U.S. DOJ Office of Special Investigations
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The Office of Special Investigations operates under the auspices of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. According to its self-description, it detects and investigates individuals who took part in Nazi-sponsored acts of persecution abroad before and during World War II, and who subsequently entered, or seek to enter, the United States illegally and/or fraudulently. It then takes appropriate legal action seeking their exclusion, denaturalization and/or deportation.
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[edit] History
The Office of Special Investigations began operations in 1979. As of August 2005, OSI has successfully prosecuted 100 persons involved in Nazi war crimes. These persons have had their citizenship revoked and/or been deported from the United States. Many had lived in the U.S. for decades and led unremarkable lives. For example, Adam Friedrich had lived in the U.S. since 1955 and been a citizen since 1962 before OSI found that he had been a member of the Waffen SS assigned as a prison guard at the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. He was stripped of his citizenship in 2004 after being a U.S. citizen more than forty years.
Surviving Nazis in the world, let alone in the United States, are becoming increasingly rare. As such, the mission of the OSI has shifted in recent years from focusing strictly on World War Two criminals to seeking out and prosecuting war criminals from the conflicts in Bosnia, Serbia, Rwanda, and Darfur who have sought refuge by coming to the United States.
[edit] Organization
The current Director of OSI is Eli Rosenbaum. Mr. Rosenbaum has worked for OSI on and off since 1980. In 1995, he was appointed Director of the office after having served as its Principal Deputy Director since 1988.
[edit] Demjanjuk case
John Demjanjuk is a Ukrainian-American who was stripped of his U.S. citizenship, and deported to Israel, by the Office of Special Investigations for concealing his involvement in war crimes at the Treblinka death camp in order to immigrate to the United States. John Demjanjuk's trial began in 1978. It led him to death row in Israel. Demjanjuk's citizenship was restored in 1998 but it was again revoked in 2004.
During his first trial he was accused of being "Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka,". The OSI had evidence, which it withheld from Demjanjuk's attorneys, demonstrating that they were knowingly targeting the wrong man with forged and falsified evidence. One OSI prosecutor resigned from the Department, when his repeated written warnings that Demjanjuk was not "Ivan the Terrible" were ignored.
When the Chief Judge of the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals learned, through reading an article in the New York Times, of the prosecutorial abuses in the Demjanjuk case, he initiated a review of the case. After Robert Mueller, then the head of the Department's Criminal Division, refused to even reply to the judge's letters and telephone calls, asking for corroboration of the New York Times allegations, the Sixth Circuit took the unusual step of appointing a Special Master to probe the conduct of the Justice Department. Eventually, the Circuit ruled in November 1993 that OSI had "acted with reckless disregard of the truth," and had carried out "prosecutorial misconduct that constituted a fraud on the court."
Neither Attorney General Janet Reno nor the Department has ever taken responsibility for the prosecutorial misconduct. John Demjanjuk was retried and convicted of lying to enter the U.S., as he had, in fact, served as a prison guard in several Nazi prisons. He was again stripped of his citizenship in 2004.
[edit] Criticism
[edit] Waste of Resources
Those people who served in World War II are now between the ages of 80 and 91 years old, as of 2008, thus the cost of initiating complaints, investigations, and ultimate prosecution of these individuals is questionable, as even if they are ultimately found to be deportable, it is quite possible that no country would want these persons returned to their country of origin (usually Germany or some other European Union country).
By 2027, it is quite probable that all persons who participated in World War II will be deceased and thus beyond the reach of the law. Also, another question which should be asked is why weren't these individuals prosecuted in the 1950s and 1960s when they immigrated to the United States and became citizens (albeit, some of them probably did provide false information on their immigration and citizenship applications)?
[edit] Extradition
Another issue which arises is the lack of prosecution of individuals who are deported from the United States to their home countries, where in most cases, these offenders are seldom prosecuted, and rarely convicted (according to some articles, fewer than 10 persons have actually been convicted by their home country of war crimes upon return).
While no one wants to see war criminals escape their crimes[neutrality disputed], the worst offenders from the World War II era (AXIS powers, Germany, Italy, Soviet Union and Japan), have been long dead or are close to the end of their natural lives.
