former Soviet states.

The bill is titled On countering the rehabilitation of nazism, nazi
criminals and their supporters on the territory of independent states the
former Republics of the USSR. Both Russians and foreigners could be
charged under the draft law, and would face sentences of three to five
years and fines up to 500 thousand rubles ($15,500 or 11,400).

The law would also give Russia the power to create a special tribunal to
monitor the development of pro-nazi policies in the countries of the
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The tribunal would hand down
evaluations on foreign politicians, parties and civic organizations
suspected of revisionism.

A foreign national found by the tribunal to have taken part in
rehabilitating nazism would be barred from entering Russia, and tried
under Russian laws if they were discovered on Russian soil. Russian
organizations and media outlets would be issued a warning from the
Prosecutor-Generals office. After several warnings, the organization
could be closed by a court order.

The bill proposes several means of responding to former Soviet Republics
that allow themselves to question the outcomes of the Second World War.
Russia may expel ambassadors, launch a partial of full blockade of
transport and information communication, sever diplomatic ties, and make
recommendations to the Russian business community and public organization
on cutting ties with the offending country.

Foreign organizations found guilty by the tribunal would be banned on
Russian soil.

The idea for such a comprehensive law was first proposed by Sergey Shoigu,
the head of Russias Ministry of Emergency Situations, in February.
Shoigus suggestion has had a wide resonance with the public, and has been
backed by Yury Chaika, the Russian Prosecutor General, and other public
figures.

Two of Russias liberal democratic parties, Yabloko and Right Cause, have
called for expanding the legislation to include rehabilitating Stalinism
and whitewashing Stalins repressions as a criminal act. The idea is
ironically fitting as Russias government has itself been criticized for
downplaying Stalin-era terrors, and reconstructing a public image of a
glorious Soviet past.

(source: The Other Russia)






GERMANY:

Son says US has ordered Demjanjuk to surrender


Immigration agents served suspected Nazi guard John Demjanjuk on Friday
with a notice to surrender to an immigration office in Cleveland, his son
said the latest volley in a more than 30-year legal battle over
Demjanjuk's citizenship.

Demjanjuk, of Seven Hills in suburban Cleveland, faces deportation to
Germany. An arrest warrant in Munich accuses him of 29,000 counts of
accessory to murder at a death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland during World
War II.

The notice was served one day after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to
hear the 89-year-old suspect's appeal to stop the deportation.

Demjanjuk Jr. did not say how his father would respond or whether the
government set a deadline for surrender.

Anyone subject to a deportation order would be considered a fugitive by
federal authorities if he or she failed to surrender by the stated time,
according to Julie Myers, assistant secretary of Immigration and Customs
Enforcement during the latter part of the Bush administration.

Khaalid Walls, a spokesman for the immigration agency, said ICE was
working with Germany on the deportation but would not comment on a
timetable.

A Cleveland immigration attorney not connected to the case, David Leopold,
predicted Demjanjuk would surrender by Monday, with agents determined to
get him on a plane to Germany promptly so they would not have to keep him
in custody. The order gives Demjanjuk a chance to avoid a repeat of the
spectacle last month when he was carried from his house in a wheelchair as
his wife sobbed, Leopold said.

In Germany, Demjanjuk lawyer Ulrich Busch challenged the Munich arrest
warrant on Friday, citing 1979 testimony given by a Sobibor camp guard who
says he does not remember Demjanjuk from either Sobibor or a training camp
where he is also alleged to have served.

The hope is that if the arrest warrant is deemed invalid, then there will
be no reason to deport Demjanjuk, his son said.

A separate attempt to block the deportation in Germany failed this week,
when a Berlin court ruled the decision lies with U.S. authorities. That
decision has been appealed.

Busch, who could not immediately be reached for comment, conceded
Thursday, that there was nothing that could be done on the German side to
force the U.S. not to deport Demjanjuk.

Demjanjuk, a native of Ukraine, says he was never a death camp guard and
maintains he was held by the Germans as a Soviet prisoner of war.

The new motion in Germany to block deportation cites testimony given by a
Sobibor camp guard that Demjanjuk Jr. said he found in U.S. prosecutors'
case files.

In the seven-page typewritten statement, dated 1979, the guard, Mikhail
Razgonyayev, said he did not remember Demjanjuk from either Sobibor or the
Trawniki training camp where he is also alleged to have served.

Razgonyayev, a Soviet soldier taken prisoner by the Germans who then went
to work for them, maintains further in the testimony that guards who did
not participate in the killings were threatened by their German overseers
with being sent to concentration camps themselves.

"Under these circumstances, I find it hard to imagine upon which basis the
arrest warrant of the court was issued," Busch argues in the written
filing.

It was not clear when there might be a ruling on the motion, and the court
was closed by the time the AP received it.

Justice John Paul Stevens refused Thursday, without comment, to step into
Demjanjuk's case.

Demjanjuk Jr. said Friday there were no plans to appeal to any of the
other eight U.S. Supreme Court justices. He said such a move might be seen
as a delay tactic, a claim made by the U.S. government about other
Demjanjuk appeals.

On April 14, immigration officers went to Demjanjuk's one-story brick home
and carried him out in a wheelchair to take him for a deportation flight
to Germany.

Within hours and while Demjanjuk was still in an immigration office at a
federal building in Cleveland, his attorney won from an appeals court a
stay of deportation that lasted until May 1.

The fight over that appeal featured dueling videos.

The family's showed Demjanjuk moaning in apparent pain while an
immigration officer examined him at home to check on his fitness to
travel.

A government surveillance video showed him walking slowly but without
assistance. The government said its video proved Demjanjuk was fit to
travel.

Demjanjuk was tried in Israel after accusations surfaced that he was the
notorious Nazi guard "Ivan the Terrible" in Poland at the Treblinka death
camp.

He was found guilty in 1988 of war crimes and crimes against humanity, a
conviction later overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court.

A U.S. judge revoked his citizenship in 2002 because of U.S. Justice
Department evidence showing he concealed his service at Sobibor and other
Nazi-run death and forced-labor camps.

An immigration judge ruled in 2005 he could be deported to Germany, Poland
or Ukraine. Munich prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for him in March.

(source: Associated Press)